SUMMER READING

The Summer Reading Program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland

From the first day on campus, we want students to engage in meaningful discussions with other students and professors, and we want these explorations to be grounded in text.  Why?  Because that is what we expect in the academic experience – that conversations are grounded in “text”, regardless of discipline. We want to have these kinds of discussions right away in order to, as Professor Christine Wooley says, “challenge the way that academic and social life are assumed to be separate” – having a summer reading in common will be, we hope, a starting point for social connections as well as for academic exploration.  Click here for the letter to new students!

Summer Reading 2008

Kindred, by Octavia Butler, tackles issues of slavery, race, love, and hate through a narrative that involves time travel and powerfully evokes a sense of place, including Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  Butler’s work explores and makes personal what happens in so many classrooms at St. Mary’s:  professors ask students to engage with the past, to consider their present circumstances critically, and to contemplate the connections between the two.  Kindred doesn’t assume that exploring such connections between the present and the past will be easy.  Rather, Butler uses literature to give us a way into such engagements, to make us feel them and feel their importance.

St. Mary’s students will also read Lucille Clifton’s Blessing the Boats, which won the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry.   Clifton offers her deeply personal visions of the tragedies and celebrations of life, including that which is both mysterious and more matter of fact.  Her work asks us to re-envision the everyday as mysterious and to find revelation in such attention to the personal.   Clifton, who will speak at this year’s Convocation (see below), believes that literature (including her own poetry and Butler’s novel Kindred) should help us explore life with both head and heart. 

SMCM Opening Convocation, August 29, 2008
Convocation Speaker: Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  She is the former poet laureate of Maryland and has won many prizes for her poetry, including a National Book Award.  Clifton has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Post-Convocation Book Discussions, August 29, 2008
More information about the book discussions will be provided during New Student Days in July.

Students will meet with their orientation groups and faculty members to discuss Kindred and selected poems from Blessing the Boats.  You should bring to the discussion two written items: a) a description of a personal response (e.g., disagreement, anger, frustration, pleasure, delight) you experienced in relation to a specific passage from either text; and b) an important question, issue, or idea that you want to further explore based on a specific passage from either text (with the passages noted – bring the texts with you!). Click here for additional information!

Accessing the Books:  Books will be available in the campus bookstore for a reduced cost and you may purchase them during New Student Days.  Many used copies are available through amazon.com as well.  Any student who has trouble getting the book should contact Academic Services at 240-895-4388. 

The Contest
Click here to find out about the contests relating to this year's Summer reading!