What are Common Reading Seminars?
Four-credit courses with a class size of 23 or fewer students. Seminars are offered fall, winter, and spring term, and students may take them either for a grade or pass/no-pass. Topics of the seminar focus on themes from the common reading text from the viewpoint of the instructor’s academic discipline.
Who is eligible to enroll in a Common Reading Seminar?
All incoming undergraduates in their first year of university study after high school graduation. Students may enroll in more than one seminar within the same term and/or academic year.
Who is eligible to apply for Common Reading Seminar Funding?
Faculty members (both career and tenure track) from every discipline and department are encouraged to propose seminars. Current and emeritus faculty must have an appointment in a sponsoring department in order to teach a Common Reading Seminar. Proposals must receive approval from the head of the department in which the course is taught and in which the faculty member has an appointment (often the same).
What is the 2016–17 Common Reading Book?
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates just won the National Book Award for nonfiction and has been widely celebrated as one of the best books of 2015. Toni Morrison has compared Coates to James Baldwin and has hailed the book as “required reading” by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States.” Others have pointed out that such praise sells Coates short—that he may be one of the best writers on the subject of America today. The book is a wondrous, taut 160 pages. It has been called “a love letter written in a moral emergency.” It is not an easy book, but the world (our world) it describes is not an easy one. Written as a letter from a father to his teenage son, it offers a meditation on the liberation of the mind—as well as a call for justice, for a full response to the whole extent of one’s life. Between the World and Me is perhaps the perfect common reading book for an emerging adult audience in today’s United States.
A limited number of review copies of Between the World and Me are available at no cost for faculty considering teaching with the book. Request a review copy
What is the compensation policy?
Read the full compensation policy here.
How do I submit a proposal?
The Common Reading Seminar program is currently in its pilot year. Check back in fall 2017 for information for the 2018–19 academic year.
Questions?
If you have questions about the application process, please contact Lisa Freinkel, Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Studies.