Author Jonathan Safran Foer will speak at the College of Charleston on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. in TD Arena. Foer will discuss his book, Eating Animals, which is this year’s selection for The College Reads! program. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed.
Eating Animals is Foer’s first nonfiction book. He earned wide acclaim for his novels Everything is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), which is the One Book Charleston County selection for 2012 (see below). Foer graduated from Princeton University in 1999 with a degree in philosophy and has written an opera and edited anthologies in addition to his novels. He has been an occasional vegetarian since age 10. He is currently a professor in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. His fourth novel, Escape from Children’s Hospital, is due for publication in 2014.
Eating Animals employs philosophy, literature, science, countless interviews, and undercover investigations of factory farms to wrestle with the complexity of food choices, especially those that involve eating animals. Why do we eat animals? Would we eat them if we knew how they were treated? To what extent does that matter? Rather than telling you what to eat, Foer challenges you to know what you are eating and how it got on your fork and then to think carefully about the ethical, environmental, legal, and communal and decide how you feel about the choices you make.
“I have been trying to get a book selected that deals with vegetarianism for quite some time,” says math professor Martin Jones, a member of The College Reads! book committee and committed vegan. Despite the fact that Foer is a vegetarian, he has said that his book is not a straightforward case for vegetarianism. Instead it investigates why we choose to eat animals.”
The College Reads! encourages faculty and students to go beyond simply reading the selection by participating in discussions and activities related to the book’s topic. In addition to Foer’s upcoming visit to the campus, film nights, panel discussions and workshops about vegetarianism and food choice are part of the fall curriculum. The spring semester will include another film series, a visit from vegan super triathlete Rich Roll, a sustainability conference, and talks by Comfortably Unaware author Dr. Richard Oppenlander and Population Connection’s John Seager.
The Charleston County Public Library has selected Foer’s Extermely Loud and Incredibly Close as their One Book Charleston County. More than 600 copies of the book are available for check out and, similar to the College Reads!, there will be book discussions, films and lectures related to the book.
The 2013-14 College Reads! Selection is Announced
The College Reads! book selection for 2013-14 is Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel. All faculty and incoming students are encouraged to read this selection as it will be included in the academic curriculum and in activities throughout the year. Alison Bechdel will be on campus Thursday, October 24, 2013. The public lecture will be at 7:00pm that evening.
Published in 2006 this award-winning book is a memoir in the form of a graphic novel. Fun Home is a coming of age story centered on Bechdel’s complex relationship with her father, a high school English teacher and director of the town funeral home (the “Fun Home”). In college, Alison comes out as a lesbian and learns her father is gay. By retelling her story, she is able to come to terms with herself, her sexual identity, and her relationship with her father.
“This book will open important conversations about identity, diversity, sexuality, and finding one’s place in the world,” explains Provost George Hynd. “The themes of Fun Home support the Diversity Strategic Plan, the creation of the Gender Resource Center on campus, and speak volumes about our commitment to an open campus climate for all students. Students who have read the book are very excited about the choice.”
Fun Home spent two weeks on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list and was named one of the best books of 2006 by numerous sources, including The New York Times, amazon.com, The Times of London, Publishers Weekly, salon.com, New York magazine, and Entertainment Weekly. Time magazine named Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home number one of its “10 Best Books of the Year.” Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award in the memoir/autobiography category.
In Fun Home, Bechdel’s life story is told as a series of flashbacks. Through these flashbacks, Alison and the reader are able to reassess each situation from new and different perspectives. Throughout the book, she grapples with finding a voice and a way to tell her own story, while realizing that she’s part of other ongoing narratives—her family’s story, the tradition of literature, and the world of art and ideas.
The First Year Experience, the Honors College, and the Center for Excellence in Peer Education will partner with the Office of Institutional Diversity to support current students in developing a reader’s guide and planning activities for next academic year.
The College Reads! is the College of Charleston’s common reading program. Each year, The College Reads! engages and connects thousands of students, faculty and staff around a single book to promote the idea that liberally educated people read broadly and discuss with one another ideas arising from the books they share. All first year students, tenured and tenure-track faculty, long-time adjunct faculty, instructors and senior instructors, FYE Peer Facilitators, Residence Hall Directors, and Resident Assistants receive the book selection each year. The book will be widely available for continuing students through the library, Liberty cafeteria, and other browsing locations.