Experience Hum 110 "Year 2" Mexico
Your student began their academic journey at Reed with Humanities 110. Now you can study the Hum 110 syllabus in our Hum 110 Parent & Family Book Club. Sessions are focused on the texts in the spirit of life-long learning and intellectual engagement.
Experience Reed’s renowned HUM 110 course, focusing on Mexico for this syllabus, particularly the city of Tenochtitlan/Mexico City, from the Spanish invasion to the twentieth century. Participants may sign up for one or all three standalone sessions. Each session includes optional advanced reading. The first half of each session features a lecture viewing, followed by discussion in the second half.
Unit I: “Casta Paintings” – Sunday, February 22nd, 3-5 pm Pacific Time – explores colonial Mexican racial hierarchies through art, examining how casta paintings shaped legal rights, social opportunities, and identity while documenting the diverse ancestries of New Spain.
Unit II: “Representation and its Discontents” – Sunday, May 3rd, 3-5 pm Pacific Time – examines the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre through Elena Poniatowska’s Massacre in Mexico and La Noche de Tlatelolco, exploring how literature and visual culture challenge official narratives, expose power structures, and give voice to the excluded.
Unit III: “The Inconvenience of Revolution: Zapatismo, Cynicism, Dignity, and Memory” – Sunday, October 18th, 3-5 pm Pacific Time – highlights the Zapatista movement and Indigenous-led activism, exploring alternative visions of democracy, citizenship, and resistance to exclusion through historical narratives, national symbols, and political frameworks.
The full syllabus with readings, lecture links, and discussion prompts is provided below. Participate in the Reed HUM 110 experience and engage with ideas that shape culture, history, and identity.
Questions? Email parentrelations@reed.edu
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:
—Peter Steinberger, former dean of the faculty and Robert H. and Blanche Day Ellis Professor of Political Science and Humanities
Hum 110 Parents & Families Book Club "Year 2" Syllabus
This syllabus covers Mexico, particularly the city of Tenochtitlan/Mexico City from the Spanish invasion to the twentieth century
- Participants may sign up for one or all three standalone sessions.
- Each session includes optional advanced reading.
- The first half features a lecture viewing, and the second half is a discussion.
Unit I: "Casta Paintings"- February 22, 3-5pm PT
The readings and materials in HUM 110 examine how difference is constructed, utilized, and reframed through cultural, political, and artistic forms, particularly in relation to race, power, and identity. One example of this process can be seen in casta paintings from eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mexico. These paintings were created within a colonial context to depict and enforce racial categories that shaped people’s legal rights, social opportunities, and claims to citizenship. Rooted in racist assumptions and hierarchical thinking, casta paintings functioned as visual narratives that supported colonial power structures. At the same time, they document the diverse ancestries present in New Spain and complicate the modern myth of a homogeneously “mestizo” Mexico.
Considering both the historical role of casta paintings and the more recent recognition of Afro-Mexican communities, reflecting on how art can both impose racial hierarchies and become a site where those hierarchies are questioned, resisted, or reimagined over time.
This lecture was presented by Laura Leibman, professor of English and humanities, on February 17, 2020.
Assignment
- View the lecture and handout
- Magali M. Carrera, “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico,” Art Journal 57.3 (1998): 36-45.
- John Tutino, “Terms of Analysis: New Spain in Spanish America,” introductory maps, and “From Mexica Capital to Silver Metropolis, 1350-1770,” in Mexico City, 1808: Power, Sovereignty, and Silver in an Age of War and Revolution (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018), xiv-xxiv, 21-34.
Prompts
How do artistic representations like casta paintings contribute to the construction, reinforcement, or erasure of racial identities, and in what ways do these images shape the relationship between truth, representation, and political power both in colonial New Spain and in contemporary Mexico? Additionally, how do these visual forms participate in the narration of the modern nation-state, particularly in defining who is included or excluded from national identity?
Unit II: Representation and Its Discontents-May 3, 3-5 pm PT
Elena Poniatowska’s Massacre in Mexico was chosen for HUM 110 because it powerfully illustrates how literature and visual culture can challenge official narratives, expose systems of power, and give voice to those excluded from democratic participation. Through a collage of eyewitness interviews, protest slogans, newspaper headlines, and photographs, the text documents the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, an event the Mexican government attempted to suppress and deny, raising critical questions about the relationship between truth, speech, and political power.
The Spanish and English editions of the book differ significantly in their narrative structure, selection and placement of photographs, and Poniatowska’s editorial framing, reflecting how history, meaning, and collective memory are shaped through acts of translation, mediation, and audience-specific presentation. These differences invite reflection on how the modern nation-state constructs and narrates its own history, often through exclusion, silence, or violence, and how alternative narratives survive and resist erasure.
This lecture was presented by Jan Mieszkowski, professor of German and humanities, on March 2, 2020.
Assignments
*Please be aware that many of the photographs are quite disturbing, as they include images of dead bodies.- View lecture and handout
- Elena Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), vii-xvii, 3-23, 173-231.
- Pages vii-xvii, 3-23, 171-172, 199-231 (Text only)
- Pages 173-198 (Images only)
- Elena Poniatowska, La Noche de Tlateloco (Biblioteca Era, Mexico, D.F. 1971), (Images only)
Prompts
How do Poniatowska’s narrative choices, such as the use of multiple voices, the integration of disturbing images, and the reorganization of visual and textual elements across editions, shape our understanding of the Tlatelolco massacre? In what ways do these choices reveal the construction of difference, the imposition of hierarchies of class, race, and citizenship, and the ethical and political stakes of representing collective trauma and state violence for different audiences?
Unit III: The Inconvenience of Revolution: Zapatismo, Cynicism, Dignity, and Memory- October 18, 3-5 pm PT
The readings on the Zapatista movement (EZLN), which emerged publicly in 1994, were selected for HUM 110 because they vividly illustrate how difference is constructed, utilized, and reframed through Indigenous-led political activism. These texts challenge dominant narratives of Mexican national identity and neoliberal economic policies, offering alternative visions of democracy, citizenship, and self-governance that confront exclusion and inequality.
Through the “Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,” the “Sixth Declaration,” and related texts such as “Mexico City: We have arrived. We are here,” “The Story of the Questions,” and the “Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law,” the Zapatistas use historical narratives, national symbols, and alternative political frameworks to contest the construction and narration of the modern nation-state. Their movement highlights the ongoing processes by which history, place, and identity are created and re-created, especially in the context of colonial legacies and resistance.
These readings also expose the imposition of hierarchies of class, race, and gender, while emphasizing the ways these are negotiated and resisted, including through the important leadership of Zapatista women. Moreover, the Zapatistas’ strategies connect to broader themes in the Black diaspora and other global movements, where artistic and political creation serve as powerful tools for social and political transformation.
This lecture was presented by Christian Kroll, associate professor of Spanish and humanities, on March 6, 2020.
Assignments
- View lecture and handout
- Selections from Subcomandante Marcos, Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, ed. Juana Ponce de León (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001).
- “Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle” (1996), 78-81.
- “Mexico City: We Have Arrived. We Are Here: The EZLN.” (2001), 155-162.
- “The Story of the Questions” (1994), 413-416.
- Zapatista Army of National Liberation, “6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle” (June 2005).
- Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law
Prompts
How do the Zapatistas use historical narratives, national symbols, and alternative political frameworks to redefine Mexican identity and confront longstanding social and economic inequalities? What do these texts reveal about the broader goals and strategies of the movement, and how do they reflect the themes of difference, resistance, and the reimagining of democracy and citizenship that HUM 110 explores?