From the
What students are reading in classes this fall
Rachel Neiwert, PhD
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (2015)
The Reflective Woman (College for Women)
In Nnedi Okorafor’s novella Binti, we meet Binti — a first-generation college student, traveling to university. She practices unique cultural traditions that create connections to and memories of home, and finds herself involved in a space war that intrudes in devastating ways on her life. I hope Binti’s story will resonate with our College for Women students in The Reflective Woman because, in many ways, she could be a member of the ż’s Class of 2028. Okorafor explores big questions central to a ż’s education: What does leadership look like? (Binti reminds us that leaders look and act in many different ways.) Who are we? How do our traditions help to define us, and how do we understand traditions different from ours? What is justice? What does forgiveness look like in the midst of horrific injustice?
— Rachel Neiwert, PhD, associate professor of history
Kathy Thames
Body Kindness by Rebecca Stritchfield (2016)
Nutrition Foundations
Body Kindness helps counteract the overriding narrative of “good” and “bad” in our culture’s relationship with eating. In the Nutrition Foundations course (taken by nursing, public health, sonography, radiography, and nutrition majors), students identify nutrient density and food sources in their own diet by recording food intake for nutrient analysis. For some students this assignment can trigger self-judgment. In this course reading, Rebecca Stritchfield suggests tools to foster a positive relationship with food and body image by prioritizing self-compassion and intuitive eating over restrictive diets. Course discussions help navigate our culture’s mantra of “eating is a performance” with confidence and kindness. By reading Body Kindness in Nutrition Foundations, we strive to build a supportive environment that values self-care and body positivity along with nutrition knowledge.
— Kathy Thames, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics
Gloria Nathanson
Touch the Future: A Manifesto in Essays by John Lee Clark (2023)
Beginning American Sign Language II
Touch the Future is one of the latest books by John Lee Clark, a renowned DeafBlind poet and author from Minnesota. In our ASL classes we explore the diversity within the Deaf* community (*asterisk represents all ways of being deaf), and one area we touch on is the DeafBlind community. This book challenges the cultural narrative of DeafBlind people as helpless and despondent. Instead, he reviews the history of simply removing the interference of non-DeafBlind people, which allows protactile, an inclusive language of touch, to flourish. In his collection of thoughtful but light-hearted essays, our students are challenged to think harder about ways we can move beyond simply allowing people into the room — and rather, make them part of it.
— Gloria Nathanson, professor of ASL and interpreting