Literature is powerful. It offers respite. It provides access to beauty and horror, to new places, new people, and new ideas. It can, as the phrase goes, change your life. Good things, all of them. But also somewhat limited goods: they鈥檙e all pretty passive, pretty private鈥攜ou might even say self-centered.
Reading as Collective Action shifts our focus outward, to another of literature鈥檚 powers: the power to reshape our world in very public, very active ways. In this book, you will encounter readers who criticized the Bush administration鈥檚 war on terror by republishing poems by writers ranging from Shakespeare to Amiri Baraka everywhere from lampposts to the New York Times. You will read about people in Michigan and Tennessee, who leveraged a community reading program on John Steinbeck鈥檚 The Grapes of Wrath to organize support for those in need during the Great Recession and to engage with their neighbors about immigration. You will meet a pair of students who took to public transit to talk with strangers about working-class literature and a trio who created a literary website that reclaimed the working-class history of the Pacific Northwest.
This book challenges dominant academic modes of reading. For adherents of the 鈥渃ivic turn,鈥 it suggests how we can create more politically effective forms of service learning and community engagement grounded in a commitment to tactical, grassroots actions. Whether you鈥檙e a social worker or a student, a zine-maker, a librarian, a professor, or just a passionate reader with a desire to better your community, this book shows that when we read texts as tactics, 鈥渢hat book changed my life鈥 can become 鈥渢hat book changed our lives.鈥
鈥淣icholas Hengen Fox offers a powerful case for the potential of using literature for public impact. From the high theory of Habermas to the streets of Knoxville, he weaves portraits of community-engaged teaching and learning that demonstrate how reading 鈥榠n public鈥 broadens and strengthens our words, our world, and ourselves.鈥濃擠an Sarofian-Butin, author, Service-Learning in Theory and Practice
鈥泪苍 Reading as Collective Action, Nicholas Hengen Fox marvelously illustrates a 鈥榬e-reading of reading鈥 as public work鈥攚ork in public, with publics, for public purposes. He takes leadership in the emerging democracy efforts around higher education, and, more broadly, adds to the repertoire of tactics for the emerging nonviolent civic life movement.鈥濃擧arry C. Boyte, senior scholar, Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Augsburg College
