The Common Reading Experience (CRE) is trying something new and exciting this year, something we believe will be a better fit for our first-year students and FYS instructors.Rather than picking a common book, we’re curating a small number of creative and cultural works—essays, podcasts, poems, videos, stories, visual art—from which FYS instructors can pick to share, experience, and discuss with their first-year students. We believe this new approach aligns with the CRE’s investment in the “deep relevance of reading” while also providing a wider range of relevant and powerful experiences for our first-year students. If you have suggestions for a short work you think would be engaging, relevant, and valuable to first-year students, please share them by February 8 using this link
Here are a few guidelines: the topic should address in some way belonging, identity, and/or self-discovery; the audience is our first-year students; the genre is open to pretty much anything; and the length should be something that can be completed in one sitting.