The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, in partnership with the Office of the President, is proud to announce Big Ideas@TU: a new program that will welcome incoming students to our spirited intellectual community. This campus-wide experience will provide a free copy of a specially selected book to all new students and support a diverse array of lectures, performances, exhibitions, and more. The common read initiative will be integrated into orientation and the First Year Experience while also providing the basis for community-wide conversation and debate throughout the academic year.
Each year, the book will be aligned with the OCH’s annual theme and selected by a representative group of students, staff, and faculty based on nominations submitted by the entire TU community.
2023-24 Selection: Educated by Tara Westover
Educated tracks one person’s experience of moving from the confines of a deeply fundamentalist family and into a larger, more complex world where she must weigh tradition against innovation and self-sufficiency against the need for community–all, as she writes, in the service of a creating “a changed person, a new self.” Westover’s book describes her childhood and her studies at Brigham Young University, Harvard, and Cambridge–all without ever having attended grade school. The rigor of a university education requires students and teachers alike to take constant stock of what they know, what they don’t know, and where to look to learn more. At the same time, it requires us to engage deeply yet respectively with people who have different histories, identities, and values than our own.
Learn more here.