An (Em)bodied Workshop: When Service Learning Gets Bawdy explores the ways a student’s perception about which bodies are and are not sexualized creates problems for that student when she attempts to run a writing group for senior citizens with Alzheimer’s disease. This essay suggests that students engaging in service learning may import constructions of a mind/body split common in school settings to service learning sites as a way to authorize their presence in these sites. Students engaged in service learning need to be pushed to examine the ways their constructions of their work may erase the body.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric