Dear Reader

Catalog description

This class will be a consideration of all the ways we read or could read: as exploration and education, as distraction, as entertainment, as meditation or prayer, as connection, as solace, as moral instruction, as transcendence beyond the confines of our individual existences. We'll start with our ideal reading experiences and then spend the semester experimenting with new ones. We'll read silently and aloud, in class together and individually outside of class. We'll try out different conditions for reading: places, times, physical books vs. ebooks, etc. We'll read across genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cereal boxes. We'll study the art of reading, the ethics of it (yes, reading can be an ethical act), the historical arguments for reading, and the place of reading in an increasingly visual culture. (Is there something a book can provide, for instance, that a movie can't?) We'll talk about how reading can be a danger to those in power who don't want others to have whatever power reading can offer. (Think: Banned books and threats to libraries.) For guidance, we'll listen to writers read their own work, and to professional readers, such as those who record audiobooks. We'll read examples of good readers reading closely and critically. And we'll push ourselves in how and what we read on our own. One possible activity: Pick any book that significantly challenges you in its length and/or content, and reflect on the pleasures and frustrations and discoveries you experience by traveling through it. This is a class, at heart, meant to allow time and space and community in which to read and think deeply about why and how we read. Its goal is to allow you to discover more about what kind of reader you are, want to be, and can be, for your benefit, of course, but also, possibly, for the good of the world.