RURAL REALITIES: FLORIDA’S FARMWORKERS
3 credit hours, regular grading
section type: R (supervised research)
offered Fall semester only
This three-credit interdisciplinary course is designed to educate students from varied academic backgrounds on issues surrounding farmworkers, who they are, what they do, how they live, and the challenges they face. Students will benefit from gaining invaluable, real-life experience while learning about farmworker realities in the classroom. They will also be able to share their particular academic knowledge with the farmworker population.
Course goals:
1) To link students and farmworkers in order to develop better communication, understanding, and support among people of different cultures;
2) To give students the opportunity to work with and develop farmworker related projects while earning credit
3) To help create a supportive environment for the efforts of farmworkers to improve their status in society; and
4) To provide farmworkers, their families, and farmworker-serving agencies with more support resources.
Course description:
This upper-division course combines interdisciplinary classroom instruction with a required sixty hours of fieldwork (action research) in an off-campus setting in order to introduce students to the cultural, social, and economic forces shaping the lives of Florida’s migrant and seasonal agricultural workers.
Course requirements:
· classroom participation, including a statement of interest and final oral report
· a short paper on a subject from weeks 2 through 4. The paper should integrate at least two points of view and use at least the following sources: one required reading, one recommended reading, and two sources found by the student
· sixty hours of fieldwork (action research) within an affiliated community or social service organization or agency
· participation in a project that constitutes a meaningful contribution to the goals of the host agency
· a journal of the fieldwork experience
· an 8 to 10 page research/position paper resulting from the action research. The paper must integrate at least three academic sources with observations from internship experience. A copy of the paper will be presented to the agency.
Course schedule:
Classes meet once weekly for the first five weeks of the semester. Classes represent an interdisciplinary orientation to farmworker issues by faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education, and College of Medicine-Area Health Education Centers. Students will spend at least six hours per week at-site for the remaining ten weeks of the semester.
WEEK I: introduction
Film: El Norte
WEEK II: farmworkers,
culture, and society
Required readings: Chavez, L. Life on the Farm. In Shadowed Lives.
Undocumented Immigrants in American Society.
Reisler, M. Always the Laborer, Never the Citizen:
Anglo Perceptions of the Mexican Immigrant during the 1920’s.
In D.G.Gutierrez, Between Two Worlds. Mexican Immigrants in
The U.S.
Rothenberg, D. Growers; Somebody on Earth Has
To Do This Job. In With these Hands. The Hidden World.
Recommended readings: Ted Connover. Coyotes.
Statement
of Interest (1 page) due
WEEK III: farmworkers
and health
Required readings: Arcury,T. & S.Quandt. Occupational and
Environmental Health Risks in Farm Labor. Human Organization
57(3):331-334
Baer, R. & D. Penzell. Susto and Pesticide
Poisoning among Florida Farmworkers. Culture, Medicine and
Psychiatry 17:321-327.
Finkler, K. Gender, Domestic Violence and
Sickness in Mexico. Social Science and Medicine 45(8):1147-60
Farmworker Justice Fund. Farmworker Women
In Agriculture-An Overview. In Farmworker Women Speak Out.
Dever, A. Profile of a Population with Complex Health Problems.
MCN Monograph Series.
Recommended readings: Bullard, R.,ed. Confronting Environmental
Racism: Voices from the Grassroots.
WEEK IV: farmworkers
and education
Required readings: Martinez, Y. & A. Cranston-Gingras. Migrant
Farmworker Families: Perceptions of Parental Involvement in
School. The Community Circle of Caring Journal 5(3):35-41.
McGilvra,B. The Culture of Migrancy. XIV
Comprehensive Center of Educational Testing Service.
Prewitt Diaz,J.et al. The effects of migration on
Children. An ethnographic study.
Recommended readings: Jimenez, Francisco. The Circuit. Stories from
The life of a migrant child.
Recommended
Readings: Gutierrez, D.
Between Two World.
Mexican Immigration in the
U.S.
Chavez, Leo. Shadowed Lives.
Undocumented Immigrants in
American Society.
Short Paper (5 pages) due on topic from weeks 2-4
WEEK
VI instructor distributes supplementary
bibliography if needed
WEEK
VI TO XV: ACTION RESEARCH ON-SITE
WEEK
XV: FINAL
ORAL REPORTS WITH VISUAL AIDS
Journals
and Final papers due!