Universities increasingly recognize the value of connecting students to local communities to promote concepts of care: volunteerism, problem-solving, stewardship. What role does literature play in place-based community engagement? How does reading or writing ‘literatures of place’ (regional or environmental literature, travel or nature writing, ecopoetry) connect students to a place and contribute to place-based solutions?

Collaborative research between faculty and their undergraduates is not a new practice, and the pedagogy of collaborative projects has attracted, perhaps more recently, considerable scholarly attention. This roundtable examines the richness in the covenant instructors and their undergraduate research assistants enter when they embark on a scholarly project independent of a course’s requirements and outside the semester’s classroom. Given our undergraduates’ remarkable fortitude, resilient energy, digital literacy, and technological savvy, our work as scholars in our specific disciplines reaps enormous benefit when we harness our students’ creative abilities.

[abstract deadline extended]

54th NeMLA Annual Convention, March 23-26, 2023, in Niagara Falls, New York