Voluntarism: Contexts and Challenges
From soup kitchens to the Bill Gates Foundation, from the Peace Corps to missionary trips to Thailand, from Habitat for Humanity to Doctors without Borders, opportunities abound to engage in volunteer endeavors. Beneficial as such projects are, however, they are also often troubled by a variety of logistical, cultural, geographical, and historical challenges, many of which are rooted in a complex, contextualized history of colonialism and egocentrism: Who decides where and when help is needed? Who defines what such help will look like? For those invested in responding to these challenges in order to pursue voluntarism, the ability to persuade others and pay careful attention to context—two key features of academic writing—become paramount as a means of increasing the likelihood of creating and realizing service-oriented goals. This course will work through the contexts and challenges surrounding historical and contemporary instances of voluntarism as a means of increasing our ability to effectively persuade others, articulate ideas, and situate inquiry within particular contexts.
We will begin by writing short responses (2-3 pp. each) to several theoretical articles addressing the politics and history surrounding charity, voluntarism, and philanthropy, as well as to two full-length chronicles describing unique instances of self-sacrifice: Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, which documents Paul Farmer’s medical work in Haiti, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin’s Three Cups of Tea, which recounts Mortenson’s endeavor to build schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. At mid-semester, students will choose one of these short responses to extend into a 5-7 page paper that examines one of the longer texts through the lens of relevant theoretical work. For a final project, students will turn their attention to a volunteer experience of their own, in which they will have worked over the semester with a community partner in Durham. Developing and responding to the ideas we will have worked with throughout the semester, students will then develop a series of texts related to this semester-long service. This work will likely include an ongoing journal, a summary of the community partner’s organization, and a culminating 5-7 page paper that sets their semester-long service into conversation with other published writing about the contexts and challenges surrounding voluntarism.
Students will participate in structured critical reflection activities throughout the semester, including a written journal and in-class group discussion, to help them reflect on the civic and ethical aspects of their service work.
PLEASE NOTE: This course has a mandatory Service Learning (SL) component, which includes approximately two hours of service each week of the semester at a site in Durham (20 hours total). Community partners will be arranged by the instructor in consultation with students and Duke’s service-learning staff. This community work is key to the success of this course and relates both to our study of and active participation in volunteer work.
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