What Wellesley's Reading

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

Cassandra Pattanayak reads from Who Counts: The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America by Margo Anderson and Stephen Fienberg, published by Russell Sage Foundation. (5:20)

	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."
	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..."
	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."
	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."
	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."
	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."
	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."
	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."

Last Modified: July 25, 2022 | Designed by: Christina Pong '09 | Created and maintained by: Kenny Freundlich | Wellesley College