Gravyland: Writing Beyond the Curriculum in the City of Brotherly Love

3. Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value: The Role of Community Publishing in English Studies

69 3 Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value The Role of Community Publishing in English Studies What I mean by dwelling in the ruins is not despair or cynicism; it is simply the abandonment of the religious attitude toward political action, including the pious postponement or renunciation of action. . . . Change comes neither from within nor from without, but from the difficult space—neither inside nor outside—where one is. To say we cannot redeem or rebuild the university is not to argue for powerlessness; it is to insist that academics must work without alibis. —BI L L R E A DI N G S , The University in Ruins VA LU E I S A S L I PPE R Y T E R M that permeates our work in English studies. Within literary studies, value has a long history of being associated with canon formation and curriculum reform. One way to mark changes in literary studies is to examine the revaluing of formally subjugated writers and their inclusion in the daily practices of the academy, such as the classroom, the scholarly journal, and the academic conference. The focus on subjugated or marginalized voices is not unique to literature, however. Over the past decade, there has also been a focus in composition studies on connecting its practices to underrepresented populations through such vehicles as service -learning or community publishing projects. This work has emphasized An earlier version of this essay appeared as “Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value: The Role of Community Publishing in English Studies,” College English 71, no. 5 (May 2009). © National Council of Teachers of English. Used with permission. 70 | GR AV Y L A N D including and revaluing formerly excluded or ignored voices. The value of this work is not only the “discovery” of new voices, but also the actual services offered to these communities. Portraying these two trends within English studies as simultaneous, however , raises the issue of whether these efforts are actually part of a similar project or not. Does the value of service learning and community publications intersect with the value associated with canon and curriculum reform? If not, what might it mean to bring this work together and to push it to the next level of articulation? How can such work be transformed, to invoke Certeau, from a local tactical response to a strategic intervention in how English studies operates? That is, where can the concept of “value” actually take us? To explore these questions, I examine one of the early community publishing collaborations between New City Writing and a local Philadelphia urban neighborhood that I will call “Glassville.” The goal of the project was to publish an oral history of the neighborhood by bringing together a service -learning course, the community’s neighborhood association, Temple’s First-Year Writing Program, and faculty from multiple departments. Instead, the project resulted in a community-led protest, where issues of race, class, and power had to be recognized and negotiated. It is in the working through of such a moment, I argue, that a revised conception of value, one embedded in the process of community publishing, can draw together the work of English studies and composition studies. Partnership The Glassville project began when a professor contacted New City Writing. The professor had initiated an ethnographic field project and encountered Glassville, a fifteen-block neighborhood that for fifty years had maintained an integrated neighborhood with no apparent racial strife or hate crimes (Bissinger 1998, 89–95). This achievement was notable because an adjacent neighborhood was known for its history of racial conflict. Although Glassville had experienced many of the economic downturns and job losses that confronted the rest of the city, the fact that it had remained an integrated community in the face of such changes stood in stark contrast to the outcome in other areas (Adams et al. 1993). Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value | 71 As a result of the ethnographic project, the neighborhood association expressed an interest in having the neighborhood’s history published. The professor contacted New City Writing because I had recently formed New City Community Press (newcitypress.org), a community press dedicated to formalizing much of the writing produced in our literacy and service-learning work with Philadelphia neighborhoods. After discussions among New City Writing staff, the neighborhood association, and involved faculty, a project was soon formed that would bundle these interests together to...