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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
  • Second Saturdays, 1 p.m. Pacific 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.

Hum 110 Parent & Family Book Club Syllabus

Unit I: 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
  • Gilgamesh, Tablets 1-11, pp. 1-100

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

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.

Unit IV: Exodus and Theogony / Making Order II

Assignments
  • Hesiod, Theogony
  • Exodus

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

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.

Assignment
  • Herodotus, Histories, epigraph, books I-III, VII-IX; cf. the “Structural Outline,” pp. 607-14

Unit VII: 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
  • Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides (= The Oresteia)

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)

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