Just a day after the Washington University community gathered to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, author Steven Galloway addressed the importance of the civilian narrative in times of war during his lecture in College Hall. Galloway’s novel, “The Cellist of Sarajevo,” was the selection for this year’s First Year Reading Program.

The 2011 fall assembly series will explore a broad range of topics and will feature philanthropists, lawyers, journalists, college professors and even comic-strip creators. The main focus of this fall’s assembly series is the human spirit.

The Freshman Reading Program: It’s one of the most overlooked and forgotten elements of a freshman’s appearance on campus, yet it is something we all went through almost immediately after arriving at Wash. U. You would sit in a group with some portion of your floor and talk about whatever book had been assigned to your class. Yes, the process was invariably somewhat awkward.

Student Life reporter Cordelia Palitz sat down and spoke with Julie Otsuka, the Japanese-American author of “When the Emperor was Divine,” this year’s Freshman Reading Program. Otsuka was a speaker in this fall’s Assembly Series. Hailing from California, Otsuka is 47 years old and one generation removed from Japanese Americans who were interned in camps by the U.S. government from 1942 until 1945.

How many of you read the Freshman Reading Program book this summer, “Field Notes from a Catastrophe” by Elizabeth Kolbert?” (A smattering of hands tentatively go up.) “Well, that’s a start.” How many of you actually care? (Nobody moves.) Welcome, class, to a dying world. Let me tell you two reasons why you should give […]