- A Seattle chapter group meets in person once a month in their local public library’s conference room to discuss the readings for the month. They all agree to do the readings and watch the lecture at home beforehand.
- A friend group based in New York convenes at a rotating house each month to watch the lecture on the TV, then sit in the living room to host their conference.
Join our new Humanities 110 book club for alumni! Reconnect with the thrill of those first days at Reed College, when you began to discover new worlds and lifelong friends. Enjoy readings selected from the current syllabus, lightly facilitated discussions, and access to recorded Hum 110 lectures.
Reconnect
What if alumni could re-engage with Reed by studying the new Hum 110 syllabus, as current students are doing?
How Does it Work?
You will work your way through the syllabus of readings and lectures in small groups of 7–15, meeting once a month to be led by volunteer conference “leaders.” Reading groups can be based in person or virtually. They can be centered around existing friend groups, affinity groups, chapter regions, or any composition of Reedies! Groups have access to recordings of the same lectures provided to students and may choose to watch them together or on their own (see example formats below). Individuals may also choose to work through the curriculum on their own, without joining a facilitated group. Once a year, faculty from the Hum 110 curriculum will do a synchronous lecture for all alumni participating in the book club.
See how to access the course materials:
Why Humanities 110?
Since 1943, Humanities 110 (Hum 110) has brought all first year students together to explore how people living in diverse historical contexts have engaged in fundamental questions about human existence. This shared learning experience also introduces students to the skills and habits of mind necessary for academic inquiry in their future work at Reed. In its current form, Hum 110 focuses on two broad contexts: the ancient Mediterranean world and North America from the early modern period to the twentieth century.
What Do We Study?
Over the course of three years, book club members will work their way through the current Hum 110 syllabus. The first year is divided into a sequence of units spanning ancient Sumer and Babylon, Pharaonic Egypt, ancient Israel and Yehud, the Persian empire, and the archaic and classical Greek city-states, particularly Athens. The second year examines Mexico, particularly the city of Tenochtitlan/Mexico City from the Spanish invasion to the twentieth century. The third year ventures into the United States, particularly Harlem in the 1920s.
Themes
- The construction and interrogation of boundaries and hierarchies.
- Narratives of creation, whether of the natural world or the social world.
- Heroic values, epic, and responses to them.
- The ways in which difference is constructed, utilized, and reframed.
- The relationship between democracy, citizenship, and exclusion.
- The relationship between truth, speech, and political power.
- Survivals, translations, and resistance in a colonial context, and the ways in which history, place and identity are continually created and re-created.
- The construction and narration of the modern nation state.
- The imposition of hierarchies of class, race and gender, and the ways they are negotiated and resisted.
- Modern literary and artistic forms of the Black diaspora, and the relationship between artistic creation and social and political transformation.
Sample Book Club Formats
In Person
Remote
Hybrid
Solo
Whether you already know exactly how you want to participate or would like a little assistance to figure that out, there’s a spot for you!
Contact us with questions.