Book One

The Book One Program at Bard College at Simon’s Rock asks incoming students to read the first book of our General Education program -- and their college careers! – over the summer. The author will speak on campus during Writing & Thinking Workshop week. The book and the discussion with the author will serve as the basis for reflection and writing during Writing & Thinking Workshop and throughout the First Year Seminar sequence. Every year, a different book is selected to be Book One; thus new students' experiences reading the text and discussing it with the author and with their fellow students will be one of the qualities that defines them as a class.

I am delighted to announce that this year's Book One is Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Dr. Hartman is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Women's and Gender Studies at Columbia University and is the recipient of Fulbright, Rockefeller, and Whitney Oates Fellowships. In Lose Your Mother, Dr. Hartman recounts her journey along a slave route in Ghana, a journey that traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade and that brings her face-to-face with her own genealogy. In this powerfully woven tale of history, biography, and memoir, she vividly describes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African-American history. Dr. Hartman is also the author of Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997).

Dr. Hartman will be addressing the class of '08, other members of the Simon's Rock community, and
guests at 7:00 pm on Monday, August 18 in the McConnell Theater.

For information on purchasing a copy of Lose Your Mother, contact Sara Monsonis in the Simon's Rock Bookstore at (413) 528-7256, or simonsrcb_bkstr@fheg.follett.com.