WE LOVE BOOKS
Connect with members of the Franke Honors community and expand your perspective. Led by Dr. Cheree Meeks, the Common Reading Program features a new book each year, chosen by Franke Honors students and meant to inspire critical thinking and meaningful conversations. While there will be numerous ways to interact with the book and its subject matter throughout the year, the program culminates with a keynote address from the author in the spring.
Read the book as part of a spring 2024 seminar!
HNRS195J-011: Reframing Disability in College and Beyond, taught by Executive Director of the Disability Resource Center, Dr. Amanda Kraus, is a 1-unit seminar in which students will have the opportunity to expand and reframe thinking about disability, specifically in the context of higher education.
Within the pages of the Common Reading book you will find ideas, inspiration, and community with your Honors peers.
The W.A. Franke Honors College Common Reading Program is designed to facilitate learning among all honors students around a common experience. The program is designed to encourage community building, complement curriculum, and offer opportunities for self-reflection, critical thinking, and practical application of knowledge across disciplines. A unique component of the program is the intentional illumination of issues of social justice.
The Common Reading program is not required, but we encourage students to purchase and read the book. Throughout the academic year, the college will host discussions and activities connected to the book. You will have opportunities to think about what the book means and how it might affect the way you interact with others and see the world.
The 2023-2024 Common Reading Book is Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Body by Rebekah Taussig
A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, this book processes a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.
Please join us for this year's Common Reading event!
Common Reading: a keynote address with Rebekah Taussig | Tuesday, March 26 | 5:30 PM | Gallagher Theater, Student Union Memorial Center
Purchase the Book (ISBN: 9780062936790; ISBN-10: 0062936794)
Previous Common Reading selections have included:
2022 – Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
2021 – Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation edited by John Freeman
2020 – The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú
2019 – What the Eyes Don’t See by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
2018 – On Trails by Robert Moor
2017 – Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
2016 – Citizen by Claudia Rankine
2015 – In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
2014 – The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
2013 – Planetwalker by Francis Walker
2012 – Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
2011 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
2010 – Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
2009 – White Gloves by John Kotre
2008 – Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
2007 – Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi