Many Voices

What We Do

The Many Voices Project invites you to a dialogue with other minds, people whose experience may be different from (but perhaps also the same as) 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 2008-2009, the Many Voices Project features Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, Persepolis. Since Satrapi's work is the common text for all ENL 111 sections during the school year, you may find that the dialogue continues outside Effective Writing, perhaps into other classes and beyond.

Effective Writing and the Many Voices Project

Each year the Augsburg English Dept. chooses a different common text for Effective Writing that illuminates issues of diversity from an unusual or striking angle. Professors, staff, and students across the campus are encouraged to participate in reading and discussing the year's text, both in formal classroom venues and in 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.

As students learn strategies for effective written communication, they engage issues of diversity through course readings and writing topics, including this year's Many Voices Project text, Persepolis. The Many Voices Project encourages you to engage other minds, people with whom you may have little--or unexpectedly much--in common. That dialogue starts with the Many Voices text itself, as your classmates and you think about Satrapi's's novel, discuss it, and write on it in Effective Writing. However, since the novel will be our common text for all ENL 111 sections, we encourage you to pursue the conversation beyond Effective Writing, whether in other classes, in a professor's office, in the dorm, at meals, or over coffee.

Many Voices Resources

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 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

Augsburg College

Many Voices

What We Do

Effective Writing and the Many Voices Project

Many Voices Resources

Effective Writing Resources