Listen as 194 Wellesley College faculty introduce you to a book that they're passionate about in their field, and then read a brief passage to whet your appetite.
The books might be little-known literary gems, beloved classics, scenes from plays, recent provocative essays, poems, thought-provoking analyses of current social issues, biographies, or many other literary forms.
Take a few minutes to explore the books that captivate Wellesley faculty. Click on a book to hear the reading.
November 19th, 2016
| November 2, 2016
Liza Oliver reads from White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in 18th Century India, by William Dalrymple, published by Penguin Books. (5:41) "Ideas of racial and ethnic hierarchy were beginning to be aired for the first time in the late 1870s, and it was the ... mixed-blood Anglo-Indian[s] which felt the brunt of the new intolerance." |
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| October 26, 2016
Charlene Galarneau reads from Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil by Emilie Townes, published by Palgrave Macmillan. (3:46) "It is what we do every day that shapes us...It is...these acts that we do that say more about us than those grand moments of righteous indignation and action..." |
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| October 19, 2016
Inela Selimovic reads from Talking to Ourselves by Andres Neuman, published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. (4:13) "Someone had to call the funeral home to buy the coffin. And the newspapers to dictate the death notice. Two simple, inconceivable tasks. So intimate, so remote." |
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| October 5, 2016
Octavio Gonzalez reads from Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism by Amber Jamilla Musser, published by NYU Press (3:59) "[Lorde] enacts the argument that black women are discursively outside of sexuality and individuality." |
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| September 28, 2016
Nadya Hajj reads from Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg, published by Shambhala. (4:21) "When you are writing, if you write a question, that is fine. But immediately go to a deeper level inside yourself and answer it in the next line." |
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| September 21, 2016
Yui Suzuki reads from Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin, published by Pantheon. (5:12) "This fish doesn't just tell us about fish; it also contains a piece of us. The search for this connection is what led me to the Arctic in the first place." |
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| September 14, 2016
Erich Matthes reads from H Is For Hawk by Helen MacDonald, published by Grove Press. (4:38) "Trained hawks have a peculiar ability to conjure history...You take a hawk onto your fist. You imagine the falconer of the past doing the same. It is hard not to feel it is the same hawk." |
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| September 7, 2016
Kartini Shastry reads from Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, published by Public Affairs (5:15). "One issue that ... arises when we think about fertility choice ... is whose choice? Fertility decisions are made by a couple, but women end up paying most of the physical costs of bearing children." |