First Year Seminar: Common Text

Each year, Saint Michael’s College chooses a common text to be read and discussed by the incoming class of new students. All first-year students are asked to read the book over the summer prior to arriving on campus. A panel discussion of the book is held during Orientation in late August, and each First-Year Seminar discusses the book at the start of the fall and spring semesters.

The Common Text for Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 will be Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann (with Kristen Joiner).

In Being Heumann, one of the most influential disability rights activists in U.S. history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human.

Judith (“Judy”) Heumann’s memoir recounts her lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. It is a story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington. Judy was at the forefront of major disability rights demonstrations (such as the Section 504 Sit-In), helped spearhead the passage of disability rights legislation (such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA), founded national and international disability advocacy organizations (such as the Independent Living Movement and the World Institute on Disability), and held senior federal government positions (in the Dept of Education and State Dept).

Judy has been featured in numerous documentaries on the disability rights movement, including the Oscar-nominated documentary film Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020). For two years before her passing in 2023, Judy hosted an award-winning podcast, The Heumann Perspective, described as “an internationally recognized bad-ass disability activist, in conversation with disabled changemakers and their allies”.

Judy co-authored Being Heumann (2021) and its young adult version, Rolling Warrior, with Kristen Joiner.

Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

Summer Assignment

Students will be asked to write a response to the Common Text. Check your SMC email in early August for your writing assignment instructions. They will be sent by your First-Year Seminar instructor and will typically be due the first day or first week of classes, though the assignment details and exact deadline may vary between sections. (Note: All first-year students should read the Common Text over the summer, regardless of whether they will take their required First-Year Seminar in the fall or spring semester. Students in spring seminars will get their assignment over the winter break between semesters, but they should still read the book over the summer.)

Three essays by faculty responding to the book will also be posted on the SMC portal by the end of July. You will receive an email informing you when they are available. Your FYS instructor will expect you to have read the essays and may ask you to incorporate responses to them into your own essay about the book.

For more information, contact:
Peter Vantine
Director, First-Year Seminar Program
Associate Professor of Modern Languages
Joyce 155 / Box 276
802.654.2853
pvantine@smcvt.edu

Past First-Year Seminar Common Text Selections