Campus Read Essay Contest Winner

The Campus Read Committee is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Essay Contest -- DeeAnna Ziegler. Her essay, “An Uncovered Classic,” was judged the best of all the entries this year.

In honor of her achievement, Ms. Ziegler is the recipient of a $500 scholarship from the BSC Foundation and her winning essay will be published in an upcoming issue of The Mystician

November 3 - Mark Your Calendar!

Not Schoolbook History:

Two Hunters, Hammett, and a Falcon

Presented by Julie Rivett, granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, and

Richard Layman, Hammett scholar and biographer

Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 7 p.m.

Sidney J. Lee Auditorium

Schafer Hall

Bismarck State College


Sponsored by BSC Campus Read Committee

Persepolis in the News

The 2009 Campus Read selection was a graphic novel, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a memoir of a girl growing up in revolutionary Iran. The book was also made into a film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Today's Bismarck Tribune (October 10, 2011) includes a story about what happened after a Tunisian television station showed the film, Persepolis. Tunisian police arrested dozens of Islamist demonstrators set on attacking the offices of the TV station. The article said,"The assault is the latest in a rise in attacks against perceived symbols of secularism by hardcore Muslims in Tunisia ahead of this month's election. Once suppressed by the former regime, conservative Muslims are increasingly making themselves heard in the country's politics."

For the complete story, go to: Tunisian Police Stop Hard Line Attack on TV Station.

What Is a Book Worth?

What's a copy of The Maltese Falcon (or any other old book you might run across) worth? Check out this posting from the BookTryst blog before you toss something into the trash!

Essay Contest & Scholarship Opportunity

Campus Read Essay Contest

Scholarship Opportunity

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

You're already reading, discussing, and writing about The Maltese Falcon, this year's Campus Read selection. Shape up those ideas and submit an essay to the Campus Read Essay contest.

Full-time students with the winning essay will be awarded a $500 scholarship from the BSC Foundation for the Spring 2012 semester. Part-time or dual credit students will be awarded up to three credits of scholarship funds.

Essay Guidelines

• Submit your best work of 600 words or more.
• The topic for your essay may be anything related to your consideration of the selection.
• The essay may be a critical response to the book or a narrative essay relating your own experiences that relate to the theme of the book.
• Don't be afraid to be creative with other ideas.
• Quoted, paraphrased, or summarized material must be correctly cited (any recognized format accepted).
• The essay must be typed.
• Include a cover page with your name, address, phone number, and email address.
• Essays that do not follow the guidelines will not be considered.

Essays will be judged anonymously by Bismarck State College staff, faculty, and administration.

The deadline to submit an essay is Tuesday, November 22, 2011. Essays may be submitted electronically as an attachment and emailed to Kitty Netzer or hand-delivered to the BSC Library front desk.

The winning essay will be published in the Mystician.

BSC Campus Read Email Address

Guess what! We now have an email address for the BSC Campus Read: BSC.CampusRead@BismarckState.edu

We look forward to hearing from you!

Campus Read 2011

Need a copy of The Maltese Falcon? The BSC Bookstore has them for sale.

Alternatively, you can borrow a copy from the BSC Library. If you search the ODIN catalog, you will find that it is available as a stand-alone book, as an online book, as an audiobook, and as part of the collected novels of Dashiell Hammett. We also have the film version starring Humphrey Bogart.

Good reading!

Do You Know What It Takes to Be a Fugee?

Help build the first and only school for refugees in the United States! Find out more about the Fugees and how you can help at Fugees Family

Warren St. John Visiting Campus on April 19

Mark your calendar!

Warren St. John, author of this year's Campus Read selection, Outcasts United: an American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference, will be be presenting on campus on Tuesday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Sidney J. Lee Auditorium.

About the Author

Warren St. John has written for the New York Observer, The New Yorker, Wired, and Slate, in addition to his work as a reporter for The New York Times. His first book, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: a Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania (2004), was named one of Sports Illustrated’s best books of the year, and ranked number one on The Chronicle of Higher Education's list of the best books ever written about collegiate athletics. His second book, Outcasts United: an American Town, A Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference, was published in the U.S. in April 2009, and subsequently in the U.K., The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Japan and China.

St. John was born in Birmingham, Alabama, where he attended The Altamont School. He studied English literature at Columbia College in New York City, where he now lives with his wife and daughter.

Announcing the Campus Read for 2011-12

The 2011-2012 Campus Read selection is:

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

About the BSC Campus Read

In the fall of 2004, BSC established its first Campus Read, a project in which all faculty, staff, and students read and discuss the same book. We believe that the Campus Read builds community, gives everyone a common talking point, demonstrates the power and importance of reading, builds a culture of reading at BSC, promotes lifelong learning, and supports BSC’s philosophy of putting learning first.

We've had quite a history of good reading at BSC:

• 2004-05 - Montana 1948 by BSC alum Larry Watson. This novel deals with family relationships, racism, coming of age, crime, punishment, and justice.


• 2005-06 - Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, a book that explores age, aging, death, dying and one man's struggle with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).


• 2006-07 - Nickel and Dimed : On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The author of this book goes undercover to explore if it is possible to survive in America on minimum wage.


• 2007-08 - Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, a compelling non-fiction account of a young man who renounces wealth to match wits with the Alaskan bush.


• 2008-09 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie, which won the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature. In the voice of a 14-year-old boy living on the Rez, the author shares a semi-autobiographical look at life caught between the Indian and white worlds.


• 2009-10 - The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a memoir of a girl growing up in revolutionary Iran. This graphic novel was made into a 2007 film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.


• 2010-11 - Outcasts United: an American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John. Outcasts United is the story of a group of teenage refugees from war-torn countries who have been relocated to Clarkston, Georgia, and are involved with a soccer team under the direction of Luma Mufleh.

What Should We Read Next?

The Campus Read Committee has narrowed the 2011 Campus Read selections down to two:

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 "hard-boiled" detective novel featuring Sam Spade, a private eye in San Francisco. Spade and his partner have been hired by "Miss Wonderly" to follow a man who allegedly ran off with her sister. From there, the plot thickens and it's a game of intrigue and lies and money and trying to figure out who is really telling the truth. The story has been adapted for the cinema several times, but chances are you're most familiar with the film starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo.


Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Mudbound is Hillary Jordan's debut novel. Set on a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in the late 1940s, it depicts a world of racism, prejudice, poverty, and hardship through the eyes of six characters, who take turns narrating the story. It won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction in 2006. Barbara Kingsolver, the founder of the prize, said this of Hillary Jordan's book, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."

What should we read next? We welcome your comments!

No One Knows about Persian Cats - Film Coming to Bismarck!

The 2009-10 Campus Read was Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

In April 2010, the Campus Read Committee invited Roxana Saberi to our campus. Saberi grew up in Fargo, is an Iranian-American journalist and former Miss North Dakota, and was held as a political prisoner in Tehran, Iran, for several months. She is also the author of a memoir, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Capitivity in Iran, and co-wrote the screenplay for an award-winning Iranian film, No One Knows about Persian Cats.

You have a chance to see this film! The Cinema 100 Film Society will be showing it at the Grand Theatres on Thursday, February 10, at 3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Check out the trailer on Cinema 100's Facebook page.

Luma Mufleh at BSC

Here are some photos from Luma Mufleh's visit to the BSC Campus in November.

Photo 1: Dinner with Campus Read Committee members and guests
Photo 2: Students guests with Luma at dinner
Photo 3: Left to right: Shaylee Meyer, Ree Mertz, Lacey Brilz, Coach Luma, Caity Davies