2009 Writer as Witness Colloquium
Featuring: Farhad Manjoo, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
At Bender Arena on August 21, 1:30 to 3:00
Each year, the Department of Literature and the College Writing Program select a book that we call our "community text" for students arriving in August. This text sets in motion a shared experience of intellectual inquiry, prompting conversations that resonate in classes long after the August colloquium. College Writing students continue to focus on the Writer as Witness text throughout fall semester, considering ways that the writing and study they do here at AU will connect to issues outside the university. This year's choice: Farhad Manjoo's True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. We will bring Mr. Manjoo, a staff writer for Slate Magazine, to campus this August for the twelfth annual Writer as Witness Colloquium on Friday, August 21, 2009. He will address the American University community and meet with students and faculty to discuss the book, an argument that contemporary communications technology has led to the cultural ascendance of belief over fact. In addition to discussing the content of the book, Mr. Manjoo will talk about his research and writing process, anticipating the themes of College Writing classes by demonstrating that writing sharpens thinking about issues both inside and beyond the classroom.
See also Farhad Manjoo's blog.
Please send questions or comments to:
cwp@american.edu
Previous Writer as Witness Texts
2008: The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea
2007: The Ponds of Kalambayi, by Mike Tidwell
2006: Love in the Driest Season, by Neely Tucker
2005: Fragments of Grace, by Pamela Constable
2004: Newjack, by Ted Conover
2003: First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung
2002: Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol
2001: Bad Land, by Jonathan Raban
2000: Almost a Woman, by Esmeralda Santiago
1999: My Own Country, by Abraham Verghese
1998: There Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz
