Readings, Roundtables, and Speakers

The programming of the Center for Resilient Communities revolves around collective inquiry that connects, deepens, and inspires action. Collective inquiry means that we facilitate a process of shared learning and experimentation. We read together. Speak with thought leaders. Dialogue about challenges, problems and solutions. Our commitment to collective inquiry is not short term. We intend to hold this conversation and gather insights together over the course of many years, even decades. Each year, in consultation with its participants, the Center will establish a calendar of speaker events, reading groups and more designed to inspire exploration into the essential qualities for constructive social, economic and environmental change. We hope that the learning from our collective inquiry will not only nourish our circle of participants but extend outward to influence discourse in society at large.

Reading Circles

Reading circles are informal gatherings around a book selected by faculty, staff or graduate students working in the Center for Resilient Communities.

Digesting one or two chapters per week over the course of a few months offers readers the opportunity for book club style exchanges and engagement with critical literature on food, hunger, water, community economies, race, colonialism, capitalism, gender, labor, the environment, urbanization, development and policy. When possible we invite the author to participate in the concluding discussion of the reading circle, as an opportunity to pose them direct questions and place their writing and research in our local context.

Join a Reading Circle!