Rethinking Urban Poverty
A Philadelphia Field Project
The Philadelphia Field project is a Penn State course in public scholarship that has been offered for the last seven years. It is a year long course organized in three parts: a semester of critical readings on urban poverty; a summer field camp of work and research while living in a low-income West Philadelphia neighborhood row-house; and an ending semester of reflection and writing. We argue that current academic ways in which we think about poverty are deeply implicated in creating conditions of material deprivation for the poor. The students are first invited to understand that argument and then as an exercise in public scholarship they are challenged to produce alternative practical knowledge that can make a real difference to the quality of life of inner city residents in Philadelphia.
Geography Professor Lakshman Yapa is currently exploring the possibility of adapting this Penn State model of public scholarship to international education by creating a linkage between Penn State and several institutes of higher education in Sri Lanka.
Professor Yapa in seminar