Learning From and Serving Whom? The Racial Melancholia of Service-Learning

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: The Complexity and Multiple Spaces of Social Justice in Action

Abstract

The vast majority of students in service-learning have been white, middle-class students, and the service sites tend to be low-income communities of color (Butin, 2006; Green, 2003). Service-learning has been lauded for helping college students gain awareness of their social privilege and an understanding of difference (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda, & Yee, 2000; Marullo, 1998), yet, also critiqued for the unequal power dynamics embedded within it (Peterson, 2009). In this ethnographic study I use racial melancholia (Cheng, 2001) to examine power dynamics and knowledge production within a service-learning course that emphasizes social justice. Unmasking the tensions and contradictions of how students wrestle with social justice issues raises critical questions for the practice of service-learning.

Author

• Colleen Rost-Banik, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities