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Hum 110 Book Club Syllabus

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Each unit is expected to take approximately one month for each book club to cover. Individual schedules may vary by group.

Year 1

Books needed:

  • Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1977. 
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh the Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. Trans. Andrew George. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
  • Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubrey de Selincourt. London: Penguin, 2003. 
  • Hesiod. Works and Days and Theogony. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993.
  • Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 
  • Parkinson, R. B., ed. and trans. The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems,
    1940-1640 B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Plato. The Trial and Death of Socrates. Trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. John Cooper. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000.
  • Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Trans. Rex Warner. New York: Penguin, 1954.   

These specific editions are suggested, but not required, for alumni participants. Books may be purchased through the Reed Bookstore. Additional assigned texts are available on e-reserves accessible to participating alumni via links embedded in the syllabus below.

Unit I: Gilgamesh / The Limits of Civilization: Walls and Other Boundaries

This one-week unit focuses on a single text, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is concerned with exploring distinctions and boundaries: between self and other, sleep and death, human, heroic, and divine powers; between the walled city and the “ends of the earth”; and between the individual and the community. What is at stake in these distinctions is the very question of what it means to be human…

Assignment

  • Gilgamesh, Tablets 1-11, pp. 1-100

Lectures

  1. Primary: Christian Kroll (Span), “Epic Caring of Gilgamesh (and Others)”
  2. Secondary: Naomi Caffee (Russian), “Forest and Flood”

Unit II: Sinuhe & Eloquent Peasant / Hierarchies and Boundary Crossing

This Egyptian unit continues the opening theme of boundaries by exploring how social, political and cultural identities are affirmed, negotiated, and challenged in some key texts of ancient Egypt.

Assignments

  • “The Tale of Sinuhe,” in The Tale of Sinuhe, Parkinson, pp. 21-53
  • “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” in The Tale of Sinuhe, Parkinson, pp. 54-88
  • Charles Freeman, “Egypt, the Gift of the Nile, 3200-1500 BC,” in Egypt, Greece and Rome, (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 40-62

Lectures

  1. Primary: Kritish Rajbhandari (Eng), “Egypt and its Others: Death as Return in Sinuhe”
  2. Secondary: Nathalia King (Eng), “Speaking Ma’at, Doing Ma’at, Making Ma’at”

Unit III: Genesis / Making Order

In telling of the formation of the earth, of human communities and their relationship to the divine, cosmogonies like Genesis and the Theogony (or Gilgamesh) offer a vision of order, a template for a person’s relationships to the natural world and to other people, while also raising questions about that vision.

Assignments

  • Genesis, plus introduction to Genesis from The Jewish Study Bible
  • Martin Jaffee, Early Judaism (University of Maryland, 2006), pp. 1-28, 50-67, 86-87.

Lectures

  1. Primary: Michael Faletra (Eng), “The Geneses of Genesis”
  2. Secondary: Jan Mieszkowski (German), “Another Abraham”

Unit IV: Exodus and Theogony / Making Order II

Assignments

  • Hesiod, Theogony
  • Exodus, plus introduction to Exodus from The Jewish Study Bible

Lectures

  1. Primary: Laura Leibman (Eng), “Migration legends”
  2. Secondary: Nathalia King (Eng), “Making Gender” 

Unit V: The Iliad / Heroic Values

This unit explores the epic vision of the Iliad, and some opposed visions.

Assignments

  • Iliad
  • Hesiod, Works and Days

Lectures

  1. Primary: Ann Delehanty (French), “Brooding Whiner or Skeptical Sage”
  2. Secondary: Nigel Nicholson (GLAM), “Great Books”

Unit VI: Herodotus / Narrating Difference

The central text of this unit is Herodotus’ Histories, and the central theme is how identities are constructed in the context of perceived differences and how those differences are described, constructed and explored. Herodotus’ histories are particularly concerned with the Persian empire in relation to the city state of Athens; the Persian empire was vastly larger in size of territory, population and resources than any empire Athens achieved, and served as both a model and an antitype, both for Greek thinkers and for other groups at or beyond the margins of the Persian empire.

Assignments

  • Herodotus, Histories, epigraph, books I-III, VII-IX; cf. the “Structural Outline,” pp. 607-14
  • Achaemenid era inscriptions, The Persian Empire, I, ed. Amelie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2007), pp. 70-4, 141-158, 492-5, 503-5.

Lectures

  1. Primary: Margot Minardi (Hist), “Same Difference”
  2. Secondary: Meg Scharle (Phil), Coming soon

Unit VII: The Oresteia / Democracy, Citizenship and Exclusion

The texts of this unit explore the operation of democratic politics and ideas of citizenship. The Oresteia trumpets an ideal of impersonal, communal justice as a solution to older forms of revenge and retaliation. Yet even in this trilogy, questions are raised about the fairness of its methods, and the ways that ideas of family, duty and piety are reformulated. The companion materials explore further the experience and representation of one of the groups—the enslaved—in opposition to which Athenian-ness was defined.

Assignments

Lectures

  1. Primary: Jay Dickson (Eng), “The Beginnings of Tragedy”
  2. Secondary: Alice Hu (GLAM) and Margot Minardi (Hist), “Slavery and Social Death”

Unit VIII: Thucydides / Speech in Crisis

This unit explores the role of political speech and persuasion as a means to reach the truth, wield power, and make decisions. Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta suggests that Athens’ defeat has its root in the corruption of speech, while Plato’s Apology traces Socrates’ trial and death to the democratic processes that untether speech from truth and justice.

Assignments

  • Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, ​I-II, III.36-50, III.69-85, V.83-116, VI-VII
  • Plato, “Apology,” “Euthyphro,” and “Crito“(in Trial and Death of Socrates)

Lectures

  1. Primary: Pancho Savery (Eng), “A Kind of Gadfly”
  2. Secondary: Peter Steinberger (Poli Sci), “Thucydidean Thought”

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