Faculty Reading Groups

Each spring the Serie Center sponsors faculty-designed reading groups. The groups read both books and essays and provide faculty with important ways to meet one another, share research and pedagogical interests, and develop as scholars and teachers. Any Macalester faculty member can propose a group and a set of readings; the Serie Center helps to advertise the group and picks up the costs of the books and modest refreshments. In Spring 2008, the Center sponsored three reading groups:

• A group of 14 faculty members who read and discussed Kenneth Bain's book What the Best College Teachers Do.
• A group of 5 faculty members who explored the interdisciplinary and burgeoning field of community and global health. Through shared readings and discussion, participants sought not only to build their own knowledge, but to forge connections across disciplines. They read one contemporary textbook, Schneider's Introduction to Public Health, and one key book from the global health canon, Farmer's, AIDS and Accusation. They also read an assortment of shorter articles, both contemporary and classic. The reading group participants have now all become active contributors to the college's newly approved concentration in Community and Global Health.
• Four faculty members joined together to discuss read essays about and discuss the topic of neoliberalism. The group discussed the connection between today's neoliberal system and older forms of economic liberalism in order to discuss the relationship between theory and political action, neoliberalism and education; how economic globalization affects the cultures of Europe and Northern America, and the intellectual and artistic reactions to neoliberalism in the East and the South.

The four Spring 2009 reading/discussion groups treat:

• Contemporary and controversial Arabic literature
• The future of biological research and education
• Theories of violence
• Issues of Secularization