It is easy to daydream during class. Especially when (mandatory) reading includes literature from or about a far away place. It is hard to imagine anything outside of those classroom walls during a long lecture.

However, one organization is trying to change this common student perspective. Words without Borders translates, publishes and promotes contemporary international literature. Susan Harris, the editorial director of Words without Borders, presented at the Skutt Student Center March 26 about the organization’s mission to connect international writers to the general public, to students and educators and to print and other media and to serve as a primary online location for a global literary conversation. Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Dr. Nina Ha, said Harris focused upon the necessity of giving people, especially Americans, access to writings by and about people from most countries all over the world.

“One step in gaining knowledge about others is through reading works by and about people students may not know, this type of exposure is important to the Creighton Mission of advocating for social justice and learning to be a global citizen,” Ha said. “Reading works that provide different points of view can assist our students to better relate to others who do not share similar experiences yet can still respect that other person’s way of life.”

Susan Harris is also the co-editor, with Ilya Kaminsky, of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. She is the former director and editor in chief of Northwestern University Press, where she founded the Hydra imprint of literature in translation.

In her presentation, Harris focused upon the necessity of giving people access to writings by and about people from most countries all over the world. She stressed that it was important to find material that had not yet been published in order to promote writings and art by up and coming writers and artists whose works have not yet been circulated.

Ha helped organize this event with the World Literature Program committee. She said the members of this committee hoped that students would be exposed to the goals that Harris addressed in her presentation. Harris wanted people to not only read the information available to them online, but to also become involved and active members of this global community. The World Literature Program wants to introduce students to works by  writers and authors who are still alive so that they can truly connect their experiences of reading a work with the actual creator of that material.

“I do hope that students can appreciate the importance to taking a class like World Literature that tries to convey the importance of learning beyond the classroom and understanding the connections between the works of literature they have read in class with the experiences that they have gained in their own lives,” Ha said.

“Students need to know what is going on outside the classroom space and challenge themselves to educate themselves about the world in which they live because the lives of people living outside their borders affect their own lives in as much as students at Creighton or in the U.S.,” Ha said.

Ha said one of the goals of the World Literature Program is to introduce new types of material to its students.  Thus, exposing students to short stories and poetry that are within this Anthology was vital to students’ learning about people from other cultures and nations all over the globe.  University College freshman Jeremy Jordan said all students should learn more about the world around them and Words Without Borders is an organization making that possible.

“There are good reasons that people are aware of the work Words Without Borders does because part of the issues that result in war and conflict stem from a lack of historical and cultural understanding,” Jordan said. “We need to be more aware of different cultures in order to understand people and prevent co