Reflections: Defining Community/Building Theories
Community is a tricky word—often connoting an inclusive and harmonious collaborative space. Too often, however, community is more a site of struggle and negotiation, an attempt to find a common framework for conflicting and seemingly contradictory impulses. One of the marks of those active in “community literacy,” “service-learning” and “engaged scholarship” is the desire to place themselves within the struggle to build a common framework and, existing within that architecture, to attempt to move forward towards building a community marked by educational, social, and political rights.
Over the past six years, the United States has seen its sense of community imploded, rebuilt, fractured, and, potentially, rebuilt again. For many in our field, these challenges have called us to rethink our identities as scholars, teachers, community members and citizens. The work which has resulted speaks not only to the ability of individuals working in common to respond to crises large and small, but also to the ability of our field to adapt and grow accordingly.
For the next two years, Reflections hopes to record this community-building work. In the process, hope to show how the immediate and the long term can stand in productive dialogue with each other. By juxtaposing efforts in response to immediate and dramatic needs, such as crisis in New Orleans, with work undertaken over a longer trajectory, public school reform, I hope it becomes clear that each immediate crisis also speaks to systemic issues which proceed and unfortunately extend beyond the current moment. I hope, that is, to have Reflections demonstrate the multiple levels on which which must consistently act. This series will culminate with an issue, edited by Ellen Cushman and Jeff Grabill, focused on theorizing the nature of community-based work in the current moment.
As you look at the series of “Special Issues” that follows, then, I hope you will consider not only work you might have produced in response to national events such New Orleans, the IraqWar, an Immigration debates, but how other work aspects of your work, related to such issues as public schools, queer politics, urban poverty, disability rights, and homelessness,might also intersect and expand our understanding of community. I hope, that is, that Reflections can provide a forum on all competing and complimentary the elements that mark community and, in the process, provide a historical record of what has already occurred and theoretical roadmap of the work to come.
Steve Parks
Editor, Reflections
Writing the Blues: Teaching in a Post Katrina Environment
Spring 20008
When the levees broke more than two years ago and the city of New Orleans was overwhelmed by the tidal surge, the lives of many in that great American city were changed forever. Those of us are a further remove were affected by Katrina, too, in that the displaced residents of New Orleans and surrounding region were relocated to cities across the US, creating the largest diaspora in American history. In the process we were reminded that the political issues which confronted New Orleans prior to the flood—poorly funded public schools, urban crime, inadequate government responses—were legion in cities throughout the US.
This issue of Reflections will explore through personal narrative, academic analysis, community writing, photography, and artwork, the ways in university faculty, community members, and students worked together under the banner of “community/university partnership” to respond to the immediate local needs of residents and the larger national issues the disaster exposed.
Call for Papers/Writing Prompt
Bridging the Gap: New Scholars, New Forms of Scholarship (On-line Edition)
Summer 2008
What does civic engagement look like to the next generation of scholars? What are the challenges, opportunities, and consequences posed by publicly active scholarship at the graduate level? This special issue addresses these questions by featuring work by emerging scholars - graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and new assistant professors. Edited by the Publicly Active Graduate Education Collective, an alliance of graduate students focused on publicly engaged scholarship, this issue will feature work which speaks to the issues, scholarly models, and writing styles being developed by the generation of scholars who will define “community literacy,” service learning,” and “engaged scholarship” in the years to come.
This issue of Reflections will be published on-line to allow new forms of multi-media scholarship and community literacy work to be featured.
Call for Papers/Writing Prompt
Peace: On the Frontlines of Non-Violence
Fall 2008
While the past six years has been marked by a “war on terror,” alliances of university faculty, community residents and students have been creating classrooms, publications, and programs based upon peace and non-violence. Although the immediate cause of such work might be seen as the Iraq War, there is a much longer and richer tradition of peace and non-violence work than can be captured by the current moment. Nor is “peace” a concept linked only to war. Communities must also respond to gun violence, hate crimes, and internal conflicts. Working for peace, then, can also stand for the overarching struggle to overcome violence and build harmonious neighborhoods. With this issue, we hope to explore the nature and significance of such work and to explore the obstacles of openly taking on unpopular or contentious conceptions of community.
This issue of Reflections will explore through personal narrative, academic analysis, community writing, photography, and artwork, the ways in university faculty, community members, and students worked together under the banner of “peace.”
Call for Papers/Writing Prompt
Deomcracis, y Libertad, pero para Quien!/Democracy and Freedom, but for Whom?
Spring 2009
Perhaps no current issue puts pressure on the definition of community as does immigration. In the midst of contentious political and cultural debate, however, university/neighborhood alliances have developed models that help build local support and educational access for a variety of immigrant populations. To succeed, these alliances have had to take into account the immediate environments in which they exist as well as state and national legislative actions. In the process, they have built programs that offer an inclusive and multi-lingual definition of community.
Published in both English and the language native to individual authors, this issue of Reflections will feature academic essays, policy analysis, memoir, photography, and artwork designed to feature the diversity of voices and programs engaged in supporting the success of immigrant populations in the United States.
Writing Theories/Changing Communities
Summer 2009
Much of the research literature on community writing and teaching responds to the
pragmatic need for such projects to accomplish real work that meets the goals of its various partners --community organizations, university faculty, undergraduate students, and other stakeholders. The implicit requirement for the “functionality” of community-based work is also a by-product of the evolution in rhetoric and composition towards a “public turn,” a move to base the discipline’s scholarship and classroom practices in support of pressing community needs.
The rapid growth of community writing projects nationally has reached a moment when it is now necessary to build theory that will allow us to understand what conceptually informs our work and what new directions for research and practice it enables. In addition, the very nature of the work also requires the an understanding of how we can employ, adapt, and create theories that articulate the role of community writing projects in producing knowledge “useful” to the academy, the larger culture, and the body politic. There is a need, then, to explore how the terms “engaged scholarship,” “public intellectualism,” “public work,” and “service learning” not only reframe our immediate work as scholars/teachers, but also reframe our broader work as neighbors, community members, and citizens.
This issue of Reflections will feature extended academic essays.