Dr. David Valentine

Can you tell me a little bit about the course you teach with a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) component?

The course is called Anthropology and Social Justice. It examines the relationship between anthropological methods and theory on the one hand and social justice work on the other, a relationship that has long been at the heart of the discipline. The students read about social justice issues (from health care access and racialized state violence to environmental racism and justice). Anthropologists argue that through ethnogaraphic research, we can get a sense of the investments, interests, meanings, conflicts, and common goals in any social group. As such, through their CEL appointments, students are asked to combine their volunteer hours with participant-observation in the events, interactions, and conversations at their sites. A key outcome of this class is a public presentation of their work at the end of the semester, to which representatives of the organizations they have worked with are invited. Students’ task is to see how to turn ethnographic participant-observation into insights that may be valuable to the organizations they have worked with. This is in keeping with a primary goal of the class, which is to ask: how do we hold anthropological research accountable to researched populations?

What an ambitious and important course! How do you structure the CEL component alongside the content of the course?

This is a 4000-level 4-credit course that typically has around 15 students. I warn the students very clearly in advance about the amount of work this course entails because it not only has a CEL component, but it is also writing intensive. We require 40 hours of volunteering in the first 10 weeks of the course and the last four weeks of the course are dedicated to writing. The CEL isn’t just an add-on to the course. In fact, it is intimately tied to how I choose the readings for the semester, what kind of assignments the students have, the training the students receive [IRB modules] and so on.

It seems as though finding partner sites that address specific social justice issues is important in this course. How do you choose the organizations?

I choose the organizations in conversation with Monica from the Center for Community-Engaged Learning. I try and map the three main books that we read to an issue that is addressed by one or more of the partner organizations. I am also flexible with students if they come in with an established relationship at a community partner site. Their long-term commitment to an organization is beneficial for the work we do in this course.

Could you explain some of the main design elements of your course?

In the first week of the class, staff from the Center from Community-Engaged Learning arrange a panel of presenters from our community partner sites so the students get to hear from them directly. This session gives us a chance to frame the purpose of their volunteering in relationship to the course material and goals.

Then, I have four class sessions on what I call “Ethics, Action, and Anthropology” that are spread throughout the course of the semester. In the first session, we look at the complex history of anthropology’s complicities with European colonialism. Other session topics have addressed the ways scholarly frameworks may constrain our understanding of what's happening in social justice work and thinking about what is at stake, and for whom, when communities –in particular Black and Indigenous communities—refuse to participate in anthropological knowledge production precisely because of the discipline’s colonial legacies.

As I mentioned before, students start at their sites right at the beginning of the semester so they are able to draw on their experiences when we have these discussions. Then, shortly after Spring Break, they withdraw from their organizations to begin writing and workshopping their research papers, as well as preparing their presentations. The presentations are given at the very end of the semester to an audience of staff members from the students’ partner sites. In this way, they are held accountable to exercise their critical voices in a way that isn’t counterproductive or just geared toward me as their only audience.

How does Community-Engaged Learning assist your students in their learning process?

I really can’t imagine this class without CEL because talking about social justice work and social change can feel abstract without any sort of application. As we go through the semester, students’ field notes and ethnographic stories can be examples that either pose counterpoints or offer reiterations of a point from an earlier article or text. Their experiences often show up as dilemmas, and we take time at least once a week in class to allow everyone a chance to speak and share. These conversations and experiences really help the texts come alive for the students, and more importantly it makes them more careful about critiquing what we read. It authorizes them to speak about the text but it also gives them a voice to speak back with a counterpoint.

You have clearly put in a lot of time and effort into developing this course. What would you say to someone who is new to incorporating Community-Engaged components into their courses?

First, I recommend that you work with the Center for Community-Engaged Learning from the start in developing and organizing your course. As I mentioned earlier, they identify and communicate with community partners, decipher which particular volunteer positions are appropriate, ensure that students attend a training to prepare them for community work, manage the recording of hours and so much more. All of this support allows me to teach a really complex course without having to do any of the administration of the CEL component. All of it just happens and I’m always so amazed! If you are worried about incorporating CEL because it would take too much time: Don’t! The staff in the Center for Community-Engaged Learning make it happen with their well-oiled machine. What adds work to this course for me is the fact that it is a writing intensive course, not the CEL component.

I would therefore suggest sitting down with a staff member from the Center for Community-Engaged Learning a few months prior to the start of the semester to figure out how to best integrate CEL with the course. Don’t assume that you will or should know. Since they have helped so many faculty design CEL courses in the past, their suggestions for partnership sites, topics, or other elements of design might help you brainstorm new texts or ways to make deeper connections with learning outcomes for your students. With their support, the payoff is much richer for the students, hopefully also for you as the faculty member, and I would guess for the partner organizations, too.

Speaking of partner organizations, one of the recent innovations in my course that I would recommend to anyone utilizing CEL pedagogies is to write to partner organizations prior to the start of the semester. I thank them for the time and energy they put in to partnering with my students and I also explain my course, the skills I’m teaching the students, my expectations, and also what I hope they will gain not only from the course itself, but also from its integration with their time at the site. I think this set the tone nicely this year and I plan to do it again in the future.

Thank you for your time and for sharing your wisdom, David! We appreciate it.