Many Voices Project

The Many Voices Project invites you to enter into a dialogue with other minds, so that you might encounter ideas that are different than your own. Part of the dialogue will be with the text itself, as you reflect on it, write about it, and discuss it with other people in class. During the 2012-2013 academic year, the Many Voices Project features Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man. Since Isherwood’s work is the common text for all ENL 111 sections this year, you may find that your conversation about the text continues outside of Effective Writing, perhaps in a professor’s office or other classroom, in the dorm, at meals, or over coffee.

Effective Writing and the Many Voices Project

Each year the Augsburg English Department chooses a different common text for Effective Writing that illuminates issues of diversity. Professors, staff, and students across the campus are encouraged to participate in reading and discussing the year’s text, both in formal and informal settings.

Effective reading brings us into contact with other minds and diverse voices; effective writing allows us to engage other minds in active conversation. While Augsburg College courses in Effective Writing do not teach “diversity,” they are intended to teach skills and methods that promote successful communication among diverse writers and readers. Because the skills of close reading and clear writing are some of the most effective tools students can use to understand personal and cultural diversity, these writing courses emphasize ways written communication can promote understanding and productive engagement among different cultures and points of view.

Many Voices Resources

2011-2012 Cairo Modern by Naguib Mahfouz

2010-2011 Walden by Henry David Thoreau

2009-2010 De amor y de sombra (Of Love and Shadows) by Isabel Allende

2008-2009 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2007-2008 The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

2006-2007 The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

                   Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

2005-2006 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

2004-2005 The Language of Blood by Jane Jeong Trenka

2003-2004 The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley