National Library Week Events: April 2-8, 2006

Change the World @ Your Library

Celebrate WPI Student Authors

Learn about award winning undergraduate student projects and how to search for them within the library catalog by chosing the Project Reports drop down limit.

Authors That Changed Your World

Campus Center Library Interactions - Monday, April 3, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Celebrating Student Authors

Award Winning Interactive Qualifying Projects on display
Student's Creative Writing Projects
Authors that Change the World - featured books from the collection

Post an author that has changed your world on our Blog

Lorraine Higgins, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at WPI shares her experiences helping everyday people to share their stories.

Private Lives, Public Voices: Writing about Problems in the Community

April 6, 2 - 3:30 p.m., Library Alcove near Bestsellers

So often, marginalized groups such as welfare recipients, disenfranchised teens in the inner city, and low-income tenants have powerful stories to tell and perspectives to share on public problems that touch their lives. And yet, there are few venues for making their knowledge public. Public talk about issues such as welfare reform, gang violence, and housing is dominated by professionals, government leaders, and the media. But what do we lose when we exclude the everyday expertise of those who are most directly affected by these issues? What can we learn by bringing the alternative and often unheard voices of everyday people into public discussion?

Lorraine Higgins, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at WPI and former Director of the Community Literacy Center in Pittsburgh, PA, has designed and led a number of community-based writing workshops with groups who want to have a say on issues that affect them most. In this workshop, Professor Higgins will share and comment on some of the life stories and proposals of people writing for change in their communities. She argues that the literate practices of community writing, publication, and dissemination are essential to a truly democratic society.

Online Short Story Discussions via MyWPI

We are hosting online short story discussions for the WPI community. Connect to myWPI → Community Tab → Search for Book (to find Online Book Discussion) and click enroll to participate. Stories we'll be discussing were recommended by WPI faculty:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A account of a woman's struggle with madness.

A & P by John Updike
Published in 1961 in the New Yorker, then 1962 in Updike's collection Pigeon Feathers & Other Stories, A & P is a story narrated by Sammy, a teenaged employee of the local A&P and his encounter with three young swimsuit clad girls.

Connect to myWPI and participate in this online forum.

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Last modified: Apr 27, 2006, 14:32 EDT