September
10, 2004
First-Year
Students at Mount Holyoke Form Global Book Circle
|
In the
fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided
to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best
and most committed students and invited them to come to my home
every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women—to
teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky,
even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction.”
From the beginning of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita
in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, it’s clear that the book circle at the center of this story takes
place not in the safety of an American college town, but in the Islamic Republic
of Iran, where reading classic Western literature is considered a challenge to
the system. In Nafisi’s living room these women dared to explore the works
of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov.
This summer, members of Mount Holyoke’s incoming class of 2008 are reading
Reading Lolita in Tehran, forming a global reading circle that encompasses six
continents. Since 2000, Mount Holyoke’s new students have taken part in
a common reading as part of the College’s orientation program, receiving
copies of the selected book during the summer and participating in discussions
after their arrival on campus. The reading helps new students make the transition
into the College community by giving them a way to make connections with other
students and to the intellectual life of the campus. Faculty members are being
encouraged to incorporate the book into their courses, and a faculty panel will
lead a discussion on the book on Thursday, September 9, at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium.
“Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in a country where
reading certain books is a crime, where even showing your own hair in public
is a crime?” President Joanne V. Creighton asked in a letter to students
that accompanied copies of the book. “This memoir tells the story of a
group of courageous young women who carved out a pocket of privacy and freedom
to pursue their own education. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the
texts they discuss. The point of Nafisi’s work is that these women dare
to read what they want to. You might find yourself thinking about the relation
between education and liberty, and the ways in which books can help set our minds
free under whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.”
“There was strong interest in the book from a lot of people on campus,” said
Christopher Benfey, Mellon Professor of English and former codirector of the
Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts, in explaining the choice. “The
Weissman Center had identified Nafisi as someone who could inspire our students
and faculty concerning the liberating possibilities of reading. We tend to take
the freedom to read for granted; that would be a mistake in Iran, where Nafisi’s
women-only reading group is a courageous act of political resistance. The Arts
Group at Mount Holyoke, led by Jim Coleman, was also eager to engage Nafisi’s
work. I think we’re all groping for ways to think about art as encompassing
freedom and resistance, and Nafisi embodies and expresses those ideals.”
Previous common readings have been The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
(2003); Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
(2002); How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez (2001); and
Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams (2000).
The
counter is
813
|
