Tryin' to Find a Way Back Home: An Introduction to the Literature and Legacy of Homelessness in America

"Homelessness" is a term that conjures up unsavory images in the popular imagination, flat, generic, clichés that owe as much to fear as to fact. The truth is that children account for a shocking proportion of the homeless in America today, as do women fleeing abuse, as do the working poor, many of whom find it impossible to secure affordable housing in many of our cities. If working men and women and school-attending children number among the homeless, why do the stereotypes of the pushy panhandler and the drunken skid-row bum continue to dominate our collective vision of homelessness? Why does this population continue to grow? What can be done to alleviate the circumstances surrounding homelessness in America? Should we act? Should we care?

Designed in collaboration with the Center for Public Service, this Seminar combines the traditional academic component with experiential education through a number of Service-Learning opportunities. Each student will participate in regular service commitments in the local community throughout the semester, and the keystone of the course will be a group Service-Learning trip in October. This trip will be based at N-Street Village at Luther Place in Washington, D.C., and will draw upon very long and well-established relationships between Gettysburg College and N-Street, D.C. Central Kitchen, the National Coalition for the Homeless, the Congressional Hunger Center, Martha's Table, DC Outfitters, and a host of other service organizations based in Washington.

In the classroom portion of the Seminar, we will study materials from a number of non-fiction texts, organizational websites, popular newspapers and magazines; moreover, we will read a number of memoirs and novels that are concerned with homelessness and related issues, and we will view a number of relevant films. Some of these works will reflect common assumptions about the homeless while others may challenge such views, but all will contribute to our understanding of how we as a people face the realities of poverty, homelessness, and social inequities.