UMass Amherst

The Dean's Book Course Book Selection

image of books from the selection shelfWhile many other honors programs and colleges offer book seminars, the Dean’s Book Course is distinguished by the texts selected and its method of selecting them.

Who selects the books

The books are selected for each year’s seminar series, not by faculty or administrators, but by a committee of Commonwealth College students themselves.

How the books are selected

This group of students, known as the Dean’s Readers, work in a year-long seminar under the DBC Director’s direction. Each year the Dean’s Readers narrow a list of some forty books to seven before reviewing and presenting their selections to one another and finally choosing two for the year ahead.

What criteria are used in selecting books

The books chosen are not the typical classics of the Great Books Course tradition. Rather, they are contemporary books by living authors, and the Dean’s Book Course often features readings by the authors and discussions with them.

The Dean’s Readers look for engaging books that offer a rich array of themes for research and discussion. They may be fiction or non-fiction or personal memoir; they may represent just about any academic discipline--political, scientific, business, literary--but must be accessible and potentially interesting to a general readership.

Books are chosen not because they offer the final word on their subject but because they open up a range of subjects for deliberation, debate, and futher discovery. Books are the center of the Dean's Book Course but a center students fill and expand with knowledge gained from research, academic study, and personal experience.

What books have been selected

Among books selected in the past are Elegy for Iris by John Bayley, Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman, The Professor and The Madman by Simon Winchester, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Natural by Joe Klein, Bodega Dreams by Ernesto Quinonez, Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, and Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family by Lee M. Siver.