As I look at my own stack(s) of books and deciding what to take on our family trip, I'm reminded of how much I appreciate the opportunity I have to CHOOSE what I have to read. As a scholar, there is certainly a mix of "want to" and "have to" reading, but overall I devour writing that attracts my interest and my fascination while avoiding or skimming those that are more obligatory.
But as I'm writing this, I am also reminded that my professional duties occasionally assign me to read a less-than-satisfactory tome. Even so, I almost always find that what I had never intended to read becomes just as or even more valuable to me as something I had intended to read a long time.
For my students this semester, reading is more "forced" on them -- I'm thinking of several of them who are no-doubt slogging through dozens and even hundreds of pages this Labor Day Weekend in preparation for next week's classes.
For my students this semester, reading is more "forced" on them -- I'm thinking of several of them who are no-doubt slogging through dozens and even hundreds of pages this Labor Day Weekend in preparation for next week's classes. One set of students is beginning James Cone's remarkable Malcolm and Martin in America, a book that will further prepare our understanding of Barack Obama's presidency and help place it in the context of other modern African American leaders and the political circumstances they faced.
Another set of students is making their way this weekend through Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life, a book that has had it's reputational ups & downs but which sociologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion will at least reluctantly agree with it's significance for developing analytical conceptions of religious & social life.
One student is reading through Karl Marx's Grundrisse, a is sort-of a thick, rough draft of Das Kapital that weighs in at well over 800 pages.
And another student is beginning to work through Max Weber's masterful writings collated in Economy and Society -- one of my personal favorite books of all time.
As they make their way through these readings I hope my students will have the same experience I often do: required reading may not have been my personal preference, but in the end these readings become among the most memorable and thought-shaping of my life. The unfamiliarity and uncertainty involved in such texts stimulates a close attention to the words that "beach reads" and bestsellers rarely demand. In addition, the need to talk and write about such texts with other "smart" people cultivates an engaged standpoint that encourages us to draw out (and sometimes tear out) the unstated implications of found in these works.
So as I leave behind my stack(s) of books this weekend, I wish my students with their own growing stack(s) of "to read" books well with the hope that they will have a positive and even transformative experience. What may have been "required reading" today may very well someday be considered "must-read" in the near future.
As they make their way through these readings I hope my students will have the same experience I often do: required reading may not have been my personal preference, but in the end these readings become among the most memorable and thought-shaping of my life. The unfamiliarity and uncertainty involved in such texts stimulates a close attention to the words that "beach reads" and bestsellers rarely demand. In addition, the need to talk and write about such texts with other "smart" people cultivates an engaged standpoint that encourages us to draw out (and sometimes tear out) the unstated implications of found in these works.
So as I leave behind my stack(s) of books this weekend, I wish my students with their own growing stack(s) of "to read" books well with the hope that they will have a positive and even transformative experience. What may have been "required reading" today may very well someday be considered "must-read" in the near future.
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