Reading for Life is a text-based course taught by prof. Álvaro Sánchez-Ostiz and Rosalía Baena starting the academic year 2025-2026.
It is a general education course which aims to provide students with the experience of meaningful reading. Students will be better equipped to face life’s challenges by means of reflecting on how literature may impact readers’ lives at emotional, ethical, aesthetic, and cognitive levels. By means of close reading, they train their attentiveness, curiosity, and open-mindedness, and the classroom discussions are aimed at helping them develop intellectual autonomy.
Since reading is a process, in this class, we will explore what happens before, during and after reading, and how each stage shapes your connection with literary texts. In this course students have the opportunity to learn about the concept of reading for meaning and purpose, as they come into contact with some of the classic texts by major authors such as Leon Tolstoy, William Faulkner, Art Spiegelman, Gustave Flaubert, among others.
This course is part of a European Research Project entitled, REMAP: Reading for Meaning and Purpose, so the students will benefit from the experience of other partner universities from Slovakia, Latvia and the Netherlands, as we explore together the joys and benefits of reading at the University.