“It is a universal truth” that no Fellow wants to write a summary of their time at the Center for Advanced Studies for the Behavioral Sciences( CASBS) because that would presage the reality of their leaving. Indeed, I have personally delayed submitting this brief statement until the last possible days before my departure. It is no exaggeration to state that the last year at CASBS has been one of the penultimate scholarly experiences in my professional life. In this report, I hope to do two things: 1) summarize my original goals in coming to CASBS; and 2) describe the unique features of the CASBS environment that allowed me to accomplish in one concentrated year of work what would ordinarily require seven years in the typical academic environment.
Before arriving, I had two important, albeit almost impossible goals. The first of these involved an invitation by Oxford University Press to write a book for their Literary Agenda Series on the reading brain and my most recent research on literacy. It was a goal worth attempting, but I did not imagine attaining it . This is particularly the case since my last book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, required seven years of research and writing.
Quite literally, I just submitted the entire manuscript to Oxford Press in the last week, and it was accepted. I am elated, exhausted, and utterly grateful for all the help that I received at CASBS that allowed this to happen. During the last year in no small part due to the extraordinary research and retrieval services of CASBS librarians, particularly Amanda Thomas, I was able to accumulate a vast amount of research that was critical to the task. It is the case that I could never have amassed the amount and the varied types of research that I needed without the uncanny literary sleuthwork that Amanda and Cybile, her assistant, provided me. At a recent keynote address to the American Library Association, I underscored how the experiences with CASBS librarians had given me a new level of appreciation for the present and future role of library sciences in the ever more sophisticated and targeted curation and retrieval of multiple information sources for research purposes.
The second major factor that impacted the preparation of my book was the collective input of my fellow colleagues at CASBS. The structure of the experience at CASBS— in which each Fellow presents both a brief introductory description of their research and then a more in-depth seminar— provides a singularly effective means of ensuring that everyone is apprised of the research goals and interests of each individual from the outset. Such a structure proved of significant help to each of us in several ways. First, we were all made immediately aware of the particular areas of interest of each Fellow. This, in turn, provided the impetus for the formation of an informal network of information that passed back and forth throughout the year: when any of us found information on issues of special interest to another Fellow, we quickly forwarded it, which would then become the topic of the next lunch!
Second, through the seminar and the discussions that followed, I received extremely important feedback on areas that were outside my expertise, but that I realized needed inclusion in my work. For example, several of the Fellows provided me with a different perspective on how literacy initiatives in a non-literate culture could be construed in a way never intended by me and my colleagues in our global literacy work. Understanding this other discipline’s perspective provided an important addition to my book. Over the year’s passage, I received a range of important insights on my work from my fellow scholars who were involved in cultural studies, literature, and technology. Indeed it is my hope that I may conduct research in the future with at least two of the Fellows who were most involved in various aspects of technology.
The upshot is that the Center gave me and all of the Fellows an extraordinary structure and climate for conducting our scholarly work. I wish to conclude my discussion of this “first goal” with an excerpt from my acknowledgments to my recently submitted book, What It Means to be Literate: A Literacy Agenda for the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press).
And now I wish to say something most authors should not say. To meet the timely schedule of this Oxford Literary Agenda series, I agreed to complete this book in one year. I should never have been so foolhardy and will always wish I had two more years. I was able to meet this commitment only because of the fact that I spent my sabbatical in one of the single best environments that exist for scholars: the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Under the directorship of Margaret Levi and co-director Sally Schroeder, the Center offered me and all of the Fellows an interdisciplinary haven for writing, research, and unrivalled intellectual exchanges among colleagues from different disciplines. From the tenacious, sometimes Sherlock Holmesian help of the librarians (Amanda Thomas) to the superb technology assistance (Ravi Shivana and Patrick Goebel) to the graciousness of every staff member, the Center supported the work of the Fellows so that we could accomplish seemingly unattainable goals in a relatively brief period of time. The Fellows themselves provided daily, often inspiring input and feedback to each other. I am especially grateful for discussions in the area of technological innovation with Fox Harrell and Katherine Isbister, and in the area of philosophy and literature with Jenann Ismael and Anne Coiro. Simply put, I could not have finished this book without the entire staff of the Center, the atmosphere and support they provided, and the rare fellowship of all the Fellows of the 2014-2015 year.
I now wish to turn to my second goal: my second book: Letters to the Good Reader: The Contemplative Dimension in the Deep Reading Brain ( to be published by HarperCollins in 2016). In this book my goal is to distill the most critical insights derived from the research of the last year about the reading brain, in order to write an epistolary book about the changes all of us are undergoing as readers in a digital age. It is a book of insights, not unlike what Marilynne Robinson’s gentle curate, Reverend Ames, tried to do for others in Gilead, her wonderful novel about this simple town.
I do not know how much I will complete, certainly not the entirety of the book. What I do know is that the experience at CASBS gave me the inestimably essential foundation for working on it. In reality, I will leave with half of it written, and a third more of it outlined. I can ask no more than this. But I will also leave with the beauty of memory: what it felt like to think long, hard thoughts about the important issues in our scholarship and our own personal contributions to the application of this knowledge in the world about us. I will leave for Boston in a few days with this knowledge that will carry me through all the days of teaching responsibilities and academic duties that all too often impede our writing. The memory of what CASBS gave me this year—from its special form of habitation, to the kindness of those who work within it, to its daily intellectual succor —- will propel me to finish this second book.
“At the end of all our exploring, we will come to the place where we began, and know it for the first time.” T.S. Eliot. I am most grateful to CASBS for helping me to return to my roots as a scholar.
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