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Richard M. Smith Common Reading
Experience
The Richard M. Smith Common Reading Experience is designed to: establish the ideas
of scholarship and academic expectations through a common learning
experience; begin student understanding of differences in the context of
the Albion College community; provide an entry for students into the
ideas of global citizenship.
The Richard M. Smith Common Reading Experience is an integral part of the
First-Year Experience at Albion College. All first-year students
are given a work of literature and asked to read it over the summer and
participate in discussions about the work when they come to campus in
the fall. Typically, the creator of the work visits the campus to
speak with the first year students and give a convocation presentation. Additional events are scheduled through the year that are directly
related to the common reading.
Past common readings include:
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"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale
Hurston (1991)
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"Linden Hills" by Gloria R. Naylor (1992)
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"A Typical American" by Gish Jen
(1993)
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"Black Ice" by Lorene Cary
(1994)
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"Savage Inequalities" by Jonathan Kozol (1995)
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"The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison (1996)
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"Life on the Color Line" by Gregory Williams
(1997)
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"The Other Side of the River" by Alex Kotlowitz
(1998)
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"A Hope in the Unseen" by Ron Suskind (1999 & 2000)
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"An American Story" by Debra Dickerson
(2001)
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"Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich (2002)
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"The Laramie Project" by Moises Kaufman (2003)
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"Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James Houston
(2004)
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"West of Kabul, East of New York" by Tamim Ansary
(2005)
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"Confluence:
A River, The Environment, Politics & The Fate of All Humanity" by
Nathaniel
Tripp (2006)
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"Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival" by Jen Marlowe, Aisha
Bain, and Adam Shapiro (2007)
The 2008 selection is: "Thank You for Smoking"
by Christopher Buckley
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