Common Read
CRC Common Read
The CRC Common Read program is one of the first opportunities each fall for our entire community to have a shared intellectual experience. The programs and events associated with our book serve as catalysts for us to experience interdisciplinary scholarship and community engagement as an integral part of CRC and the UW.
CRC residents each receive a copy of the book, either before leaving campus in the spring, or during the summer while preparing to arrive for the first time. Over the course of the fall semester we will have discussions, programs, presentations, events, and even a contest connected to the themes of the book.
Each year, a new book is selected by a committee of students, staff, and faculty partners. For First-Year students, the CRC Common Read is the primary text in our First-Year Seminar, ILS 138: Exploring the Foundations of a Liberal Arts Education.
CRC also participates in UW’s campus-wide Common Read program: Go Big Read.
Reasons to Participate
- shared experience with roommates, neighbors, faculty, staff, and friends
- assist with transition to a new CRC community - whether as a returning or new student - by creating a foundation to explore beliefs, values, and ideas
- enjoyable reading which will lends itself to being involved outside the classroom
- assist with the transition to a new learning environment by reinforcing communication skills and demonstrating the import and role of intellectual engagement with CRC and at UW-Madison
Book Selection Criteria
Please note that we revise our criteria each year.
The 2009 CRC Common Read book will:
- help us ask questions, of ourselves and others
- encourage us to examine our assumptions and understandings
- avoid "providing all of the answers" but instead remain open to analysis
- be inclusive such that it is not purposefully offensive to anyone; controversy is acceptable, however
- have content we want to talk about and explore with each other
- be relevant to a contemporary issue
- be accessible to all CRC populations
- have a "hook" in the beginning
- be approximately 100 to 300 pages in length
