08/26/2025
Water is essential to life on earth, and “Water” will be the theme of SUNY Cortland’s interdisciplinary series of lectures, discussions, film screenings and art exhibitions during the 2025-26 academic year.
SUNY Cortland’s Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee (CICC), in partnership with the Student Government Association (SGA), is encouraging the campus community to explore the possibilities of how this elemental force impacts our lives.
“Water speaks to both the physical and the metaphorical: watershed moments, floods of emotion and staying afloat in turbulent times,” said Benjamin Wilson, associate professor and chair of the Economics Department.
Wilson, a research scholar for the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, discussed the annual series on behalf of the CICC, an all-campus committee of faculty and staff.
Since 2012-13, the CICC has developed the series around a single theme that changes from year to year. Events are free and open to the public. The theme follows last year’s focus on “Air,” a similar life-or-death topic that inspired strong participation among faculty, staff and students, akin to the “Food” theme from the year before that.
“This year’s programming invites our campus and broader community to explore the environmental, social and cultural dimensions of this vital element,” Wilson said.
He hopes campus community members from many different disciplines will begin early planning talks or other programs that they might contribute to engage the campus community in a dialogue around the essential forces that shape our world.
“From scholarly and practitioner presentations to book clubs and student-led initiatives, we will dive into the many meanings of water — its essential role in sustaining life, its symbolic power in language and culture and its connection to critical global challenges,” he said.
“As a universal and tangible element, water offers a shared language through which students, faculty, staff and community members can engage in meaningful, pluralistic conversations about the pressing environmental and social issues of our era,” Wilson said.
To help everyone think through some of these topics and generate conversations in classrooms and common spaces, the committee will expand the common read, the book chosen for participants to read in tandem with the series, to three books, Wilson said.
This follows last year’s successful two-book selection. This year, the CICC partnered once again with SGA in choosing three common read books advancing the “Water” theme. In addition to both a fiction and nonfiction book for common read programming, a children’s book has been added to this year’s conversations.
The three books are:
- The Water Dancer, a 2020 novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates. A New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club pick, this work of fiction is by the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me has been described as a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss and an underground war for freedom.
- The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World is a 2017 work of nonfiction by Jeff Goodell. The book gives an account of the coming water, why and how this will happen and what it will all mean.
- We Are Water Protectors, the 2020 Caldecott Medal award-winning children’s book, is by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade.
The CICC encourages faculty to consider including these common read texts — or excerpts from them — in their Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 classes.
To participate as a faculty or staff member in the CICC committee, submit an event, volunteer to support this year’s activities and programming, or for more information, visit the CICC website for details or contact Wilson.
Select an image below to begin a slide show
The nonfiction common read by Jeff Goodell
The adult fiction common read by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The children's book common read by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade