Literature Humanities

HUMA CC1001-HUMA CC1002 Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy II , popularly known as “Literature Humanities’’ or “Lit Hum,” is a year-long course that offers Columbia College students the opportunity to engage in intensive study and discussion of some of the most significant texts of Western culture. The course is not a survey, but a series of careful readings of literary works that reward both first encounters and long study. Whether classwork focuses on the importance of the text to literary history or on its significance to our contemporary culture, the goal is to consider particular conceptions of what it means to be human as well as the place of such conceptions in the development of critical thought.

The principal objectives of Literature Humanities are to teach students to analyze literary texts and to construct well-reasoned arguments. An interdepartmental staff of professorial and preceptorial faculty meets with groups of approximately twenty-two students for four hours a week in order to discuss texts by Homer, Enheduanna, Sappho, Aeschylus, Suzan-Lori Parks, Plato, Virgil, Apuleius, Augustine, Ibn ‘Arabi, Marie de France, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Austen, Machado de Assis, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Woolf, Césaire, Morrison, Rankine, and Kim, as well as Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament writings.

Registration Procedure

All information concerning registration in HUMA CC1001-HUMA CC1002 Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy II is included in the registration materials sent to students. All first-year students are preregistered in Literature Humanities.

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