The University of Dallas believes passionately in bettering our community through
initiatives that have immediate and lasting results.
UD Reads is a community reading initiative for the UD community, as well as community members in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.
We are pleased to announce our 2020-2021 UD Reads title.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is the 2017 Pulitzer winner, the 2016 National Book Award winner,
and has garnered ritical reviews from every major publication - The NYT Book Review, Kirkus, NPR, Washington
Post, etc. The book is a work of magical realism, and details the experiences of Cora,
a slave girl on a journey within the Underground Railroad. Cora encounters different
worlds at each stage of her journey— an odyssey through time and space. Whitehead
brilliantly re-creates the terrors for black people in pre–Civil War America, and
tells the story from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises
of the present day. The Underground Railroad is a tale of one woman’s will to escape
the horrors of bondage and a powerful meditation on our shared history.
In addition to the University of Dallas community participation, UD is thrilled to partner with over 40 local public schools, Catholic schools, charter schools, and homeschool groups. More than 4,000 students across the Dallas / Ft. Worth area will read the novel as part of the literature and social studies curriculums.
The lesson plans in this guide have been designed by Erin Begle, Certified Teacher in the Irving Independent School District and Dr. Carmen Newstreet, Assistant Professor, Department of Education.
The University of Dallas looks forward to reading with you!
Cherie L. Hohertz
Dean, Cowan-Blakley Memorial Library
His first step was to enroll in physician’s assistant school at Baylor’s College of Medicine, a career trajectory to which he had aspired since his early childhood. Nowadays, Jonathan Cunningham, BA ’17, is dedicated to the vocational pursuit of comfort and healing at MD Anderson in Houston, among the largest cancer treatment centers in the U.S., where he was once a chemotherapy patient himself.
+ Read MoreDuring his Rome semester in 1991, Joseph Meaney, BA '93, with his friends (now Father) Kevin Cook, BA '94, and (now Texas State Representative and UD Trustee) Tan Parker, BA '93, attended a private Mass with Pope St. John Paul II. Several weeks earlier, they had hand-delivered a letter to the Swiss Guards outside St. Peter's requesting the Mass and including their contact information; at last, they'd received the phone call instructing them to be at the Bronze Gates at 5 a.m.
+ Read MoreFrom the time he was in fourth grade, Bishop Francis Malone, BA '74 MA '77 MDiv '77, knew he was going to be a priest. As he was serving Mass in his home parish, Malone heard God's call, loud and clear.
+ Read More
