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Parents & Family Hum 110 Book Club

Start Your Own Hum 110 Journey

Your student began their academic journey at Reed with Humanities 110. Now you can study the Hum 110 syllabus in our Hum 110 Parent Book Club. Sessions are focused on the texts in the spirit of life-long learning and intellectual engagement.

  • Work your way through the Hum 110 syllabus over the course of three years, studying the readings that shape the experiences of all first-year students.
  • Learn first-hand about the Reed conference method.

Sign Up to Participate

Participants will be able to choose from several recurring meeting times:

  • Second Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Pacific Time
  • Second Wednesdays, 7 p.m. Mountain Time
  • Second Thursdays, 7 p.m. Central Time
  • Third Wednesdays, 7 p.m. Eastern Time
Students in a Reed classroom with laptops at a conference table talk with each other and smile.

What is Hum 110?

Since 1943, Reedies have begun their Reed academic journeys with Humanities 110 (Hum 110), a foundational experience that focuses on how people living in diverse historical contexts have engaged fundamental questions about human existence. In 2018, Hum 110 shifted from focusing solely on Greece and the Ancient Mediterranean to include teachings on the Americas, including a unit on Mexico City and a unit on Harlem.

Reed’s Conference Method

While many colleges offer small classes with personal attention, the Reed conference experience is distinctive, if not unique, among higher education institutions. Here is how Reed faculty members describe the Reed conference:

At Reed we follow an unconventional tack, and we do so self-consciously. To be sure, there are as many kinds of Reed conferences as there are Reed professors. But they all tend to share this belief: that . . . education is most effective when students develop, articulate, criticize, and defend their own arguments. . . . Students—all of whom have a comparatively limited acquaintance with the subject matter—are responsible, through discussion, for formulating and evaluating theories and interpretations. Understood in this way, education at Reed is an eminently practical activity because it gives students systematic and ongoing experience in the actual practice of making and evaluating arguments.

—Peter Steinberger, former dean of the faculty and Robert H. and Blanche Day Ellis Professor of Political Science and Humanities

Hum 110 Parent & Family Book Club Syllabus

These specific editions are suggested, but not required, for participants. Books may be purchased through the Reed Bookstore or elsewhere.

You may join the book club at any point throughout the year.

Audiobook suggestions are offered at the end of this syllabus.

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

This 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
Prompts

What does The Epic of Gilgamesh say about boundaries? What does it say about 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? How does Gilgamesh define being human?

Unit II (April): 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
Prompts

How does The Tale of Sinuhe construct identities? How are social identities formed, negotiated, and challenged? How do political identities intersect social identities? What about cultural identities? How does this reading relate to enduring questions of immigration?

Unit III (May): 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, eds. Berlin and Brettler.
  • Pp 1-28, 50-67, 86-87 from Martin Jaffee. Early Judaism. University of Maryland, 2006.
Prompts

What is the vision of order portrayed by Genesis? What is the template constructed for human relationships with each other and the world around them? Where does that vision of order fall short? 

Unit IV (June): Exodus and Theogony / Making Order II

This unit's reading is a continuation of 'making order' in Unit III. We will explore the same prompts through the lens of Hesiod's Theogeny and Exodus. In telling of the formation of the earth, of human communities and their relationship to the divine, Genesis offers a template for a person’s relationships to the natural world and to other people. The kinds of stories and their visions of order sometimes overlap and sometimes differ from those of Genesis: the Theogony also tells of the creation of an ordered universe from chaos; the early Greek (or “Presocratic”) philosophers also build a vision of what is and what should be; and Exodus likewise tells of the challenges of creating a cohesive community.

Assignments
Prompts

How do these presentations of order differ from Genesis and each other? 

Unit V (July): The Iliad / Heroic Values

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

Assignments
Prompts

What values does the Iliad seem to praise? How does it subvert those values? How are love and friendship alligned and contrasted? How do the concepts of fate and free will interact with each other, and how do they intersect with the ideas of duty and honor? 

Unit VI (August): 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.

Assignment
  • Herodotus, Histories, epigraph, Books I-III, VII-IX; cf. the “Structural Outline,” pp. 607-14 from Herodotus, Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. London: Penguin, 2003.
Prompts

How are the identities presented in Herodotus's Histories constructed in the context of perceived differences? How are those differences described, constructed, and explored?

Unit VII (September): The Oresteia / Democracy, Citizenship, and Exclusion

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.

Assignment
  • Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides from Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1977.
Prompts

Is communal justice presented as fair? How are ideas of family, duty, and piety depicted?

Unit VIII (October): 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
Prompts

How is political speech and persuasion used in relation to truth and power? How does Thucydides present the defeat of Athens? How does Plato present Socrates' death as related to speech and persuasion?

Audiobook Options

Jennifer Turner '11 sourced a number of audiobook recordings of these texts for her group! They are shared here for your convenience, in case listening to the books works better than reading them. "Different translation" or "same translation" refers to the book list above.

These links go to Audible.com, but the audiobooks may be available through your local library or other sources. Reed does not benefit from your use of these links.