Doing the Public Good: Latina/o Scholars Engage Civic Participation - Softcover

"This volume will appeal to educators deeply invested in civic engagement for the public good. Readers will no doubt explore what the public good means to them and how they pursue civic engagement for the public good."-- (10/01/2011) "Twelve senior and mid- /early-career Latino scholars contribute 11 chapters offering personal and critical reflection about how their work as faculty members connects with the civic mission of the university. In the concluding chapter the editors analyze the major insights that emerge from the contributing authors' lyrical memoirs, reflections, and poetry, using this information to create a new model of higher education for the public good, develop a sense of urgency to address it, encountered various barriers in promoting it, and used specific strategies to achieve it.-- (05/01/2008) "These are brilliant, elegant and provocative essays that sing across generations and geography to create a volume that is as intellectually compelling as it is politically urgent."--Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, The Graduate Center - City University of New York (07/01/2007)

How can scholars reconnect themselves--and their students--to higher education's historic but much diluted mission to work for the public good? Through the lenses of personal reflection and auto-ethnography--and drawing on such rich philosophical foundations as the Spanish tradition of higher learning, the holistic Aztec concept of education, the Hispanic notion of bien educado, and the activist principles of the Chicano movement-these writers explore the intersections of private and public good, and how the tension between them has played out in their own lives and the commitments they have made to their intellectual community, and to their cultural and family communities. Through often lyrical memoirs, reflections, and poetry, these authors recount their personal journeys and struggles--often informed by a spiritual connectedness and always driven by a concern for social justice--and show how they have found individual paths to promoting the public good in their classrooms, and in the world beyond. Contributors include: Jennifer Ayala; Dolores Delgado Bernal; Flora V Rodriguez-Brown; Kenneth P. Gonzales; Miguel Guajardo; Francisco Guajardo; Aida Hurtado; Maria A. Hurtado; Arcelia L. Hurtado, Raymond V. Padilla; Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner; and Luis Urrieta Jr.