JumpStart Reads
Welcome to JumpStart Reads! We look forward to a lively discussion with you on Friday, Sept. 11.
The following texts continue this year’s JumpStart theme of career and calling. They invite us to consider different professionals’ assessments of their work; they also invite us to consider obstacles to people’s work and calling. These texts range from current discussions on major news sites to literary texts by prominent poets.
The following article by Amanda Ruggeri, which invites us to consider the value of a broad education and training in the humanities, was selected by the BBC as the best article from their Worklife section for 2019.
The following article by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson was published on June 3, 2020, in the Washington Post. A marine biologist and policy advisor, Johnson responds and contributes to the current debates about both the climate crisis and racial inequality in the U.S.
The following poems are taken from Poetry Foundation, a prominent website that is often used by writers, students, and scholars. “Digging” is a well-known poem by Seamus Heaney (1939-21013), an Irish poet and one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature (the highest honor for a writer) in 1995.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging
“Find Work” was written by Rhina P. Espaillat, who was born in the Dominican Republic in 1932. As Poetry Foundation observes, “her family was exiled to the United States and settled in New York” after a relative opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. She has published poems in both Spanish and English.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40463/find-work
The JumpStart Reads group will meet for a double session on Friday and count for two elective breakout sessions. If you attend the full double session, you will not be required to attend any other elective breakout sessions.
Contact
For further information, or if you have questions about this session, please contact:
| Dr. Cynthia Westerbeck | Dr. Kellie Bond | |
| (509) 527-2370 | or | (509) 527-2858 |
| Director of Honors | Chair of English |