Monday, November 10, 2008

Service Learning Call for Proposals - 1/1/09

http://www.compact.org/opportunities/detail/4449

Call for Abstracts - Engaging Culture and the Arts: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Service-Learning

Dear Colleagues Across Disciplines:

Do you teach service-learning courses about culture and the arts –or- courses that use direct engagement with culture and the arts as gateways to other topics? Might you be interested in writing an article about it for a collection on service-learning for civic engagement? If so, read on!

The Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Service-Learning series from Stylus Publishing is a groundbreaking collection of reference books on service-learning organized around specific community issues rather than disciplinary boundaries, thus demonstrating how different approaches and/or collaborative efforts can contribute to shared goals. Volumes in the series include:

- Race, Poverty and Social Justice – Gender Identity, Equity and Violence – Health and Wellness – Research, Advocacy and Political Engagement – Sustainability (in development)

As of today, there’s a commitment from the publisher to produce these five volumes. But I believe we should make the case for at least one more – on culture and the arts!
The inclusion of such a volume has the potential to demonstrate how culture and the arts constitute a range of activities are central to the wellbeing and survival of communities; that no matter what our disciplinary perspective, a civically engaged culture and arts pedagogy has the potential to positively impact our students, our communities and the richness of our own lives as scholars and citizens.

I invite you to join me in an effort to convince the series editor to propose another volume to the publisher. If we can collect 8-10 strong proposals, then he has committed to me to seek publication with Stylus as part of the series. If that doesn’t work, I’m personally committed to taking those strong strong proposals to however many publishers I need to in order to make this happen. For now, all it requires of you is a page or two of effort. Let’s shine a light on all the extraordinary work you are doing (see the call for abstracts below).

Sandra

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Call for Papers: Proposed Volume on
Engaging Culture and the Arts: Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Service-Learning

Please follow the guidelines below for submitting a 1-3 page prospectus. Please keep in mind the following information concerning your chapter:

Theme:
Culture and the arts are the province of all, providing means by which communities are empowered and uplifted, and through which students are enlightened and energized. Culture and the arts encompass a broad range of pursuits including but not limited to material, verbal, kinesthetic and musical forms of expression; the preservation of cultural heritage; and the celebration of new, living traditions. These are not peripheral activities but central to the wellbeing and survival of communities. As bell hooks states, “Learning to see and appreciate the presence of beauty is an act of resistance in a culture of domination that recognizes the production of a pervasive feeling of lack, both material and spiritual, as a useful colonizing strategy.”

This volume deals with the arts and the cultural life of communities as both topics of instruction and methods of instruction. We thus invite essays that address courses in which the subject matter or theme is explicitly about culture and the arts, but we also invite essays about courses which may be about other subjects (from the sciences to professional fields) which use art and culture as entryways into other topics. Essays in this collection demonstrate how direct engagement with the cultural life of communities through well-designed service-learning experiences contribute in tangible ways to the communities served, to student achievement of course outcomes, and to the professional growth of faculty members.

Audience: The target audience for the series is the growing legion of faculty in higher education who are exploring the power of the service-learning pedagogy for teaching community engagement. The series will be suitable for faculty across all types of institutions and should be a useful resource for course development in all undergraduate years. The audience for this volume consist of faculty across disciplines who include culture and the arts in their courses as either topic or method of instruction.

Purpose: This volume is to serve as a source book for faculty who teach a variety of courses that have curricular content related to culture and the arts, or for whom engagement through arts and culture might serve as methodology through which other issues such as social justice can be accessed. Each chapter should approach the general theme from the disciplinary perspective of the author thus forming a collection of multiple perspectives on this theme. Chapters written by interdisciplinary teams are especially welcome, as are chapters written in collaboration with students or community partners. Each chapter should demonstrate the power of service learning to help students explore course content and attain learning objectives through their participation in community-based work. The goal is to give examples and guidance for faculty seeking to integrate service-learning into courses.

The prospectus should contain the following elements:

1. Your name(s) and title(s)
2. Your discipline(s)
3. Contact information (department, campus/organization, address, email, phone)
4. Abstract (500-1500 words)
a. Learning objectives and outcomes – what will the chapter attempt to address, what are the multiple discrete objectives for engagement with arts and culture, and what are the outcomes long and short term? What are the big ideas you are trying to convey to students?
b. Methods / process – how did you approach the learning objectives (include community partners, specific projects/placements, student preparation, reflection activities)
c. Assessment – How do you measure qualitative changes through the process?
d. Future directions (ex: questions to ponder, resources to explore, activities to pursue, suggestions for others who are involved in community-based teaching and research)
5. References – a brief bibliography

Please send the prospectus to (electronic is preferred, subject line: Engaging Culture and the Arts):

Sandra Posey
Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary General Education
Interim Director, Center for Community Service-Learning
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
3801 W. Temple Avenue
Pomona, CA 91767
sposey@csupomona.edu

Due date: Jan 1, 2009

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