Deep Read
The Deep Read is a program by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz that invites curious minds to think deeply about literature, art, and the most pressing issues of our day. We read books from a wide range of genres, exploring their implications on our politics, inner lives, and communities.
Learn about the Deep Read here
James, by Percival Everett
In 2025, we will read James by Percival Everett. Currently on the shortlist for both the 2024 Booker Prize and the 2024 National Book Award, James is an adaptation of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Everett’s novel is a fugitive slave narrative told from the perspective of Twain’s enslaved character as he fights for freedom and dignity in an undignified world. We’ll consider how Everett depicts the possibility of humanity in his novel about the brutality of slavery, the performance of race, and the value of language and literacy.
Trust, by Hernan Diaz
In 2024 we read Trust by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Diaz. Together, we considered how the technologies of finance and fiction overlap in this novel about capitalism and its social, cultural, and political power in the U.S. Over 10,000 Deep Read subscribers were given the opportunity to read together, share their insights, attend presentations from UCSC faculty on the book, and see Diaz in conversation with Associate Professor of Literature, Zac Zimmer.
Under a White Sky, by Elizabeth Kolbert
During the Spring of 2023, The Humanities Institute produced our fourth and largest annual Deep Read program focused on Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Under a White Sky. Over 8,500 students, alumni, faculty, staff, and readers around the world considered her perspective on the stark changes taking place in our world and explored the efforts we are making to adapt and survive in the era of climate change.
Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi
The 2022 Deep Read program focused on Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom and explored the conditions of cultural assimilation for immigrants to the United States, religious faith vs. scientific inquiry, and the experience of first-generation students in higher education.
There There, by Tommy Orange
The Humanities Institute’s 2021 Deep Read Program explored Tommy Orange’s novel There There. Centering on an urban Native American experience in Oakland, CA, the novel was hailed by last year’s Deep Read author, Margaret Atwood, as “an astonishing literary debut.”
The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood
The Deep Read book for 2020 was Margaret Atwood’s latest Booker Prize-winning novel, The Testaments, a sequel to her 1985 classic The Handmaid’s Tale. The program, which ran parallel with a class and events on campus, shared insights from Literature, Feminist Studies, Engineering and Anthropology. Margaret Atwood joined the UC Santa Cruz community for a live, virtual event on Tuesday September 22, 2020.