Fall semester is drawing to a close here at Emory, and I really should be working on getting student grades in order. Which is exactly why I feel so compelled to think about plans for next year's fall semester. Officially this is called "structured procrastination," and otherwise, well, slacking.
However, for the past few days I've been thinking about a plan to teach a course that involves service learning, or community-engaged learning, and I want to record some of my thoughts before I forget them. In part this plan is a modest, quiet form of "occupying" with art; in part it's a way to invite students to balance abstract, ancient principles with contemporary life and their own experience.
I've been thinking about a first-year seminar on East Asian literati culture that combines classroom lecture with hands-on practice of brush calligraphy. I chose calligraphy because it's something that even non-fluent English speakers could do, and while it's of great significance to East Asian culture it can be done by just about anybody who's willing to practice. Also, the materials are inexpensive and available. What we learn in the classroom we then take into the environment of a local community center. Emory students will join students from the community center in practicing calligraphy, and at the end of the semester we will have a group exhibition. The students will all be newcomers to campus and to Atlanta; I hope that
they will learn that working for the benefit of others also brings
benefit to themselves.
This is related to my interest in the cultural phenomenon of wenren (C.) / bunjin (J.) 文人, people of education and personal cultivation who make their lives a form of art. For the 18th century haikai poets who gravitated towards Buson, poetry and brush calligraphy were of immense importance, and together with reading classical texts, enabled working people living in undistinguished circumstances to feel a sense of transcendence and connection with something grand, venerable, and ancient.
I'd like my students to connect with this on a level that goes beyond just struggling to get a grade in a class. I also think that as a group we can help people in the neighborhood -- many of them refugees, or people without much in the way of financial resources -- to connect with it too. While bunjin were more likely to be recluses than community organizers, I'm interested in exploring with students to what extent we can learn from their example in terms of simplicity, benevolence, duty, and righteousness.
Sounds very grand, doesn't it? Maybe corny? I do have to keep working on it just to get to a place where I'm ready to start.
Here are some places that can suggest some directions to take this:
Emory Office of University-Community Partnerships
Campus Compact
