Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Syllabus | Spring 2022

Jump to: Full Schedule

Course Logistics

REQUIRED TEXTS:

  • Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).
  • W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Note: This book is in the public domain and can be accessed through Project Gutenberg here. 
  • Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage International, 1980).
  • Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006).
  • David Levering Lewis, ed., The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (New York: Penguin, 1994).
  • Alain Locke, ed., Survey Graphic; Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro (Baltimore: Black Classic Books, 1980).
  • Jean Toomer, Cane (New York: Liveright, 2011). Note: Cane is in the public domain and can be accessed through Project Gutenberg here. 

The following book includes required readings for some days and recommended readings for others. You may purchase it at the bookstore or access it for free as an e-book via the library website:

  • Davíd Carrasco, The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) [E-book].

Additional readings are available on e-reserves and through online galleries, accessible via links embedded in the syllabus below. You will need your Reed username and password to access these texts. Please bring a copy of the day’s reading assignment to class each day. The library has on reserve a limited number of each required text.

CONFERENCE ASSIGNMENTS
Humanities 110 is a yearlong course, and students are expected to remain in the same conference throughout the year. In cases of absolutely unresolvable schedule conflicts, students may petition for a change of conference time. Petitions (in the form of an email) should be addressed to the course Chair, Paul Hovda, including an explanation of the conflict and why it cannot be resolved. Students granted a change of conference time will be assigned to new sections based on available slots and the student’s schedule; requests to move into a particular conference generally cannot be honored. 

PAPERS AND OTHER ASSIGNMENTS

Three course-wide papers will be assigned in the spring semester, due at the times designated on the syllabus. Individual conference leaders may assign additional writing. If the due date for an assignment conflicts with a religious holiday or obligation that you wish to observe, please consult with your conference leader. Over the course of the semester, students are also required to submit at least three conference discussion questions, in writing, to their conference leader. Due dates for these questions are determined by individual conference leaders.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATIONS
If you have a documented disability requiring accommodations, please contact Disability Support Services. Notifications of accommodations on exams, papers, other writing assignments, or conferences should be directed to your conference leader. Notifications of accommodations regarding lectures can be directed to the chair of the course, Paul Hovda. You are advised to consult with your conference leader about how your accommodations might apply to specific assignments or circumstances in this course. 

RESOURCES FOR SUPPORT
Your conference leader is your first line of support for any questions you have about the course. Please also be sure to explore the Hum 110 website for additional information. The Introduction and Resources entries on the lecture schedule provides brief introductions to upcoming readings and suggestions for how to approach them. The Writing in Hum 110 page provides tips on the writing process. 

The Writing Center is a particularly valuable resource for Hum 110 students working on papers. You can get help with all stages of the writing process from peer tutors at the Writing Center. In Fall 2020, the Writing Center will be virtual, and offer drop-in help online from 7:00-10:00p.m. Pacific time; you can find links to the Writing Center session posted on the Drop-in Tutoring Schedule website. Extra tutoring help will be available in the weeks leading up to paper due dates.

For additional information about support resources available to you on the Reed campus, please see Student Life’s Key Support Resources for Students.

If you have questions that aren’t answered here, please consult your conference leader or email Hum110@reed.edu.

Schedule

Week 1

Palimpsest of Past and Present: Tenochtitlan/Mexico City

Mon 24 Jan

Assignment
Lecture: "WHERE DIVINITY COMES INTO BEING: TEOTIHUACAN AND MESOAMERICA"
Tom Landvatter

Wed 26 Jan

Assignment
Lecture: "WE WALKED A LONG TIME TO GET HERE; WE HAVE BEEN HERE FOREVER"
Nathalia King

Fri 28 Jan

Assignment
Lecture: “REPRESENTING MEXICA IMPERIALISM IN A PLACE AND TIME OF SPANISH IMPERIALISM: THE CODEX MENDOZA”
David Garrett

Week 2

Mon 31 Jan

Assignment
Lecture: “MAPPING THE COSMOS AT THE TEMPLO MAYOR”
Margot Minardi

Wed 2 Feb

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • “Beginning of the Songs,” “A Song of Green Places, an Otomi Song, a Plain One,” and “Another to the Same Tone, a Plain One,” in Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs, trans. John Bierhorst (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985), 134-139. 
  • Aquiauhtzin of Ayapanco, “Warrior Women of Chalco,” Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World, (Norman: University of Nebraska Press), 255-282.
  • Recommended: Carrasco, “Wordplay, Philosophy, Sculpture,” The Aztecs, chapter 6. (E-book)
Lecture: "FLOWER: SONG"
Laura Leibman

 

Fri 4 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: "From Invasion to Colonialism"
David Garrett

Week 3

Mon 7 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: "LIENZO DE TLAXACALA"
CARMEN RIPOLLÉS (PSU)

Wed 9 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: "THE 'SPIRITUAL CONQUEST' OF MEXICO? QUESTIONS AND COMPLICATIONS"
Elizabeth Drumm

Fri 11 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: "SOR JUANA’S “FIRST DREAM” AND BAROQUE POETICS"
Ariadna García-Bryce

Sat 12 Feb

FIFTH PAPER DUE

Due Saturday, February 12, at 5:00 PM to your conference leader.

View Paper Topics

Week 4

Mon 14 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: “SEX & PASSION IN THE POETRY OF SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ”
Laura Leibman

Wed 16 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: “RACECRAFT & CASTA PAINTINGS”
Laura Leibman

Fri 18 Feb

Assignment
Note: the lecturer advises that you begin watching the lecture before beginning the reading for today.
  • Introduction and resources
  • Selections from The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002).
    • José Maria Morelos, “Sentiments of the Nation” (1813), 189-191.
    • Agustín de Iturbide, “Plan of Iguala” (1821), 192-195.
    • Editors of El Tiempo, “A Conservative Profession of Faith” (1846), 220-225.
    • Mariano Otero, “Considerations Relating to the Political and Social Situation of the Mexican Republic in the Year 1847” (1847), 226-238.   
  • Gallery: Diego Rivera National Palace mural (c. 1929-1935)
Lecture: “TURNING POINTS: MEXICO IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY”
Margot Minardi

Week 5

Mon 21 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: "MODERNITY AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION"
David Garrett

Tue 22 Feb

Optional lecture sponsored by the departments of history, humanities, and Spanish, and the Office for Institutional Diversity

Oaxaca Resurgent: Indigeneity, Development, and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Mexico
Alan Shane Dillingham, citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Albright College.

5:00 PM, Vollum lecture hall

Wed 23 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: “MEXICAN MURALISM, 1920-1940”
William Diebold

Fri 25 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: "LOS OLVIDADOS: SPACE, VIOLENCE, DREAM"
Marat Grinberg

Week 6

Mon 28 Feb

Assignment
Lecture: “GENDER AND GENRE, MODERNISM AND MEXICANIDAD: FRIDA KAHLO AND MARÍA IZQUIERDO”
Gail Sherman

Wed 2 Mar

Assignment
Lecture: “REPRESENTATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS”
JAN MIESZKOWSKI

Fri 4 Mar

Assignment
Lecture: “THE INCONVENIENCE OF REVOLUTION: ZAPATISMO, CYNICISM, DIGNITY AND MEMORY”
Christian Kroll

Week 7

Aesthetics and Politics: Harlem

Mon 7 Mar

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, in Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900, 2nd ed., ed. Jacqueline Jones Royster (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016), 46-68.
  • Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Exposition Address,” in Up from Slavery (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 141-151.
  • Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, chapter 3.
Lecture: "STRANGE FRUIT"
Pancho Savery

Wed 9 Mar

Assignment
Lecture: “W.E.B. DUBOIS'S "DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS" AS THEORY AND FORM: “WHAT I HAVE BRIEFLY SKETCHED IN LARGE OUTLINE, LET ME TELL AGAIN IN MANY WAYS””
Nathalia King

Fri 11 Mar

Assignment
Lecture: "WHO, HOW, AND WHY NOT?: QUESTIONING AFRICAN AMERICAN SPIRITUALS"
Mark Burford

Sat 12 Mar

Sixth Paper Due

Due Saturday, March 12, at 5:00 PM to your conference leader.

View Paper Topics

Week 8

Mon 14 Mar

Assignment
  • Charles W. Chesnutt, The Wife of His Youth, The wife of His Youth, and other Stories of the Color Line, pp. 1-24, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899. PDF version.
  • Du Bois’ “The Talented Tenth” essay (Appendix II from the Oxford World Classics edition of The Souls of Black Folk.)
Lecture: "Fictions of Uplift: Education and the Color Line"
Sarah Wagner-McCoy

Wed 16 Mar

Assignment
Lecture: "MOVING THE COLOR LINE: JACOB LAWRENCE'S "MIGRATION SERIES"
Nathalia King

Fri 18 Mar

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • James Weldon Johnson, “The Making of Harlem,” in Survey Graphic, 635-639.
  • Saidiya Hartman, “A Note on Method,” “Mistah Beauty: the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Woman, Select Scenes from a Film Never Cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 1920s,” “Revolution in a Minor Key,” “Wayward: A Short Entry on the Possible,” and “The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner,” in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: Norton, 2019),  xiii-xvi, 192-202, 216-256.
Lecture: “HARLEM, NEW YORK: CITY WITHIN A CITY”
Margot Minardi

Sat 19 Mar

Spring Break

March 19 – March 27

Week 9

Mon 28 Mar

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • W.E.B. Du Bois, “Credo” and “Souls of White Folk,” in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, (New York, Schocken Books, 1969), vii-viii, 3-4, 29-52.
  • W.E.B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. Lewis, 3-5.
  • W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, chapter 13
Lecture: "WHITE SUPREMACY, BLACK DEMOCRACY: W.E.B. DU BOIS AND THE NAACP"
Paddy Riley

Wed 30 Mar

Assignment
Lecture: "THE WORLD IN HARLEM, HARLEM IN THE WORLD"
RADHIKA NATARAJAN

Fri 1 Apr

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • Survey Graphic
    • Cover;
    • Table of contents and "The Gist of It" (p. 627);
    • Locke, "Harlem" pp. 629-30;
    • Locke, "Enter the New Negro pp. 631-34;
    • Reiss, "Harlem Types" pp. 651-54
    • Locke, "The Art of the Ancestors" p. 673.
  • In The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. Lewis: Du Bois, "Criteria of Negro Art" pp. 100-105. 
Lecture: "ALAIN LOCKE, HARLEM, RENAISSANCE"
Paul Hovda

Week 10

Mon 4 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "Women and the Stake of Sex in Jean Toomer's Cane"
Jin Chang

Wed 6 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "FORMAL INNOVATION AND TRAGIC BEAUTY IN JEAN TOOMER'S CANE"
Dustin Simpson

Fri 8 Apr

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • In The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. Lewis: 
    • Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” 91–95.
    • George S. Schuyler, “The Negro-Art Hokum,” 96–99. 
    • Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel," 244.
    • Claude McKay, "If We Must Die," 290 "The White House," 291 "The Harlem Dancer," 296.
    • Helene Johnson, "My Race," "A Southern Road," "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem," "Poem," 276-278.
    • Gwendolyn Bennet, "Hatred," 223.
    • James Weldon Johnson, "The Creation," 286-288.
    • Sterling Brown,"Odyssey of Big Boy," 229-231
    • Langston Hughes, poems, 257-267
Lecture: "Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance"
Dustin Simpson

Week 11

Mon 11 Apr

Assignment
  • Conference leader's choice.
Lecture: No lecture

Wed 13 Apr

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1-115 (chapters 1-12). 
  • Zora Neale Hurston, “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” in I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, ed. Alice Walker (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1979), 169-173.
Lecture: "Hungry Listening"
Elizabeth Drumm

Fri 15 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "FROM MULES TO MEN, ANIMALS IN THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD”
Kritish Rajbhandari

Sat 16 Apr

Seventh Paper Due

Due Saturday, April 16, at 5:00 PM to your conference leader.

View Paper Topics

Week 12

Mon 18 Apr

Assignment
  • Introduction and resources
  • In The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. Lewis:
    • Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues" and "Jazzonia" (pp. 260-261)
    • Langston Hughes, "The Blues I'm Playing" (pp. 619-627)
  • Listening guide
  • Listening assignment. All recordings, in order, can be found here. 
    • W.C. Handy, “St. Louis Blues”
    • Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, “St. Louis Blues”
    • Ida Cox, “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues”
    • Ida Cox, “Graveyard Dream Blues”
    • Ma Rainey, “Runaway Blues”
    • Blind Willie Johnson, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”
    • Blind Willie Johnson, Willie B. Richardson, “The Soul of a Man”
    • Skip James, “Devil Got My Woman”
    • Count Basie, “Boogie Woogie Blues”
    • Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Strange Things Happening Every Day”
    • Chuck Berry, “Roll Over Beethoven"
    • Duke Ellington, "Happy Go Lucky Local" 
Lecture: "The Many-Sided Blues"
Paul Hovda

Wed 20 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "IS YOU GOT THE DOG?"
Pancho Savery

Fri 22 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "Invisible Man: An Apprenticeship in Identity."
Jin Chang

Week 13

Mon 25 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "Boomerangs of History: Dispossession, Hibernation and Communism (a conversation)"
Kritish Rajbhandari and Christian Kroll

Wed 27 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: No lecture

Fri 29 Apr

Assignment
Lecture: "BEHOLD THE INVISIBLE"
Pancho Savery

Week 15

Wed 11 May

Final Exam

Wednesday, May 11, 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Exam Instructions
Exam Website