Welcome to the Common Reading Program Reading and Teaching Guide
Welcome to the Reading and Teaching Guide for the Common Reading! Whether you’re a professor wondering what activities you could use in your class to incorporate the text or a student looking for more information on a piece, we have the information you’re looking for. Find sample discussion questions, activities, related resources, and bios from all our contributors. You can also find a full online version of the text.
Want to nominate texts for the 2022-23 Renewal Anthology? Submit texts here.
Table of Contents
The Art of Adaptation by Sarai Mannolini-Winwood
I Promise We’ll Have Fun by Nadina LaSpina
My Mustache, My Self by Wesley Morris
Cloud Dragon Skies by N.K. Jemisin
Women Are Hit Harder By Climate Change by Jessica Wapner
Ghost Language by Hasanthika Sirisena
The Heart of the Hopi by Aaron Levin
Code-Switching Is Not Trying to Fit into White Culture by Ida Harris
Debunking the Myths of Happiness by Jason Marsh
View from a Wheelchair by Jeffrey P. Whitman
Taking Imagination Seriously by Janet Echelman
Creating a Gender Inclusive Campus by Genny Beemyn and Susan R. Rankin
Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by Randy Robertson
Common Reading Lecture: Nadina LaSpina
Nadina LaSpina
Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021—7:30 p.m., Virtual Only!
Nadina LaSpina is a memoirist and prominent activist in the disability rights movement. Her book, Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride, details the story of her life, from her early years in her native Sicily, where she contracted polio as a baby, to her adolescence and youth in America, spent almost entirely in hospitals, to her rebellion and her activism in the disability rights movement. She now lives in New York City, where you can find her in the streets with Disabled In Action, ADAPT, The Disability Caucus, and other groups.
Adaptability Lecture Recording
2021-22 THEME
Read the Anthology
We experience adaptability in many ways. Change can happen quickly, and we may have to adapt to new circumstances unexpectedly, like many of us did at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other times, we can accept change and adapt more slowly, like new students transitioning to college life, graduates starting their careers, or life-long learners encountering different cultures. In being adaptable, we learn from and support one another, and our flexibility provides new opportunities to further ourselves. Change is inevitable. How will you adapt?
This year’s theme of Adaptability was nominated by Hannah C. Lyons, Class of 2020.
Anthology Cover Art
