Community members encouraged to suggest texts for 2022 selection
OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi is calling on faculty, staff, students and the community to nominate books for the 2022 Common Reading Experience. Nominations for next year's read, which will be the focus for first-year students, are due by Dec. 8.
The Common Reading Steering Committee, which will read all the finalists, will begin choosing a selection in early 2022. All incoming Ole Miss freshmen and transfer students will read the selected text in their EDHE classes, a program designed to help first-year students adjust to the university, develop a better understanding of the learning process, acquire essential independent skills and begin the major/career exploration process.
The course also introduces students to the mission, values, and constituencies of a comprehensive public university, and ethical and social concerns affecting its functioning. The program aligns with the mission of the Common Reading Experience.
"The Common Reading Experience provides an opportunity for us to come together as a community and engage in intellectual discussions around a common theme," said Natasha Jeter, assistant vice chancellor for wellness and student success and co-chair of the selection committee. "It is a hallmark of our first-year experience program; each year we look forward to this shared intellectual experience."
Created in 2012, the Common Reading Experience provides students with examples of different perspectives to increase their knowledge of what is happening – or happened – in this world.
"The University of Mississippi is an intellectual community, first and foremost. When we read a book together, we grow stronger," said Stephen Monroe, chair and assistant professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and chair of the Common Reading Experience Steering Committee. "We learn more about each other, ourselves and our world.
"This year, our community has thoroughly enjoyed 'World of Wonders,' written by our very own faculty treasure, Aimee Nezhukumatathil."
"World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments" offers readers a visual of Nezhukumatathil's childhood and adulthood, and the racism she endured growing up as a "brown girl" in America in the 1980s with immigrant parents.
Previous Common Reading Experience texts include "What the Eyes Don't See," by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha; "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," by Matthew Desmond; "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter," by Ole Miss English professor Tom Franklin; and "The Education of a Lifetime," a memoir by Chancellor Emeritus Robert Khayat.
"Please help us find a great book for next year's Common Reading Experience," Monroe said. "The nomination website is open; nominating a book only takes a few minutes. We need suggestions."
For more information on the Common Reading Experience, or to submit a nomination for the 2022 Common Reading Experience, go to https://umreads.olemiss.edu/.
