L216 (Business and the Humanities) is a service-learning seminar that
explores the relationship between the values of the marketplace and
our social structures through literature, essays, poetry and
polemics.  Specifically we’ll be looking at issues of ameliorating
social ills through various models, including charity and social
change.
Questions addressed include What are the values of the marketplace
and how do they foster or discourage the creation of a healthy
community? What happens to people who can’t provide for themselves?
What kinds of individual and communal characteristics do social
services, businesses, and institutions of education support and
inhibit? What are the tensions between the for-profit and nonprofit
sectors in alleviating problems both agree exist? In what kind of
world do you want to live? What are the responsibilities of citizens
in a democratic society, citizens who are part of multiple
communities?

We’ll read a 21st century parable, utopian literature, critical
essays on the role of nonprofits in solving society’s problems,
analysis of the personal effects the structure of business has on
American workers, and other essays, stories and poems.  Organized as
a seminar in which all participants are responsible for constructing
knowledge, this course will raise central questions that will be
addressed through the texts we read and discuss, through student
projects, and through the weekly service each one performs in the
local community.

Service-Learning component:  To understand the relationship between
the kinds of community we want to have and various means of creating
it, students will work on a class project, writing the history of the
Bloomington Area Chamber of Commerce. This project will involve oral
histories, archival research, and other forms of original research.
The final product will be widely published by the Chamber.
Additional service may be performed in local nonprofit organizations,
including youth-serving, elderly care facilities, and animal and
environmental organizations.
If you cannot commit to two hours of weekly service, you should not
take this class.