Community-Engaged Pedagogy, Literary Studies and Vocation

This chapter examines the impact of community-engaged pedagogy in literary studies through a ‘Literature of Service’ course. Students explore vocation through engaged conversations about social justice and community, both in field placements and in texts. This chapter identifies the habits cultivated by literary studies and shared by community engagement – mutuality, attentiveness and intentional action – and suggests that they lead to greater empathy and capacity for understanding that benefit the common good. At the intersection of literary analysis and storytelling, students find that analysis of the systems that marginalize both fictional characters and real people can serve others through writerly advocacy. In this process, many students embody new writerly voices themselves, which can contribute to their own vocational explorations. Such ‘literature of service’ courses encourage students to understand the relationship between service and story—in narrative, poetry, analytic and advocacy writing—as a means to examine vocation within texts and life.