Your First Assignment: The Summer Common Reading
As a community of scholars, we value reading as one pathway to greater knowledge and conversations about ideas as another. The Summer Common Reading is our first opportunity to engage in both. Knox College has selected Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson as our 2023 Summer Common Reading. Earlier this week, we sent US-based students a copy of Just Mercy through the mail (check your mailboxes… some of you may have already received it). International students will receive instructions to access a digital copy of the book during the week of July 3rd and will receive a physical copy of the book once you arrive on campus.
All first-year students are required to read Just Mercy prior to arriving on campus and to craft a short response to the text. Later this summer, probably around August 1st, your First-Year Preceptorial (FP) instructor will contact you with instructions on how to craft your response and when and how to submit it. You will be discussing the book in your FP class as part of a larger conversation in which students, faculty, and staff will also participate.
Transfer students also receive a copy of the book. While transfer students do not take FP, we encourage you to read the book and hope that the common reading will provide an entry point for conversations and contact with your fellow students.
Just Mercy details the case of Walter McMillian, a man wrongfully convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. Bryan Stevenson and the lawyers of the Equal Justice Initiative worked to overturn McMillian’s conviction. In the book, Stevenson discusses McMillian’s case and other miscarriages of justice that disproportionately affect the poor, the mentally ill, people of color, and children. Just Mercy is a work of nonfiction δΈ€ the narratives command our attention and sympathy. Sometimes these stories end well; sometimes they end in tragedy. As America struggles to come to terms with what it means to have the highest per capita number of incarcerated individuals in the world, Stevenson offers a thoughtful and important entry into conversations about the role of prisons in American society, conversations echoed in contemporary political debates, and a discussion with which you too will engage when you arrive at Knox.
NOTE: Although it is not the primary focus of this book, Stevenson does describe - at times graphically - what it is like to witness a person being put to death by electric chair or lethal injection, and also touches on incidents of physical, sexual, and mental abuse in the prison system.
Questions about the Summer Common Reading? Please contact Danielle Steen Fatkin, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at dfatkin@knox.edu.
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