is there a place for service learning in literary studies?

Is There a Place for Service Learning in Literary Studies?Author(s): Laurie GrobmanSource: Profession, (2005), pp. 129-140Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595806 .

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Is There a Place for Service Learning in Literary Studies?

LAURIE GROBMAN

Although literary specialists have yet to embrace service learning in any

systematic way, Ellen Cushman and several others are urging us to move

in that direction. Cushman suggests that literary specialists can "link the

love of art and human decency" with the larger community ("Public In

tellectual" 335). She argues that literature and textual interpretation "can

be powerfully instructive when it comes time to understand the conflicts

taking place in students' and community residents' daily lives." Most sig nificant, she proposes that literary specialists engage in community lit

eracy work in order to gain necessary "cultural currency" to thrive, even

survive, in their discipline ("Service Learning" 210).1 In the last several years, I have embarked on projects bringing together

service learning, women's literature, and multicultural literature. Many of

my experiences with service learning in classes in multicultural literature confirm the positive possibilities in this pairing, especially in relation to

advancing multicultural issues and complicating students' understandings of difference. In many ways, my students developed more-complex multi cultural understandings through reading literature while also working in an inner-city public school, an after-school program for disadvantaged chil

dren, or a domestic abuse shelter. But problems and challenges remain in

the effort to integrate service learning with literature. I am especially con

cerned that service learning in literary studies may undermine literary stud ies rather than imbue it with the cultural significance Cushman envisions.

The author is Associate Professor of English at Penn State University, Berks Campus. A ver

sion of this paper was presented at the 2004 MLA convention in Philadelphia.

129 PROFESSION 2005



130 HI IS THERE A PLACE FOR SERVICE LEARNING IN LITERARY STUDIES?

Several of the problems with service learning in multicultural and women's literature courses echo the issues raised by compositionists and

service-learning practitioners, including the criticism that service learn

ing can too easily degrade into a "liberal do-gooder stance" (Cushman, "Public Intellectual" 332). Because service learning is for many students their first real-world encounter with some of the nation's profound social

ills, it can be difficult for them to avoid seeing themselves as saviors de

spite the emphasis on mutual learning. Moreover, community organizations and members may advocate the

kinds of values and worldviews that are the subject of academic and liter

ary critiques. For example, while working in a domestic abuse shelter for women and children, some of my students who were reading critiques of American individualism and meritocracy were confused by some women's

expressed desires for an affluent lifestyle. My students found similar ma

terialist values among the children in an inner-city school and commu

nity organization. It seemed to them that the staff members and teachers were encouraging a "white, middle-class lifestyle" at the same time that our class readings and discussions criticized it.

Another potential problem is what Cushman refers to as the "hit it and

quit it" type of service-learning project, where students leave after one se

mester or even less. Such a brief time makes it nearly impossible to create a sustainable relationship between a community and college or university ("Sustainable . . . Programs" 40). Even one-semester projects are difficult to organize and implement, and the prospects for extended programs are

worse, especially in schools without an existing service-learning admin istrative structure.2

Despite my attempts to address the problem, I have found that service

learning can too easily encourage narrow interpretations of literature to

fit or explain real-world situations, especially those related to race, class,

gender, and other categories of difference, thereby erasing the complexi ties of literary interpretation. I also remain concerned that service learn

ing may reinforce the insidious notion that texts by writers of color are

valuable only as sociological documents, not as works of art, or that eth nic writers of imaginative literature must be authentic spokespersons for

their racial group. In these pairings, literature becomes at times subservi ent to, or a rubber stamp of, what students find in the real world of their

service organizations. In this article, I describe briefly several service-learning and literature

projects and instructors' goals and expectations for them. I discuss my most recent course, which incorporates service learning with multicul

tural literary study, and the positive outcomes it propelled. I explain my



LAURIE GROBMAN ||| 131

concerns about the literary text in a service-learning project and my ef

forts to address them. Finally, I ask colleagues to join me in answering the

question that is the title of my piece: Is there a place for service learning in literary studies?

The Promise of Service Learning and Multicultural

Literary Studies

In English studies, many compositionists have embraced service learning because it connects students' academic work with the outside community and real-world situations. Students learn best when they are actively in

volved in projects with intrinsic interest, and writers, specifically, develop

language and discourse skills best by writing for real and diverse audi ences (Cooper and Julier 83). As Linda Adler-Kassner, Robert Crooks, and Ann Watters assert, "service-learning in the context of Composition can increase students' conception of the social far more effectively than

either textbooks or experience alone" as students begin to "rewrite the

social," addressing the "causes of social problems and not just the symp toms" ("Service-Learning" 5, 6).

In composition and service-learning research, emphasis is placed on

multicultural learning outcomes. As Sonia Nieto puts it, community ser

vice learning should focus on "the notion of civic responsibility in a plu ralistic but unequal societf (emphasis added), and it should occur within a

"critical multicultural lens" (ix, x). Service learning has "ethical and civic

promise" (Cushman, "Service Learning" 213), fostering democratic and

social-justice values (Hunter and Brisbin; Myers-Lipton; Warren). It en

courages students to take on the perspectives of others (Weah, Simmons, and Hall). But Dick Cone and Susan Harris suggest:

multicultural experiences do not necessarily lead to a "multicultural atti

tude." . .. Students . . . often draw on deeply-ingrained stereotypes, media

images, and previous experiences unless they are encouraged to consider

new experiences from an academically-informed perspective. (32)

Julia Garbus claims that service learning in English studies is "not just a trend, but a tradition" (563). She traces the roots of it and literary study to a literature professor, Vida Dutton Scudder, who in 1891 in Boston

founded Denison House, where educated young people came together to

live simple lives and to try to better the lives of neighborhood residents

(549). Scudder "brought the outside world into the literature classroom,"

believing that "community work provoked questions that study could illu minate" (548). She believed her "love of letters" (qtd. in Garbus 552) could




"catalyze" her students to see themselves as "creative, analytical, and effec tive individuals who could tackle injustice and better their world" (552); she

expected students' work with residents of settlement houses to help them break out of their limited, or limiting, class perspectives.3 "[W]e are all

segregated in the prison of class," Scudder wrote, but we can "escape from such prison" through imagination or through "personal contacts" (547).4

Over one hundred years later, we find traces of Scudder's work in service

learning and literature projects nationwide, in which instructors attempt to

influence and broaden students' perspectives, especially vis-a-vis difference. In an undergraduate course called The Literature of Reflection, Robert Coles assigns literary texts "as a basis for reflection upon what [students] are

experiencing in their work as volunteers," a "kind of psychological advice and instruction" (148, 152). In a multicultural American literature course at the

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, students work in community-service settings with people of backgrounds different from their own, conduct in terviews and oral histories, and read short fiction and novels by a diverse

range of writers (Jay). Students in Teresa Tavormina and Jenny Banks's Life

Reading Project at Michigan State University participated in literature dis cussion groups with off-campus community organizations and then shared their insights with other MSU students (Cushman, "Service Learning" 214;

Tavormina). Claire Gaudiani's course at Connecticut College?Literature, Service and Social Reflection?adapted from Coles, links the experiences of the authors and subjects of the literature to those of people who have par allel backgrounds. (www.clairegaudiani.com/Writings/pages/CS215.aspx).

Wendy Brandon's Writing as Social Reflection at Rollins College converges around two central questions: "How does one move from an intellectual

analysis of moral and ethical social issues to a socially responsible life?" and "In addition to volunteering your time, what other concrete forms of social action are possible?" (www.fiu.edu/~time4chg/Library/ideas.html).

Although this work goes on, it is largely hidden from view rather than

disseminated through scholarly publication.5 Are practitioners concerned

about a lack of interest in the discipline? Are they uncertain about what

service learning has to offer students or the community that is pertinent to literary studies? Even when studies about service learning involving literature are published, there seems to be little attention paid to literary education. For example, Deborah Williams Minter, Anne Ruggles Gere, and Deborah Keller-Cohen mention that their service-learning project included "literary representations of literacy education" (670), yet their discussion of students' consumption and production of texts did not touch on students' literary interpretation (684). Mark Langseth mentions briefly a project in which students in a Shakespeare class working in a homeless




shelter for elderly men "suddenly could comprehend the lessons about

power, physical decline, and redemption in the story of King Lear" (22) without examining why or how such (re)interpretations occurred.

My experiences with service learning in women's and multicultural

literature classes suggest potential on several levels, although continued

research is vital. First, service learning can encourage students to theo rize difference. Students engage in fluid, continual negotiations of dif

ference and commonality, especially with regard to understanding the constructed nature of stereotypes and beliefs about the other (Grobman,

"Thinking"). Literary texts and community service can work reciprocally to heighten (and in some cases introduce) awareness of the complexities of

race, gender, and class as they intersect in people's lives?in literature and in the real world (Grobman, "Service-Learning"). In Gregory Jay's view, service learning in multicultural literature courses provides an "invalu able 'real life' involvement in cross-cultural understanding."

Students explored complexities and contradictions in my recent course

combining multicultural literature and service learning. The course fo cused on many questions with which multicultural literary studies itself is wrestling, such as, What is multiculturalism and how is it relevant to

literary studies? What is meant by a canon of American literature? Who makes decisions, and on what bases, about what books and writers are to

be read and studied? Why do some scholars want to broaden the canon

of American literature to include texts by women and minorities, while others want to keep the canon in its traditional form? Do works by mi norities and women speak to different or similar issues as works in the canon? Do we read literature for what it can teach us or to appreciate its artfulness or for both reasons? What value does literature hold for stu dents and for society?

Students explored these questions while studying many literary texts,

among them Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Ernest Gaines's A Lesson before Dying, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, excerpts from Richard

Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory, and Judith Ortiz Cofer's Silent Dancing.6 At the same time, students participated in a federally funded reading program at a local, inner-city elementary school. They usually worked one-on-one

with children, not to teach them how to read (my students were not trained for this kind of instruction) but to get them excited about reading.

Students' selection of books for these reading sessions constituted a cen tral component of the intellectual connection between service and litera

ture, informed by Linda Flower's service-learning paradigm of intercultural

inquiry. Intercultural inquiry is a "literate action" in which the partners involved "attempt to use the differences of race, class, culture, or discourse




that are available to them to understand shared questions" (186; emphasis in original). Students read and discussed in small-group work and larger class discussions scholarly articles on canon issues, children's literature, and

multicultural children's literature. They also took into account the views

expressed by the administrators and teachers at the elementary school as

well as the desires and interests expressed by the children. As Flower sug

gests, "an intercultural inquiry seeks rival readings of [an] issue that have

the potential to transform both the inquirers and their interpretations of

problematic issues in the world" (186). Although elementary-aged children

may not be partners in the traditional sense, their views were considered by students in a give-and-take as they all grappled with questions of literary value in accordance with their different levels of education.

It was important to me and the elementary school administrators that

my students keep in mind that every child with whom they would work was

African American or Latino/a and economically disadvantaged, although students would decide whether or to what degree to base their book selec

tions on the children's racial and class backgrounds. First, however, they had to examine the notion that texts present specific worldviews. As Ann

Green suggests, many students tend to avoid discussion or acknowledg ment of white privilege (and thus they understand service learning as help

ing), so "[f]or white people, white privilege must be taught" (282, 284).7

Among my strategies for dealing frankly with whiteness was to ask stu

dents to consider whether the books they chose in a given week were ap

propriate for the children in the light of the books' embedded worldviews.

The assertion of universality in such books as those in the Berenstain

Bears series and the Dr. Seuss series spurred some very interesting class

discussions, especially over the question of universality as white, Western,

male, or middle-class. Even when we agreed that a particular book or col

lection of books embodied a particular worldview, students debated over

their appropriateness for children from other backgrounds. I facilitated the

discussions not to resolve these matters but to highlight their intricacies.

In Green's experience, "It is extremely difficult for white students to talk

and write about systemic racial inequalities and white privilege." Even dur

ing her students' final "reflection dinner," and even though all the students

in her class were white and all the people tutored were people of color, the

students "refused to name racism as a possible cause of the difficulties that

brought people to their service-learning sites, and they could not name

their whiteness as a source of privilege" (286). My students' work suggests,

however, that combining literary study with service can foster this deeper

understanding. Many students expressed in their e-mail journals both shock

and distress over the systemic inequities they encountered while working in




the inner-city elementary school.8 Often, my middle-class, white students

talked about how their elementary school experiences were so different, and they were saddened and angered by what the children at this school

faced on a daily basis. One student's journal remarks, for example, centered on the schoolchildren's lack of resources in the Southern rural school in

the late 1940s in Gaines's A Lesson before Dying and at the urban elementary school in Reading in 2004. In previous classes, I have had students dismiss

the inequities in A Lesson before Dying as "in the past," but in this class, combined with here-and-now service experiences, students recognized that structural inequities exist not far from their own backyard.

Literature and Service Learning: Productive or

Unproductive Tensions?

When I taught A Lesson before Dying without a service-learning compo nent, students could articulate some of the possibilities envisioned in this

text, such as a criminal justice system that works equally for the rich and

poor, white and nonwhite, or Gaines's hope that the "vicious circle" of the black man's burden will "ever be broken" (167). But studied side by side with service learning in a poor urban elementary school, A Lesson before Dying at times seemed to students a case study rather than a work of art

able to envision aesthetic and political possibilities and "to be the source

of further history" (Krieger 229). Students were quite conversant about how service learning allowed them to connect to the literature at a more

personal level, how it gave them new lenses through which to understand the literature and vice versa, and how both service and literature exposed them to unfamiliar cultures.

These are important insights and suggest the value of the pairing of lit erature and service learning. But perhaps because of their real-world work and encounters with everyday social ills, my students tended to mine the literature for answers and explanations, as if it corresponded in a one-to one relation with life. Many found in Ortiz Cofer's description in Silent

Dancing of El Barrio, the building in Paterson housing many Puerto Ri

cans, with voices speaking and arguing and radios blasting (90), an explana tion for some of the children's behavior (even those who were Latino/a but not Puerto Rican). They often seemed to oversimplify complex social prob lems?such as equating the character Cholly in The Bluest Eye with what

they learned about inner-city parents' lack of involvement in their children's education. Ironically, these are the kinds of connections I hoped students would make in order to see difference more complexly and, in Cushman's

words, to find in literary texts the "ability to represent conflict resolution




for communities of readers" ("Service Learning" 211). How, then, do we

balance the always already there tension between the literary text as a work

of art and the literary text as a source of cultural or social truth? I am not blaming my students, whose work in and outside the class

room was generally outstanding. Having been informed by the school's

guidance counselor during their introductory session that most of the

children they would be working with were never read to at home, my students all took their job seriously, trying to ignite the children's passion for reading. Most insisted that children need to read or be read to because

reading allows for imaginations to soar and for skills to develop. They recalled sitting on their parents' or grandparents' laps as children, feeling loved and nurtured as books were read to them. And their journal entries

and class and private discussions confirmed that they achieved some suc

cess with the children, connecting to them through the book choices.

At the same time that I question whether this tendency for the text

to lose its literary power is inherent in any service-literature pairing, I am thinking about ways to better balance these competing demands for next semester. I was mindful of this complex challenge as I designed the course. I tried to confront the crucial issues of difference's complexities while also attending to the meaning and value of literature as literature.

Our discussions often focused on the relation between art and life and, in particular, the relevance or role of art, especially literature, in social

change. My pedagogical approach to multicultural literature brought to

gether myriad cultural and aesthetic traditions in the texts under study. For example, students read Waldo Martin's "The Sounds of Blackness:

African-American Music" to understand another form of black artistic

expression and to consider its influence in The Bluest Eye. I asked ques tions such as, How might the blues inform your reading of The Bluest Eye}

How might the music illuminate some of the artistic, social, and politi cal features of this text? As artistic expression in and of itself and as an

aesthetic form in The Bluest Eye, how might it help us consider issues of

cultural distinctiveness and universality?

My students' final journal entries for the semester suggest that with

careful attention to these matters, we might be able to pair service learn

ing with multicultural literature while affirming the value of literature in

the battle for social justice.9 Both Amanda and Adam allude to something

unique to art that allows for multiple interpretations and comprehensive

knowledge making.

Amanda: I believe that art can be the way of demonstrating the need for social change. Art is a form of expression.

. . . This expression can

enlighten other people who might have been unaware of the situation




the author is presenting. . .. This interpretation is important because it

can mean something different to each person. ... If people view art, no

matter what kind, it can inspire them and encourage them to act.

Adam: These authors show their lives and experience through the use of literature. Instead of just saying it through testimony they disguise it in a book, a more creative way that teaches people more because it's not

simply stated. It makes the reader think about it.

These were students' final journal entries, based on the kinds of questions I asked and constrained by the time limits of our course, so this is as far as they got. Could I have pushed them to probe deeper, by referring them to our earlier class discussions of literary analysis? And would I have been

successful? I will revise the course again and perhaps provide another

group of students more effective ways to examine the aesthetic and politi cal power of literature in the context of service learning.

Despite Scudder's work over a hundred years ago, the pairing of service

learning and literature is in its infancy. I am hopeful that they can lead a

long and fruitful life together that does not diminish the value of literature, but we must proceed cautiously and not expect that imaginative literature can provide solutions to complex social problems. Cushman's vision of lit erature as a means to resolve community conflicts can only be realized, in my view, if we remember that literary texts are imaginative constructs.

We must remain mindful of literature's cultural and aesthetic capabilities; otherwise, service learning in a literature course becomes boilerplate, and

literary study loses its specific functions in a comprehensive curriculum.

Extending Northrop Frye's notion of the "educated imagination" beyond the study of literature and other disciplines, Richard Conville asserts that "[o]ur students' imaginations can also be extended through experience." "By joining community service with classroom theorizing," he continues, "our students enlarge their vision of the society they want to

live in" beyond the society they already live in (emphasis mine). Imagine the possibilities for the educated imagination if we can productively bring together the study of literature and service learning. Or as my student

Joe put it, "Reading in detail [in the literary texts] the lives of other peo

ple with different experiences lets me come into the [elementary] school

knowing that every kid has a story."

NOTES =^

1. Cushman joins a growing number of literary specialists who see a crisis in and

of English studies. See, for example, Berube; Downing, Hurlbert, and Mathieu, "En

glish Incorporated"; Greenblatt; North et al.; Scholes; Yagelski and Leonard.



138 III IS THERE A PLACE FOR SERVICE LEARNING IN LITERARY STUDIES?

2. Penn State University has an extensive Public Scholarship program from which

I have benefited in both monetary and educational ways. But over two hours from

University Park, at a college of the university without its own service-learning pro

gram, I am on my own in making contacts with community organizations. But some

organizations and schools want immediate help because of desperate need, so even if

that help is temporary, we should not dismiss these sites.

3. Scudder's turn-of-the-century Wellesley College students were "upper-class or upper-middle-class Protestant girls [who] had grown up shielded from the un

sightly poor." Perhaps not aware of their own socially defined roles as women, these

students, because of their class and race, could "easily ignore off-campus turmoil"

(Garbus 551). Today, service learning regularly involves middle- or upper-class white

students working with economically disadvantaged, nonwhite community members

(Nieto ix; see also Green 277). Many of these students have been shielded from social

problems that plague many of our nation's cities and poor rural communities.

4. Even though Garbus acknowledges that some of Scudder's methodologies and

value systems seem somewhat unenlightened, she credits Scudder and other settlers

with doing "the best they could, and . . . helpfing] neighbors in countless practical

ways" (557). For example, Scudder spoon-fed her students her interpretation of litera

ture instead of fostering close reading or examining assumptions (555). Furthermore, she did not approach her community-service work with the idea of devising strategies to help neighbors as peers help themselves (557).

5.1 pieced these projects together from several sources. Coles's work is well-known, and I first learned of Tavormina and Banks's project through Cushman's "Service

Learning." I recalled speaking with Gregory Jay about his pairings of service learning and literature at a MELUS conference in 2002 and recently contacted him through e-mail. In the ERIC database I found the articles by Langseth and by Minter, Gere, and Keller-Cohen. I found additional projects by online searches of the Web.

6. Because students were going to be working with Latino/a and African American

children, most readings in the course were by writers of these racialized ethnic groups. 7. In this class I had eighteen white students, one African American student, and

one Puerto Rican student. The two nonwhite students were already aware of the

phenomenon if not the term "white privilege," but like their white counterparts, they

initially had trouble with the notion of worldview in a children's book. From two

different backgrounds (also, one was a first-year student and the other a junior), they reacted in different ways to many issues arising from service learning and literature.

In the future, I hope to explore through my research issues specifically pertinent to nonwhite students. But I am troubled that, with so few minority students in my

classes, their anonymity cannot be guaranteed. 8. Students' written reflections connecting their academic, literary, and community

service work occurred in graded one-on-one e-mail journals with me. In these jour

nals?informal, reflective, critical writing rather than finished products?I gave a set

of prompts to the entire class, to which each student responded separately. I wrote

back with questions and comments, usually asking for clarification or development, and students were required to respond to my first set of comments and questions.

9. I am using pseudonyms for my students, who gave me permission to use their

work. I received approval to conduct research on human subjects for this project

through the Penn State University Compliance Office. Excerpts from students' written

work are unedited, except for obvious punctuation errors, spelling errors, and typos.




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