Literature Humanities

HUMA CC1001  and HUMA CC1002 “Literature Humanities’’ or “Lit Hum,” as it is popularly known, is a year-long course that offers Columbia College students the opportunity to engage in intensive study and discussion of significant works. A part of the Core Curriculum since 1937, Literature Humanities is not a survey with a fixed syllabus, but an ever-evolving series of careful selected readings that reward both first encounters and long study. Whether classwork focuses attention on the formal elements of the text, its importance to literary history, or on its significance to contemporary culture and issues, the goal is to consider a range of perspectives across time and cultures that can enhance our understanding of the world and foster a deeper sense of empathy, while also developing crucial skills in close reading, critical thinking, writing, and academic discussion through the analysis of literary works.

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, Suzan-Lori Parks, Plato, Vergil, Apuleius, Augustine, Ibn ‘Arabi, Marie de France, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Austen, Machado de Assis, Dostoevsky, Woolf, Morrison, and Rankine, as well as Hebrew Scriptures, Gospels, the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, and the anonymous Life of Aesop. 

Registration Procedure

All information concerning registration in HUMA CC1001-HUMA CC1002 is included in the registration materials sent to students. All first-year students are preregistered in Literature Humanities. Students can change their section during their registration period prior to the start of the semester and the change of program period during the first two weeks of the semester.

All Core Curriculum courses, including Literature Humanities, must be taken for a letter grade. Students may not drop or withdraw from Literature Humanities after the Core drop deadline, which is also the end of the Change-of-Program period. For more information, see Registration—Dropping Core Courses.

Courses of Instruction