Service | Academic Work | Education & Training | Capacity Building | Deliberative Democracy
Types of Service short-term | ongoing school year | summer
Short-term
Ongoing School Year
Summer
Academic Work courses | service-learning | CBR and policy research | departments and institutes
Courses and Academic Programs
ANTHROPOLOGY & SOCIOLOGY
105 — Introductory Sociology
An introduction to the basic study of social organization and human relations. The course aims to cultivate critical insight into the conditions of contemporary existence, including social stratification by race, social class, and gender.
241 — Urban Social Problems
The course provides an overview of the history of cities and urban development, urban strengths and challenges, and the future of cities. Through hands-on experience in Memphis communities, students come to understand how urban issues are social problems that affect people’s everyday lives.
275 — Food and Culture
Food is not only important as nutrition, but as a symbol of identity, a marker of status, a sealer of alliances and an item of social and economic currency. This course exams the myriad uses, meanings and impacts of food cross-culturally.
290 — Learning from Things: Material Culture Studies
This course focuses attention on our “materiality” and our engagement with the material world. Examples of material cultures studies will be drawn from such disciplines as archaeology, anthropology, geography, history, folklore, popular culture, architecture, and museum studies.
331 — Race/Ethnic Identities, Experiences, and Relations
This seminar course uses fundamental sociological concepts and theoretical perspectives to examine the historical and current realities of immigration and multiple race/ethnic identities, experiences, and relations in the United States. The course will survey a broad range of topics, with many touching on controversial debates that surround social stratification issues.
341 — Sociology of Education
Education is considered to be the primary means of realizing the American ideals of equality and success. This seminar course critically examines that idea by using sociological perspectives and research to understand how social class, race, and gender affect educational opportunities and outcomes.
391 — Prejudice and the Human Condition
It is a condition of being human to understand the world in terms of projected assumptions of meaning based on one’s historical, social, cultural, and linguistic position. This course examines the phenomenon of the projective or “prejudiced” nature of human understanding and explores its implications for the self and the structure of interpersonal, institutional, and cross-cultural experience.
HISTORY
249 — Poverty in the United States
This course examines attitudes toward the poor throughout the course of U.S. history, as well as the experiences of public and private relief organizations. Lectures and readings give attention to attempts to define “poverty,” to vagabond/homeless experiences, to problems facing the working poor, to private and public attempts to eradicate poverty, and the assessment of various programs of poor-relief, public assistance, family wage.
URBAN STUDIES
201 — Introduction to Urban Studies
An interdisciplinary approach to examining issues and institution in American cities; neighborhoods, downtowns, suburbs, housing, poverty, environmental justice, nonprofits and city politics; discussion of urban public and social policies; field trips or service learning are used to do hands on analysis of urban issues.
360 & 460 — Urban Studies Junior/Senior Internship
A directed internship with an urban, social, governmental, or nonprofit agency. The courses integrate traditional academic work in Urban Studies with practical internship experience.
462 — Field Projects in Community Organization
Direct application of class work to an urban problem or issue through field work in an urban institution; development of a research or policy design before field activity; involvement of student, faculty sponsor and community agency sponsor.
485 — Senior Seminar in Urban Studies
An investigation of subject areas in the discipline of Urban Studies that involves research collaboration between students and faculty.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
200 — Urban Politics
A critical introduction to urban America’s fiscal and racial problems, formal and informal political processes, power structures, and alternative futures.
316 — Urban Policy
Problems and processes for policy formation in the urban system; discussion of substantive policy areas such as housing and community development.
320 — Urban Programs
Examination of programs and policies that address urban problems; with an opportunity to explore the inner working and outcomes of effective programs that have social, environmental, and downtown emphases.
Departments and Programs
Anthropology/ Sociology
Political Science
History
Urban Studies
Service-learning, CBR, and Policy Research
Anthro/Soc Urban Studies 241- "hands-on experience in Memphis community"
Ethnography at Home...350- Students become ethnographers of the Memphis community.
Urban Studies 201- Field trips or service-learning is used to do hands-on analysis of urban issues.
Education & Training forums | workshops | reflection activities
Workshops and Trainings
Freshmen Bonners go through orientation in the beginning of the fall semester that includes going to service sites like Souper Contact and MIFA. They also have weekly meetings to discuss various areas of service.
Reflection Activities
Bonner Scholars at Rhodes have the option of either journaling or joining a small reflection group to fulfill their reflection requirements.
Past reflection group topics have included:
Human Rights and You
Philosophize Me: A Thoughtful Approach to Service
Getting Uncomfortable in Your Service
Campus and Organizational Capacity-Building training | fundraising | resource development
Topic-Based Reflection Groups
The Bonner Center is re-fashioning its Service Reflection Group program, open to all students who do service, toward issue-based teams. The issue-based teams will form around a topic, e.g., homelessness and hunger, reflect on their direct experiences working in various agencies, then identify relevant policy and societal issues affecting the topic. These teams will utilize wiki sites to communicate their experiences and ideas and to publicize their work with other campus groups and the public.
Research, Policy Analysis, Deliberative Democracy evaluations | policy research | issue forums | advocacy
Fellowships as a Vehicle for Activism
The Bonner Center recognizes an absence at Rhodes in the area of campus-wide efforts to engage important societal issues. As our campus creates new fellowship opportunities for all students receiving merit-based aid, we will use our leverage in this process to include systemic analysis and policy development as an expected outcome for these groups. Working with newly-appointed faculty and staff leaders for these fellowship groups, our hope is to create a climate of interest and passion for the policy implications of our work and research.
Contacts staff | faculty | students | community partners (local, regional, national)
Director of the Bonner Center, Walt Tennyson: tennysonw@rhodes.edu
Community Service Coordinator, Tiffany Merritt: tmerritt@rhodes.edu