Forum Conversations: books

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Literature-- Why do we bother?

Not that I don't love Frank's math videos, but it seems time to get some discussion going about non-math topics. So, what about literature? Why do we bother with it? What makes a classic a classic? And why should we read classics at all?

One of my students recently raised this issue and I believe it is an important one-- central in fact to the role of humanities education in this century. Most "great" literature is so far removed from our lives in the 21st century as to be almost in another galaxy. Those of us who teach literature talk about relating it to our students' lives and those students may even tell us that they learned a lot from a text they read. But what do we actually learn about our own lives when we read "classics"? Why is it "good for us" to read such literature? Why does having that kind of background still make people consider us more educated?

In other words, what would we actually lose out on, if we just started studying and/or teaching books we enjoy rather than those works that others have stamped as works of great literature? How many of us actually enjoy the classics and would pick them up to read on our own, without being required to read them for a class assignment? To get specific here, how many of you read Shakespeare before you go to sleep or on a plane trip? Beowulf? Steinbeck, maybe?

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Summer Reading for Entering Freshmen

UNM is considering choosing one book each year that they ask entering freshmen to read over the summer before starting classes in the fall. The idea is to give students some common ground to discuss and then be able to connect with each other about. As the Provost's memo explains "The basic concept is a recommended summer reading for all new students, the goal of which is to foster a common experience that will help develop a sense of community with their new environment and introduce them to a part of the academic life they are beginning." Books other institutions have used for such programs include:
Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed in America
Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics
Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen
Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Prejean, The Death of Innocents
Salzman, Iron and Silk
Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No
Kidder, Mountains beyond Mountains
Urrea, The Devil's Highway

For a memo about this Lobo Reading Experience program, follow this link.

What do you think? Would this be a good idea? What other books might you suggest for such reading?

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Welcome to the Virtual Honors Forum: a place where students, faculty, and staff of the University Honors Program come together for conversation. Just like in our real forum full of cozy couches, study tables and chairs, this is a place to share with others what you are studying, what has you mesmerized, mildly intrigued, or downright flabbergasted. "To share" is really the key phrase, for as many of us have discovered, real learning (and research) does not take place in a small room where we sit alone with a book. Learning is dialogue and research is collaboration.

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