2013 Summer Reading

Dear Members of the Class of 2017,

Welcome to the First Year Experience at Skidmore College. By now you know that we have chosen Wes Moore's provocative best-seller, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates as the common reading selection for your class. We anticipate that reading and thinking about this book prior to your arrival on campus will help prepare you for some of the complex and far-reaching discussions that characterize the college experience, and that will take place this fall in your Scribner Seminars.

We hope you are already immersed in the book and find it as engaging and challenging as we do. As the Committee that chose it and that will oversee relevant programming in the fall semester, we feel that this selection offers a number of different entry points for thinking about issues such as class, race, societal inequalities, personal agency, and the interplay of nature and nurture.

As you read and discuss this selection with your family and friends, consider the two Wes Moores and their divergent life paths. What can we learn about and from these two young men? How might their stories illuminate the strengths and limitations of our social and economic structures?

This website is designed to deepen your thinking about The Other Wes Moore; it will be updated over the summer, so please check back frequently. We look forward to discussing the book with you, and we are also excited about bringing the author to campus on Monday, September 16th.

Happy reading!

Sincerely,

Professors Kate Leavitt (Art), William Mudrovic (Foreign Languages and Literatures), and Mary Odekon (Physics)

 

**Books for the entire FYE faculty and first year class have been provided through the generous donation of Jim and Sue Towne in special recognition of Skidmore's second president, Henry T. Moore.