AH,
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the dreaded syllabus: home to a smattering of deadlines…and a section called “required reading.” Whether you’re literature-ambivalent or a bibliophile who totes around tattered copies of your favorite novels, those words probably don’t elicit much excitement. Usually, “required reading” recalls textbooks and dense scholarly articles. But what if it could mean something more? Across disciplines, Tufts professors work to redefine required reading by assigning books that mean something to their students. Every so often, these books transcend the syllabus, shaping the semesters that come afterward. When Sam Usher ’18 walked into his Human Factors class sophomore year, he was already declared as a mechanical engineer, but he had some doubts about his major. His friends recommended that he consider Human Factors, so he signed up for the introductory class, taught by Professor of the Practice Daniel Hannon. As the course’s required reading, students were assigned The Design of Everyday Things, a best-selling book written by cognitive scientist and engineer Donald Norman. “It felt more engaging than a textbook because he used real-world examples to explain each of the concepts, instead of just defining vocabulary,” Sam explained. Between class lectures and the book, Sam found himself looking at things differently—including the kitchen stove. “You never really know which knob corresponds with which burner,” he said. The alternative presented by Norman is to use spatial mapping, arranging the knobs so that they correspond with the placement of the burners on the stove. “It was really eye-opening,” Sam said. “The book said there was no such thing as dumb users, just bad designs. And the point of a good design is that people should be able to use it
without having to think about it.” Sam’s experience in that course—especially the final project, in which he and his partner designed and 3D-printed an iPhone holder that could be used for gaming—inspired him to switch majors. “What I love about Human Factors is that it’s a good mixture of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills: you learn coding, but you also think about empathizing with users,” Sam said. It was that combination—of technical knowledge and a human approach—that he found mirrored in Donald Norman’s book. Carolyn Margulies ’18, a double major in sociology and French, was also looking for a way to combine her interests. Both of her majors require a lot of reading: in the course of a day, she might immerse herself in a qualitative study on gender, then parse classic French literature. But she didn’t find much overlap between the two areas of study until this past semester, when she took 20th and 21st Century Female French Writers with Senior Lecturer Claire Schub. “We talked a lot in the class about what it means to be a female writer, and what it means to be a female writer in the context of a literature that is so based in male writing,” Carolyn said. One of the books on the list of required texts was Simone de Beauvoir’s exploration of the treatment of women throughout history, Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex). It jumped out at Carolyn immediately. That same semester, in her Qualitative Research Methods of Sociology course, she was conducting a semester-long research project on how people with non-binary gender identities navigate the French language. “Gender is not something that’s discussed very much in French,” Carolyn explained, “so critical discourse on gender and femininity is not widely available.” That’s what made Le Deuxième Sexe so special. “It tied together everything that I had been learning for the past couple of years and solidified my decision [to major in both areas],” Carolyn said. “This is why I study French. This is why I study sociology. To be able to read stuff like this, understand it, and then put it into practical use in the greater scheme of the world.” When we talk about the transformative power of literature, this is partially what we mean: that a good book can spur us to action—whether that action is declaring a different major or deconstructing systems of oppression. But sometimes the transformative power of a good book is a quieter thing: an unexpected connection between two subjects, a question we’re inspired to ask, or an hour spent reading for fun. Last fall, Finn Pounds ’19 decided to establish a new routine: he would eat an early dinner in the dining hall every day, devoting that hour to reading books that weren’t assigned for any of his classes. His most recent favorite is Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life by Leonard Mlodinow. Finn is, in case you were wondering, a physics (and math) major. The books he reads for fun aren’t usually an escape from his academic subjects—they’re a way of delving into those subjects more deeply. Finn came to college expecting to be an English major—but that was before he fell in love with physics and math. He still makes time in his schedule to take literature courses, on topics ranging from Shakespeare to The Japanese Short Story. In the latter course, taught by Professor Susan Napier, Finn began to notice connections between literature and physics. “A lot of physics, when approaching areas that are fundamentally not on a human scale, likes to use anthropomorphic terms to describe the interactions, particles, and theorems,” he explained. “It’s interesting to notice parallels between the