Overview
The Lewis Common Reader engages students and faculty across the entire campus in reading, research, and discussion about pressing issues facing our campus community and society. Each year, lectures and workshops related to the Common Reader allow faculty to share their expertise about issues raised in the Common Reader and students to share in-process research related to the Reader.
The 2020-21 Common Reader--Texts on Social Justice in Our Times--is a compilation of faculty-selected texts that invite the Lewis community to live our mission value of Justice in a time of quickly-evolving social, political, and environmental circumstances. Those texts are available here.
PROGRAM GOALS
The goals of Lewis University’s First Year Common Reader Program were adopted by the Common Reader Committee in December of 2006:
- Create a sense of community
- Promote discussion
- Set academic expectations for students
- Provide a shared intellectual experience
- Encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue
- Increase faculty-student interaction
- Promote critical engagement with ideas
- Encourage reading among first year students
COMMON READER SELECTIONS
| Year | Title | Author |
| 2020 | Texts on Social Justice In Our Times | An anthology of texts submitted by Lewis faculty |
| 2019 | Educated | Tara Westover |
| 2018 | Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz | Dr. Ewa Bacon (Professor Emerita of History, Lewis University) |
| 2017 | Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists | Courtney E. Martin |
| 2016 | Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream | Joshua Davis |
| 2015 | Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon |
| 2014 | The New Kings of Nonfiction | Ira Glass, Editor |
| 2013 | The House on Mango Street | Sandra Cisneros |
| 2012 | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot |
| 2011 | Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream | Adam Shepard |
| 2010 | Garbage Land | Elizabeth Royte |
| 2009 | The Devil in the White City | Erik Larson |
| 2008 | Persepolis II | Marjane Satrapi |
| 2007 | Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon |
| 2004 & 2005 | Life of Pi | Yann Martel |
For more information, please contact:
Andrew Lenaghan
Library Director
lenaghan@lewisu.edu
Dr. Tom McNamara
Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum and the Writing Center
tmcnamara1@lewisu.edu
