FYRS -- First Year Research Seminar (Winter 2025): Meadows

Reading is (Still) Fundamental? From children's stories to novels, reading fiction has been a bedrock of Western education and society. With the dominance of long and short format video in today's culture, is reading still important? How have attention span adaptations affected reading? What is 21st-century literacy? Why are books and libraries under such political fire? What effects do visuals, video, marketing, and awards have on books and on what is published? What is literary fiction and what is not, and does it matter? How do reading for pleasure, reading to children, and reading communities like book clubs affect society and the development of sympathy and empathy? Do programs like Dolly Parton's Imagination Library make a difference in career and life success? In this course, students will explore these questions, read a novel of choice for pleasure, examine this experience together, and research to address these questions. After all, reading is fundamental-right? 

Below are links to some of your course readings. To gain full access to The New York Times website, create an account at this site using your Transy.edu email address. Don't forget to check your email to verify. Once you have created an account, type the article's title in the search box.

Try these sample searches on your class topic in the library catalog:

Use broad reference materials to find background information about your topic. This will help you narrow your topic and will also give you keywords to find the most relevant sources. Credo can be a good place to start for that first step in research.

Below are suggested databases for finding articles on topics relating to your course.

Need more options -- Databases A-Z

 A few scholarly articles on the topics relating to your course are below.