Composition: History & Theory: 1990 - 1999
Cushman, Ellen “The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research” (1999)
Description
Ellen Cushman argues for a new conception of “public intellectual” that incorporates service learning and “activist research.” Additionally, Cushman wants to expand the “public” in “public intellectual” to include local communities, rather than just the broader intellectual elite. For Cushman, a truly public intellectual interacts in local communities through organizing service learning classes. She envisions the research, teaching and service all contributing in significant ways to one another. Integral to understanding Cushman’s suggestion is her explanation of “activist research”: “Activist research combines postmodern ethnographic techniques with notions of reciprocity and dialogue to insure reciprocal and mutually beneficial relations among scholars and those with whom knowledge is made” (824). In this way, the “public intellectual” and her students will resist coming into a community ready to impart “wisdom,” while remaining comfortably out of touch with the actual needs and desires of the people in the community. Cushman ends her argument with an example from her own service learning experience which illustrates how the community was served, the teaching was enhanced, and her own research was advanced.
Author
Lydia McDermott
Date of Upload
11/3/09