A campus-wide advisory committee consisting of faculty, staff, and community partners has selected the UCSB Reads book for 2013: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Penguin, 2011). Now in its seventh year, the award-winning UCSB Reads program encourages the UCSB and Santa Barbara communities to join in reading and exploring a common book with wide-ranging and interdisciplinary themes. Each year the UCSB Library hosts several faculty-led discussions both on campus and in local public libraries that deal with the book’s important questions and issues. UCSB Reads 2013 will officially launch when Chancellor Yang distributes 2,500 free copies of the book to students at the beginning of the winter quarter. The program will culminate with a free reading and lecture by the author in Campbell Hall on March 4, 2013.
In Moonwalking, science journalist Joshua Foer sets out to report on the U.S. Memory Championships and becomes swept up in the art of memory techniques that originated in ancient Greece, learning to apply them in increasingly impressive memory feats of his own while he writes about the world’s top-level memory champions.
Moonwalking offers countless opportunities for interdisciplinary programming that draws from our diverse campus resources and faculty expertise. Fields that may be particularly interested in this title are psychology, neuroscience, education, anthropology, art, classics, and history, among others. Some of the questions the book raises have to do with the distinction between memorization and learning, the nature of "expertise," and the difference between pre-literate and literate societies.
There are many ways in which you can get involved with UCSB Reads:
- Consider teaching all or part of Moonwalking in your courses. The Library will make free copies of the book available to your students if you do so.
- Volunteer to be a panelist in one of the UCSB Reads campus and community conversations.
- Encourage your students to attend the conversations. Include the dates of the author’s lecture and other events in your syllabus.
- Attend the events!
To get involved, share programming ideas, or if you have questions, please contact Rebecca Metzger, rmetzger [at] library [dot] ucsb [dot] edu, (805) 893-2674 or Jane Faulkner, faulkner [at] library [dot] ucsb [dot] edu, (805) 893-5380.
