Dear First-year Student:
On behalf of the Department of Literature and the College Writing Program, we welcome you to
American University. To set the stage for your first year here at AU, we have chosen a book that
we call our "community text" for you to read before you arrive in August. You and your
classmates will discuss the book and write about it in your College Writing class. The College
Writing Program and the Campus Store will also sponsor an essay contest to honor the best
writing inspired by the community text.
We're delighted to announce this year's choice: Jessica Alexander’s Chasing Chaos: A Decade in
and Out of Humanitarian Aid. We will bring Alexander to campus this fall for the eighteenth
annual Writer as Witness Colloquium on Wednesday, September 9, at 8:30 p.m. in Bender
Arena. She will address the American University community and meet with students and faculty
to discuss the book.
In clear, engaging prose, Alexander reflects on her experiences from over a decade of
international humanitarian aid work. Author Jonathan M. Katz notes: “In Chasing Chaos,
Alexander takes us to a place where few outsiders can go, cracking open the rarefied world of
humanitarianism to bare its contradictions – and her own – with boldness and humor.”
Alexander has over 12 years of experience working with various NGO’s and UN operations.
She received a Fulbright scholarship to research child soldiers in Sierra Leone in 2006; her
research there was presented as expert evidence in the human rights case brought against former
Liberian President Charles Taylor by the UN-backed Special Court. Alexander has also
conducted research in places as fraught and far afield as Rwanda, Darfur, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,
Myanmar, South Sudan, Pakistan, Haiti and the Horn of Africa. Her candid – often irreverent –
chronicle of aid work around the world provides a window into what happens after we see a
crisis from afar, write a check or box up household goods, and hope that we have done good.
Jessica Alexander is an adjunct professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, New
York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, and the Institute of International
Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University. She received a Masters of Public Health and
Master of International Affairs from Columbia University in 2005. She is pursuing her Ph.D. at
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, focusing her research on accountability in
humanitarian action.
The American University Campus Store is offering Chasing Chaos at a discounted rate. You
may order the book directly through the Campus Store website: www.shopamericanu.com.
Copies will also be available for purchase at the Campus Store during all of the New Student
Orientations, when you’ll have your first opportunity to talk with classmates about Chasing
Chaos. You will find additional resources on this website prepared by our colleagues in AU’s
Bender Library: http://subjectguides.library.american.edu/collegewriting.
As you read this summer, think about possible questions for the author to address during the
September Colloquium. You may email questions or comments to: cwp@american.edu. You
also will have the chance to ask your questions directly at the Writer as Witness Colloquium on
September 9. We look forward to meeting you there to hear your responses to the provocative
questions raised by Jessica Alexander’s work. Enjoy the rest of your summer. And welcome to
AU!