CCC 61:1 / september 2009
Robert Brown
Review Essay
Town and Gown: Partnering Writing Programs with
Urban Communities
Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement
Linda Flower
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008
Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy beyond the College Curriculum
Eli Goldblatt
Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007
Making Writing Matter: Composition in the Engaged University
Ann M. Feldman
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008
In a book review published in College Composition and Communication in
2002, Bruce Herzberg wrote that “the continuing interest in service learning
and community literacy in our field is an admirable trend” and went on to
predict that more books on the subject were “to be anticipated” (Review 547).
As it so happens, Herzberg’s prediction has come to pass, if these three books
suffice as proof.
As a trend, service learning may be in good health, but as a term, it is in
decline. It is no accident that these authors have all avoided using the phrase
in their book titles. The problem lies in its paternalistic overtones, which suggest that the university extends its expertise and the community gratefully
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accepts it. It was Bruce Herzberg, in fact, who cautioned against this server/
served dichotomy as long ago as 1994 (“Community”). These three authors,
all opposed to a one-way transfer of knowledge, envision more egalitarian and
reciprocal relationships between town and gown. In Thomas Deans’s taxonomy
of university–community partnerships, they favor the model he calls writing
with the community, as opposed to the other two models: writing for the community or about it.
While all three authors share a commitment to writing with the community, each comes at this commitment from a somewhat different angle: Linda
Flower theorizes how university mentors and urban youth can join together in
consciousness-raising inquiry; Eli Goldblatt shows how a writing program can
become more involved with and accountable to its institution’s neighboring
community; Ann Feldman explains why a composition curriculum should be
rhetorically grounded in its civic surroundings.
Each of these books grew out its author’s initiatives in the city that is home
to his or her institution. Linda Flower writes about her work with Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh; Eli Goldblatt writes about his efforts at Temple
University in Philadelphia; and Ann Feldman writes about her initiatives at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. Because each author teaches at a Research I
school in a metropolitan area, the situations in which they work, and about
which they write, are comparable—comparable enough to bring their books
together in an omnibus review.
Linda Flower not only occupies the geographic center of the group; her
book sits at the referential crux of their texts. (That is, Goldblatt and Feldman
both cite Flower, but not each other.) This centrality seems reason enough to
turn attention to her book first.
Flower’s book is the fruit of more than a decade’s work with the Community Literacy Center (CLC) of Pittsburgh. Of the three authors, it is Flower who
draws her vision of community literacy on the largest theoretical canvas. Her
synthesis of research literatures—in rhetoric, in philosophy, in communications
and cultural studies—is always thorough and at times almost encyclopedic.
There is something glacial about her argument, both in its unhurried pace and
in its formidable force.
When she takes exception with certain proponents of critical literacy, she
does so with a firm but even hand—more evenhandedly, I would add, than some
of those cited have treated her in kind. Her targets are anti-foundationalists
who pull the rug out from under “the establishment” without putting anything
else in its place. In her view, literacy scholars should not content themselves
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with problematizing, but should commit themselves to the riskier but more
rewarding task of problem solving.
Over time CLC became a forum where university folk and community
members learned to communicate with one another, across lines of cultural
difference, in order to address a problem jointly construed. To such activity
Flower assigns the name “intercultural inquiry”:
The cognitive challenge of intercultural inquiry is to deal with the fact that we
are all working with limited but complexly different and valuable interpretations
of reality. The rhetorical challenge is to use difference to build a more expansive
representation of that reality. (59)
In the effort to use difference productively, intercultural inquiry led to written products of deliberately hybrid design—polyvocal conglomerates where
academic discourse shared space with vernacular genres. These heterogeneous
texts then became scripts at public performances where high school students
dramatized their points of view for civic leaders and others who engaged
them in discussion. Ultimately, though, it was not the publications or the
performances or even the institution of CLC that mattered most; in Flower’s
estimation CLC’s most lasting effect was also its least ascertainable: the local
public sphere that intercultural inquiry brought into being—“a deliberative
community built around discourse,” which had not existed previously and
would not have existed otherwise (29).
Readers acquainted with Flower’s older research will know that the word
“cognitive” in the quotation above hearkens back to that research. She tells us
that she left off her former line of inquiry when she recognized a potential for
greater positive impact in doing community-based research. Even so, she did
not completely jettison her earlier findings. Rather, what the reader encounters
is her older research repurposed in the service of intercultural inquiry. That is,
she took what she learned about writers’ mental routines—how they represent
rhetorical tasks, define goals, and monitor their progress—and fashioned it
into prompts for CLC mentors to use when cuing their teenage partners. The
methods of intercultural inquiry, such as generating rival hypotheses and getting at the story-behind-the-story, are really intellection turned inside out and
remade as social intercourse. Beyond the argument it presents, the book also
testifies to its author’s evolution as a scholar.
The only real fault I find with the book is its lack of a clear organizational
plan. The chapters do not follow a linear progression; rather they seem to cycle,
and sometimes recycle. Readers must wade through more redundancy than they
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should have to. This redundancy may owe partly to the fact that two chapters
were former journal articles. When a book is built around a sizable preformed
core, it tends to grow by way of accretion. Or so seems the case here. Late in
the book Flower makes what I take to be a revealing remark: “You may have
noticed that each chapter of this book was organized around a significant issue
or problem in community literacy” (232). How much more useful it would be
to find this statement in the first chapter (in the future tense) than in the last!
The remark may also give readers reason to wonder how much organization
was an afterthought for Flower herself.
Some years after CLC was founded, Eli Goldblatt launched his own
extramural initiatives on the other side of the Keystone State. In his book
he tells of his efforts to connect Temple University’s writing program to the
many literacy institutions, large and small, that surround its campus in north
Philadelphia. His central argument is this: if our writing classrooms operate
as “mere way-stations, disconnected from what has come before or what will
confront students afterward,” then as educators we are guilty of practicing
what he calls “through-put” education (45). At Temple, those who suffer most
from through-put education are those who live nearest the school, in the
neighborhoods of Philadelphia, but whose scholastic training is remote from
the university’s curriculum. By connecting Temple’s writing program to the
surrounding community, Goldblatt wants to ease the way to academic success
for local students with inadequate preparation. As the subtitle of his book suggests, he does not address the curriculum per se but instead looks beyond it,
to illuminate the context that the curriculum insufficiently heeds.
His efforts to make connections take him to public and parochial schools
in the city and outlying suburbs (chapter 2), to nearby community colleges
(chapter 3), and to storefront literacy outfits and nonprofit arts organizations
(chapters 4 and 5). Since Goldblatt concerns himself with administration at the
programmatic level—that is, above the level of the classroom—his book will
speak most directly to WPAs, though the “A” here might stand for activist as
well as administrator. “Unabashedly committed” is he to the democratic cause
of opening higher education to as many students as possible (14).
Of the three authors reviewed, Goldblatt writes in the most conversational tone and with the most consistent authorial presence. His personable
voice is the stylistic counterpart to his claim that personal relationships are
what sustain university–community partnerships more than anything else. By
that same token he tries to cultivate a personal relationship with his reader.
The personable quality of his prose comes across in a statement such as this
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one: “I don’t know if I’m any wiser now than when I started this book project,
but I am older and a little more circumspect about what can happen to largescale visions” (193). His humility here is endearing, but it also serves another,
epistemic purpose.
Winning readers’ trust and bringing them into his confidence are crucial
to the success of his argument. Much of Goldblatt’s data, especially about
building relationships, comes in the form of stories—stories of committee
meetings, brainstorm sessions, and general schmoozing. (Fittingly, he titles
one of his chapters “Lunch.”) Though conversations at lunch counters are
no doubt important for maintaining relationships, they do not leave behind
a material trace, napkin jottings notwithstanding. Consequently, readers are
left to take a lot of what Goldblatt says on the authority of his word—that is,
by dint of his ethos. He admits as much himself, if unintentionally, when he
writes, “She [Lourdes, the subject of a story] is becoming a leader in her home
communities, but—believe me—Lourdes’ remarks were not lost on the grad
students who heard her, either” (139). However true this may be, readers have
no choice but to believe him, because right after he makes this statement, he
abruptly ends the story.
One might discredit much of his evidence as merely anecdotal, but to do
so would disregard his premise that sharing anecdotes creates the social cohesion that, in turn, makes true university–community collaboration possible. For
Goldblatt, story swapping amounts to far more than small talk, for swapping
stories is how participating parties make their perspectives known and bring
them to bear in negotiation. Following the philosophy of community organizer
Saul Alinsky, Goldblatt holds that all parties must voice their self-interests before an equitable alliance can form. An organizer’s job, according to Alinsky, is
to identify the concerns that motivate individuals and to persuade them that
collective action is the way to redress those concerns. Parties can be recruited
for a campaign only when they feel personally invested in its outcome.
Goldblatt’s book has a polemical edge, but he does little in the way of
outright claiming and contending. Instead, he is far more apt “to present a
picture” (9) or “to illustrate a kind of joint sponsorship” (140). “Illustrate,” in
fact, is his verb of choice—and with good reason. As with any case study, the
question arises of how well his findings will translate to other situations. Rather
than dodge the question, Goldblatt confronts it directly. And his answer to it
is twofold—you really can’t, but maybe you can. On the one hand, you really
can’t, he says, because university–community partnerships should develop in
response to local circumstances, and as a result each project is effectively sui
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generis and thus resistant to repotting. On the other hand, maybe you can, if,
as an active reader, you find something in this detailed portrait applicable to
your own circumstances. Goldblatt writes, “By being as specific as I can about
the localness of literacy learning at Temple, I intend to offer a meaningful
case study to those in very different but equally compelling situations” (13).
As Goldblatt is a poet in addition to being a scholar, I cannot help but wonder
whether he subscribes to the school of poetics that believes—to (heretically)
paraphrase Cleanth Brooks—that the best way through the door of universality
is by the keyhole of particularity.
What I found most compelling in Goldblatt’s account were his observations about the importance of outside funding. To launch his community
literacy projects, the biggest being New City Writing, he had to coauthor three
successful grants. As his projects cut across “the usual institutional boundaries,” he knew that he could not count on steady financial support from any
one school or university center (165). In explaining why the grants factored so
importantly in his projects, he gives reasons that go beyond the obvious one,
money. He explains that winning the grants earned him some respect from his
colleagues and superiors. Also, and less expected I think, he says that applying
for grants was a catalyst for cooperation among his project partners. In Alinsky’s
terms, the promise of money motivated individuals to hitch their self-interests
to a common mission. And the process of applying forced them to formulate a
mutually amenable plan for realizing that mission.
Like Goldblatt, Ann Feldman also advocates making changes at the
programmatic level, but unlike Goldblatt, she takes aim directly at the curriculum. Her school, the University of Illinois at Chicago, has committed itself
to becoming an “engaged” university. By adopting this identity, the school has
committed itself to making knowledge for and with the people of Chicago.
Consequently, the way that faculty conduct research is changing. Instead of
projects of only disciplinary interest, faculty are pursuing projects of applied
research, which cross disciplinary boundaries and which involve off-campus
partners as co-investigators. When this happens, says Feldman, a writing program finds itself presented with a golden opportunity: “[W]hen a university
announces its commitment to engagement and when faculty increasingly study
issues related to its metropolitan context . . . these activities should have an
impact . . . on writing instruction” (59–60).
Feldman wants to immerse students in local civic contexts so that writing becomes a response to real exigencies. Once the rhetorical locus of writing instruction moves out into the community, students enrolled in first-year
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composition will come to appreciate how writing can act on the world and
contribute to material change. She opposes a model of service learning where
students are sent out to volunteer (at, say, a soup kitchen or an after-school
program) and return to the classroom to write about what they learned. She
believes that students learn not by reflecting but by doing. Accordingly, she
champions a community-based course where writing is a key component of
what students contribute to participating community partners. By producing documents of pragmatic consequence for an agency or organization,
students learn how situational variables shape the genres in which they write:
“Community-based writing projects offer a unique clinic in which students
. . . can apply important considerations of genre to particular situations that
give rise to writing” (119).
Of the three books, Feldman’s has the best organizational design. She
divides her book into two parts: part one is a manifesto for community-based
writing courses; part two is the story of the Chicago Civic Leadership Certificate
Program (CCLCP), the three-year pilot program in community-based writing
that she launched with a small team of colleagues. What I found to be the most
engaging chapter, however, did not belong properly to either part, but rather
came between them. Feldman calls it her “narrative interlude” (9).
This narrative interlude marks a departure from the academic discourse
that predominates in the rest of book. In it, Feldman tells the backstory of
CCLCP, beginning at a time when it was still just an idea in her mind. Like all
good stories, this one has a plot (artfully alinear), colorful characters, and conflict. The most colorful character, and the source of greatest conflict, is Stanley
Fish, who was then dean of arts and sciences at the school. If not quite on par
with Milton’s Satan, Fish cuts an imposing (though not unlikable) figure in
Feldman’s story. To read about her crossing swords with Fish is good fun, but
it is also good information. For it was against his steely antagonism to service
learning that Feldman honed her own apologia in favor of it. This interlude
comes as a welcome break from the manifesto that precedes it, because in it
Feldman reveals just how fraught a process it was to make her own curricular
vision manifest.
The only part of Feldman’s vision that risks being a pipe dream is her belief
that tenure-track faculty will take an interest in teaching first-year writing.
Her line of reasoning runs something like this: When faculty start conducting
research out in the community, they will find themselves out of their element.
This disorientation will force them to question their disciplinary assumptions
about how knowledge is made and conveyed. They will come to realize that new
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conditions and constituents call for novel methods and rhetorical strategies.
In the search for workable alternatives, faculty can put their newfound awareness to pedagogical use. By pulling back the curtain on their work-in-progress,
they can let students in on the “secret” of research. Perhaps faculty will even
find ways to involve students directly so that they can see for themselves how
knowledge is made at an engaged university.
At one point Feldman invites her readers to imagine a hypothetical scenario:
What if these faculty, working on urban transportation issues, met with [first-year]
writing students as part of, perhaps, an undergraduate research forum, described
their work, and invited the freshman to participate in the project. (70)
While there is nothing wrong with aiming high, Feldman admits in her narrative interlude to “having trouble getting other faculty to come on board” for
what would become CCLCP (94). As far as we are told, no tenure-track faculty
member taught a section of first-year writing in the program’s pilot years. This
fact would not be so corrosive to her argument had Feldman not built her
case for a community-based curriculum so firmly on faculty involvement, as
nothing less than a precondition for it. Because of this, CCLCP did not meet
its own criteria for success. Feldman built it; faculty did not come, at least not
yet. Perhaps at a later date she will publish a report of faculty participation
that proves otherwise.
Before bringing this review to a close, I want to reconvene the three books
once more, this time to consider them from a more personal perspective, that
of a junior scholar. Something these authors all share, which is no coincidence,
is their senior status. These books are not their “tenure books,” nor could they
possibly have been. There are several reasons for this. The projects described
therein were many, many years in the making—time beyond the trial period
an assistant professor has to make tenure. These scholars also had to leverage
their positions as administrators; they had to write successful grants; and they
had to call on the help of their campus outreach office.
Time, money, clout, contacts—these are things young scholars rarely
enjoy to any appreciable degree. So just how is an up-and-coming researcher
with an interest in community literacy supposed to follow in their footsteps?
Ann Feldman is surely right in wanting tenure-track faculty to participate
in community-based writing courses, but perhaps it is among faculty-to-be
that she will find more willing recruits. Of the projects described in these three
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books, it is CLC, Linda Flower’s project, that seems to me to hold the most
promise as a model for supporting young scholars. Research at CLC occurs
onsite, as part of its mission. Flower describes several CLC research projects
by graduate students that led to publications. (In fairness I must mention that
Feldman, too, cites a paper based on CCLCP assessment that she coauthored
with graduate students.) For young scholars with an interest in community
literacy, having an existing infrastructure like CLC is crucial. Without it, they
may have to resort to kiss-and-run research of a kind that does not promote
good community relations.
Maybe, if more university–community partnerships like CLC were established, then literacy research in rhetoric and composition would come to bear
greater resemblance to research in the social sciences—if not in its methods,
then in its conditions. Incoming graduate students would work under the
guidance of a professor and draw upon that professor’s network of contacts
and existing body of research. Research so conducted would display greater
continuity, and its conduct would also be less like the lonely pursuit that characterizes much of the work in English departments.
After having read about the work done by young scholars at CLC, I would
predict that more books on the subject of community literacy are to be anticipated.
Works Cited
Deans, Thomas. Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.
Herzberg, Bruce. “Community Service and Critical Teaching.” College Composition and
Communication 45.3 (1994): 307–41.
. Rev. of Community Literacy Programs and the Politics of Change, by Jeffrey T. Grabill. College Composition and Communication 53.3 (2002): 547–49.
Robert Brown
Robert Brown works for the scholarly journals office at Arizona State University.
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