Common Reader Program - First Year Seminar Toolkit - Bradford

Common / Community Reader Program

The First Year Seminar is home to Pitt-Bradford's Common Reader program.

The program aims to foster critical thinking and analysis through reading and discussion of a text that addresses topical issues.

The goals of the Pitt Bradford Common Reader Program are to:

promote reading as a shared intellectual experience among first-year peers and the university community;
cultivate the exploration of ethics and values;
increase awareness of the importance of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access;
provide connections between academic and social aspects of university life.

(amazon.com 2021)

Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in "Notes of a Native Son" capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in "The Harlem Ghetto" to a sobering "Journey to Atlanta."
(library.pitt.edu 2021)

American Masters: James Baldwin Biography
"In numerous essays, novels, plays and public speeches, the eloquent voice of James Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of black Americans and the saving power of brotherhood." (PBS.org 2006)
Poetry Foundation: James Baldwin
"A novelist and essayist of considerable renown, James Baldwin bore witness to the unhappy consequences of American racial strife. Baldwin’s writing career began in the last years of legislated segregation; his fame as a social observer grew in tandem with the civil rights movement as he mirrored blacks’ aspirations, disappointments, and coping strategies in a hostile society." (Poetry Foundation 2021)