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This post is part of a blog series, ‘Adventures in the New Humanities,’ by Judy Kutulas, the Boldt Family Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities.

The title of this post, in case you either weren’t alive or didn’t quite make it to the end of my book on the 1970s, references an iconic 1970s record album, a book, and a television special all called Free to Be, You and Me that were designed to encourage children to think outside of traditional gender categories and stereotypes. Well, I don’t mean to be alarmist, but it’s time we unleashed a similar avalanche of new thinking on our students to induce them to do something important for their college successes and their lives: read.

Yes, read. I know; it’s shocking.

According to educational columnist Kimberly Rues, the percentage of 12^th graders — you know, members of our incoming class — who read even one book, magazine, or newspaper beyond what was required in school dropped from 60 percent in 1980 to 16 percent in 2016, and that includes electronic books and on-line newspapers.

We could just dismiss this with a sort of “OK, Gen-Zers” eye roll, but the truth is that Americans, overall, are reading less and the reasons why are complicated. Younger people have scheduled lives, teams, and other extracurriculars to help get them into colleges, plus jobs and family responsibilities, because families have to make a lot of sacrifices to afford college these days.

At the same time, we older Americans are equally busy and just as distracted as our soon-to-be-students by what we might call “the competition” (a.k.a. social media, YouTube, streaming platforms, podcasts, and games). How many BuzzFeed quizzes will you take before the sun sets today?

The attention span grows shorter. The visual and aural alternatives to reading grow stronger. As Hercule Poirot — a fictional detective created by Dame Agatha Christie — might say, we must exercise those little grey cells.

The attention span grows shorter. The visual and aural alternatives to reading grow stronger. As Hercule Poirot — a fictional detective created by Dame Agatha Christie — might say, we must exercise those little grey cells.

It’s hard to buck the trends. Look at what we’ve been doing the last few months to keep ourselves entertained while sheltering at home: watching Netflix, listening to podcasts while we do puzzles or bake bread, Zoom cocktail parties, replicating great art with our dogs. We live on our phones, but not on the Kindle apps we might have there.

The pandemic has generated more conversation about bookcases than what’s on them. The New York Times even did an article about them, looking behind celebrities on Zoom to see what’s in their bookcases. Feel free to pause here and see if you’ve read any of the same books as Prince Charles, Cate Blanchett, or Stacey Abrams. Now I’m wondering what it says about me that I’ve read some of the same books as Vogue editor Anna Wintour (you know, the real-life devil who wears Prada) and pop culture specialist Andy Cohen. Also, I’m wondering if actor Paul Rudd actually read Jude the Obscure.

I’d call myself the poster child for short attention spans, but, as it happens, it’s not even July yet and I have already read two of the top 10 New York Times fiction bestsellers. The list is here, in case you also have a short attention span and want to see if you can guess which two I’ve read. I’ve also read three on PDA’s bookshelf and noticed two or three more that look interesting. And yet I’ve also managed to devote plenty of time to contemplating Paul Rudd’s reading habits, streamed a lot of TV, and written this.

So, what can we do to make reading a pleasure rather than a chore?

I suppose we could make some preachy speeches about how important reading is for pleasure or even open a before-class conversation with “Anybody read a good book lately?” and hope someone has read one so excellent that they convince others in the class to do so. Personally, I have a different approach.

Every humanities class needs a great read. It doesn’t have to be a classic novel — it doesn’t even have to be fiction — but it should be something that will stick with at least some of your students.

Every humanities class needs a great read. It doesn’t have to be a classic novel — it doesn’t even have to be fiction — but it should be something that will stick with at least some of your students.

Making that choice is an evolving process, changing over time, but generally done in consultation with students. It’s why I ask students to name their favorite class read on course evaluations and why, when ordering for the next semester, I usually will do some kind of informal poll or ask the question, “Should I use this book again?”

Keep in mind as you pick that a lot of our students bring what we might call high school baggage into our classrooms. I think it’s safe to say that nearly every one of our students has enjoyed reading at some point, but I fear that precious little of it was assigned. I just googled “high school reading lists” and, with one or two exceptions, the titles on several different websites bore a remarkable resemblance to what I read in high school and that was back when Richard Nixon was president.

The literary canon has widened, but maybe not enough, yet I think it’s safe to say that reading in high school sometimes involves humanities’ problem-solving at its worst rather than its best, particularly in what students characterize, and not in a good way, as hunts for symbolism. Actually, I know what they mean because I too hunted for symbolism in the 10^th grade. You probably did too. And I don’t mean to slam my 10^th-grade English teacher, who was otherwise quite excellent and gave me her copy of The Catcher in the Rye, which I read and loved, but no longer assign because there are newer and more relevant novels to use in America since 1945. The copy she gave me, however, sits on the bookcase in my office. Take that, Paul Rudd!

Yet neither the presence of symbolism nor the fact that one of your assigned readings appears on the list of classics should doom it. I’ve seen Professor of English Mary Titus stare down the symbolism monster in a book on dozens of high school lists, The Great Gatsby, and emerge victorious as our American Conversations class enthusiastically parsed the meaning of the green light at the end of the dock (and the end of the novel).

Keep in mind that your class doesn’t need to love a great read to be affected by it. Right now, for instance, a great read for fall might involve race in the USA — not cozy and satisfying, but relevant and important and memorable. If you haven’t yet ordered your books (shame on you), here are some suggestions from The New York Times, although there are plenty of other lists out there as well.

Keep in mind that your class doesn’t need to love a great read to be affected by it. Right now, for instance, a great read for fall might involve race in the USA — not cozy and satisfying, but relevant and important and memorable.

There is also much to be said for discovery, whether it be a new genre, an unexpected life story, or a different kind of read. When I co-taught American Conversations with Associate Professor of Music David Castro, he talked me into the graphic novel with super-heroes, The Watchmen, a story by Alan Moore with visuals by Dave Gibbons and John Higgins. Some in the class were enthusiastic; many of us were very hesitant and, frankly, lost at sea for a while. Once David started to explain how the elements of the story worked together with a different set of conventions than the class was used to, we started to get the read and felt triumphant and really smart and literate. Even I got over the notion that I was reading a genre that my parents would only let us have on vacation, comic books.

Finding patterns and triumphing over a new — and challenging — genre are aspects of learning to read critically.

We can aid in this process by giving students clues and enticements. Providing a link to the author’s website on your syllabus or a relevant documentary can help pique student interest. I can’t tell you how many converts I’ve made to one of my favorite history books, Kathy Peiss’s Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, by showing clips of old carnival rides from a documentary about Coney Island (check Catalyst — it’s a good documentary) and a 1902 short film from the Library of Congress called A Tough Dance. Definitely check out the tough dance. Like my students, you’ll be surprised at just how tough it is.

But the real kicker with Cheap Amusements is that students can see hints of their own experiences of identity-formation as they read about immigrant factory girls sneaking out to dance halls, “putting on style,” rebelling against old-country ways, and falling in love with movies. It’s the bigger analytic arc that connects their lives to some complicated things that happened more than a century ago that appeals.

Of course, if what you think is a great read turns out to be a dud, that’s a teachable moment too.

Explaining why a read didn’t work, wasn’t compelling, or seemed full of fallacies is its own version of humanities problem-solving. It’s analytic and requires knowledge of genre or historical period or disciplinary methods. One of the first skills humanities graduate students demonstrate is the book review, a short-form piece of writing that deconstructs a reading. It may sound irrelevant, but it’s the same sort of thing human beings do 300 times a day.

I think it’s also safe to say that students, like anybody else, like to complain, so they might as well practice complaining in a scholarly fashion, none of that “I hated, hated, hated” stuff that is actually part of the title of a set of film reviews by Roger Ebert (I Hated, Hated, Hated This Film). I haven’t read it, but I’m sure it’s full of satisfying snark about some beyond-mediocre films. I should put it on my I-should-read-that list or check to see if it’s downloadable before I forget.

Which leads me to e-books and reading apps. I’m a big fan of reading apps, because I can never remember what books I was going to buy by the time I’m in a position to buy them — and sometimes, I just want to read something NOW. E-books don’t take up any room in your suitcase when you travel and when you find a mystery series you really like when you are in Iceland, you can download the next one from your hotel. Maybe it’s because I’m a historian, but I find a lot of my need-to-read-nows begin with something I’ve watched, like the movie Hidden Figures or the recent Netflix series Unorthodox, both of which have taken me to unexpected places. And if your books are stored in the cloud somewhere, they aren’t taking over your house like my husband’s are and the New York Times can’t peek at your bookcases.

Five years ago, the publishing world was all abuzz about the likelihood that print books would disappear, but it’s become clear that there are plenty of never-e-readers out there, and that’s fine. E-books replicate paper books pretty fully these days, and some would say they are better since footnote-jumping is easier and you can blow up the pictures. The real how-we-read controversy these days concerns whether or not listening to somebody else read a book counts as reading.

The audiobook complicates life for those of us who use novels since the vast majority of audiobooks are in fiction categories. Historically, reading aloud was a sort of prequel to what Duchess Kate calls “literacy work” — that’s learning to read with proficiency for those of us without tiaras. Experts have suggested that reluctant readers use audiobooks as an inducement to master reading, but that they somehow don’t really count as reading for the rest of us, especially not college students who, some might suggest, are just looking for a short-cut and their first choice, a film, doesn’t exist.

Professor James F. English, who directs the digital humanities lab at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks these assumptions are just wrong and that audiobooks have a place in encouraging lifelong engagement with reading.

He reminds us that audiobooks are the one kind of book that are growing in popularity. Half of all readers in the USA have listened to at least one audiobook in the last year. Notice I said “readers,” because audiobooks don’t preclude reading; they just extend and expand its possibilities. In 20 years, when our current students are riding around in their driverless cars, they will probably be listening to audiobooks.

There are challenges to using audiobooks in classrooms. The most commonly featured texts are what English describes as the “middle distance” of literary history, somewhere between old classics and brand-new texts. So too are there accessibility challenges and controversies over what Matthew Rubery calls “the politics of narration.” But English points out that our prejudices about audiobooks are often inaccurate. They are not, for instance, quick-fix substitutes for lazy students. It takes longer to listen to a novel than it takes for the average college student to read one. Studies also suggest that listening to a novel doesn’t result in a more superficial understanding of the text.

In short, while you may cringe at the thought that your students are listening to some great work of “middle-distance” literature you assigned in class while doing laundry, walking the aisles of Target, or driving, so what? It’s multitasking in a good way. I spent a lot of my adolescence working on my suntan while reading, and the reading part is not what I regret now.

I know that some professors have students take turns reading out loud in class to help the group savor the language of a work itself. It can be a magical moment, as it has been whenever I’ve had Professor of Writing Diane LeBlanc come in to lead a classroom session on poetry. I would caution, however, that for some students reading aloud is difficult, so make sure your readers are volunteers. But reading out loud can be another way of encouraging students to read more, especially if they are theater majors or overly dramatic. And it’s good practice for parenthood and that pre-literacy work.

Assistant Professor of Writing and Ole alum Bridget Draxler ’05 says ever since college, she’s been trying “to recreate the reading community I had as a student in Great Con.” I’d be willing to bet that there were books her cohort read that were challenging to understand, challenging to their understandings of the world, and sometimes full of symbolism. I bet there were days students complained about what they were reading. But in the end, most members of any of our learning communities come away full of satisfaction, academic confidence, and a host of good experiences. They have tackled hard reads and understood them. They have debated their merits, situated them in contexts, and are much more likely to continue reading in their leisure time after they leave the Hill.

The pleasure of a good book is individual and personal, but each read also exists within the context of other reads and in conversation with other books and other readers. Both aspects of reading are important, nurturing us as people, but also inspiring us to think, talk, and act.

We in the humanities are always on the defensive about the practical skills and useful trainings we offer. A good read is at the top of that list of practicalities. Reading sustains us, makes us good citizens, and helps us become empathetic and curious people. Read for yourself this summer while thinking about ways you can hook your students on pleasure reading in the fall.

We in the humanities are always on the defensive about the practical skills and useful trainings we offer. A good read is at the top of that list of practicalities. Reading sustains us, makes us good citizens, and helps us become empathetic and curious people.

Bridget’s love of the book club has got me thinking. Given our current situation, I’m not likely to invite speakers in this upcoming school year, and I have a feeling the fine spreads of food that have welcomed speakers or celebrated adjuncts via the auspices of the Boldt Chair are not going to happen. I’ve got a budget and what better way to spend some of it than on a book club or two? I’m soliciting suggestions. Do you want something escapist or immersive or relevant? Please send me your suggestions. In the meantime, I’ve got a whole load of all sorts of reads, fiction and nonfiction, loaded on my Kindle and ready to roll in the three or four days before I have to start planning for the new semester.

Judy Kutulas is a professor of history at St. Olaf College, where she teaches in the History Department and the American Studies program, along with American Conversations. She is the Boldt Family Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities, charged with helping to revitalize humanities teaching and learning at the college. Read her inaugural ‘Adventures in the New Humanities’ blog post here.