HUMA CC1001 and HUMA CC1002 — Literature Humanities or “Lit Hum,” as it is popularly known, is a year-long course that offers students the opportunity to engage in intensive study and discussion of significant works.
In Literature Humanities, students make sense of literary texts together, on paper and in discussion. We read significant and challenging books that require collective exploration in a seminar setting to be best understood and appreciated, books that enable us to ask questions about literature and how it works, about our place in histories and traditions, about ourselves as beings and members of a society. We read with and against the grain of canon and tradition, and we pursue understanding together, in a shared classroom community, to learn not only how to be better readers and writers but also how to be in intellectual community with one another. Over the course of the semester, students become acquainted with specific works of literature; they become aware of those works’ relations to one another; and they become conversant in the questions those works ask and the questions they make it possible for us to ask.
Instructors from a range of departments and disciplines meet with groups of approximately twenty-two students for four hours a week in order to discuss texts by Enheduanna, Homer, Sappho, Aeschylus, Plato, Vergil, Augustine, Ibn ‘Arabi, Marie de France, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Austen, Woolf, Morrison, and Rankine, as well as Hebrew Scriptures, Gospels, and Gilgamesh.
For information about registering for Literature Humanities, please refer to the College Bulletin, GS Bulletin, or SEAS Bulletin and consult your Advising Dean.
| Paul Brooke Program Chair for Literature Humanities | ||
|---|---|---|
 Associate Professor of Classics 601 Hamilton Hall (212) 854-7856 | ||
The Readings
Fall
Enheduanna, “The Exaltation of Inanna” *
Gilgamesh
Genesis *
Homer, Iliad
Sappho, If Not, Winter
Homer, Odyssey
Aeschylus, Oresteia
Plato, Symposium
Virgil, Aeneid
Luke *
John *
Instructor's Choice
Spring
Rankine, Citizen
Augustine, Confessions
Ibn ‘Arabi, The Translator of Desires
Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France
Dante, Inferno
Montaigne, Essays *
Shakespeare, King Lear
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Selected Works
Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Morrison, Song of Solomon
Instructor's Choice
Text Availability
All readings marked with an asterisk (*) are available to faculty online in the Lit Hum Reader and should be shared with students on CourseWorks. All other readings can be purchased through the Columbia University Bookstore. Digital and print copies of most books can be borrowed from Butler Library.
Students who identify as first-generation, low-income students may use the First-Generation, Low-Income (FLI) Partnership Library. Their website has instructions on how to borrow books from the FLI Library’s collection of digital and print copies and a guide to other low-cost options.
If you are having difficulty obtaining the required texts for any reason, please write to the Center for the Core Curriculum: core-curriculum@columbia.edu.
Literature Humanities Texts, 1937-2025
Those unfamiliar with Columbia’s Core Curriculum often view it as an unchanging roster of readings. In truth, however, the syllabi for each course are routinely reviewed and amended in light of the “insistent problems of the present.” As a result, students in Literature Humanities have cumulatively read at least 152 works of literature and philosophy since the course’s inception in 1937. Click here to view a list of these texts and the years in which they were studied.