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The Kolbert Reports Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Welcome to The Kolbert Reports, a
Saint Michael's symposium on the common text for 2010-11, Elizabeth
Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Students in the
class of 2014 should purchase the book and read it before arriving
on
In asking these three faculty members to write brief responses to Kolbert’s book, I emphasized that we were not looking for full-blown scholarly essays, but simply for intelligent reactions. These professors come from three different fields: Biology, English, and Economics. I told them the responses did not have to represent their disciplines; we just wanted to see how three faculty members would approach this material. The results are wonderful, and we are deeply grateful to our respondents. If you are enrolled in a fall semester First-Year Seminar, you should receive a letter from your instructor early in August with instructions about working with this material. We will send the letter to SMC e-mail addresses as well as by snail mail. If you don’t receive such a letter, or if you have a problem with the links, feel free to let me know at the e-mail address below. If you will be taking First-Year Seminar in the spring semester, we still expect you to read Kolbert’s book and the faculty responses before arriving this August. There will be a program focused on the text during Orientation, and you won’t want to miss out on that conversation. All spring seminars will also begin with this material, so you’ll have a head start on preparing for January. Will Marquess, Coordinator of First-Year Seminars
For information about sustainability efforts at SMC, click here: http://www.smcvt.edu/sustainability
For a Google map of locations in the book, created by SMC Geographer Richard Kujawa, click here: http://classweb.smcvt.edu/rkujawa/catastrophe.htm
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campus.
There is more information about this Summer Reading Assignment on p.
13 of the New Student Guide.