About
First Readings, sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College and the Office of Alumni Relations, is Brown's summer reading project for all new incoming students. Now in its second year, the program provides first-year and transfer students with a common reading experience that in turn serves as their introduction to the University and to the pleasures and rigors of undergraduate academic life.
Students receive their texts over the summer and write letters to their advisors on an aspect of the book that they find particularly compelling, difficult, or curious. In this way, they may begin a dialogue with their First-Year Advisor on the academic interests they hold and their expectations for life at Brown. Upon their arrival at campus, they meet in small groups for a First Readings Seminar, led by a member of the faculty or an upper-level administrator. These popular seminars afford students the chance to meet their peers and begin conversations based upon their shared readings.
This year's selection focused on the social sciences, and the text chosen was Rory Stewart's lauded travel narrative, The Places in Between. The text, reviewed by The New York Times as a “striding, glorious book,” recounts the author's 2002 journey across Afghanistan. The structure and subject matter of the work is accessible and cross-disciplinary, and thus it should prompt much reflection for the readers, who themselves will soon be charting new territory as they begin their careers at Brown.
The Brown University Library has developed this website dedicated to First Readings. Knowing how to conduct research amongst primary and secondary sources is a skill indispensable to the undergraduate, who fill find on this website critical information about research resources at Brown and the expectations the University has for reference protocols and academic integrity.