Lists of Works

 See below for recent lists of works taught in the Global Humanities sequence.

Fall 2026: Intelligent Lives

• The Assyrian Reliefs at the Hood Museum (9th c. BCE)
  Plato, Ion (c. 380 BCE)
• Christine de Pizan, selections from The Book of the City of Ladies (c. 1405)
• Albrecht Dürer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (c. 1497) and Sudarium Held by Two Angels (1513)
• René Descartes, selections from Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
• Françoise de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman (1747)
• Immanuel Kant, selections from The Critique of Judgment (1790)
• Rudyard Kipling, “The Secret of Machines” (1911)
• T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919)
• Graciliano Ramos, Barren Lives (1938)
• Jorge Luis Bourges, “Funes the Memorious” (1942)
• Marc Chagall, Sacrifice of Isaac (1956) and Creation (1960)
• Alfonso Cuarón, Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
• Tommy Pico, Nature Poem (2017)
• Nnedi Okorafor, “The Mother of Invention” (2018)

Winter 2027: The Arts of Care
Additional works TBD.

• Sophocles, Antigone (c. 441 BCE)
• Anonymous, “Nineteen Ancient Poems” (Han Dynasty, 2nd c. CE)
• Tao Qian, “Peach Blossom Spring” (421 CE)
• William Shakespeare, King Lear (1606)
• Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (1904)
• Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
• Selections from Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals (1980)
• Michel Foucault, selections from Technologies of the Self (1982)
• Lee Chang-Dong, Oasis (2002)
• Steve McQueen, The Lynching Tree (2013)
• John Trengrove, Thando Mgqolozana, and Malusi Bengu, Inxeba (2017)
• Contemporary Ukrainian poetry, TBD
   

Fall 2025: Decadence

• Gaius Petronius, Satyricon
• Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy
• Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Suffering of the World,” “On the Vanity of Existence,” & “On Aesthetics”
• Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature
• Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor 
• Suzan-Lori Parks, Venus
• Lucrecia Martel, La Ciénaga
• Han Kang, The Vegetarian
• Eliana Pérez, Only Good for Crying
   

Winter 2026: On Believability

• Aeschylus, Agamemnon
• Christa Wolf, “A Letter about Unequivocal and Ambiguous Meaning”
• William Shakespeare, Macbeth
• Jean de Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
• John Milton, Paradise Lost
• Georges Méliès, short films (including The Trip to the Moon)
• Charles Chestnutt, The Conjure Woman and Other Tales
• Elena Garro, “The Tlaxcaltecs Are to Blame”
• Wangechi Mutu, Double Fuse
• Margaret Bourke-White, “The American Way”
• Heinrich von Kleist, The Broken Pitcher
• “The Great Moon Hoax” (1835)
• Dashiell Hammett, “They Can Only Hang You Once”
• Akira Kurosawa, High and Low
• Jorge Luis Borges, “Narrative Art and Magic” & “Death and the Compass”
• Alejo Carpentier, “Prologue to The Kingdom of this World”

Fall 2024: (In)Equalities

• Rigoberta Menchú, I, Rigoberta Menchú
• Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
• Françoise de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman
• Bong Joon-Ho, Snowpiercer
• Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage”
• Nella Larsen, Passing
• Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
• Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Noble” from Beyond Good and Evil
• John Rawls, “A Kantian Conception of Equality”
• Sophocles, Philoctetes
• Leo Tolstoy, Death of Ivan Illyich and “Three Deaths”
• Kurt Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron”

Winter 2025: Longing and Belonging

• Martha Nussbaum’s “Teaching on Patriotism: Love and Critical Freedom”
• Edward Said’s “Reflections on Exile”
• William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
• Charles Gounod’s opera Romeo and Juliet
• Cara Romero’s photographs in Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light)
• Miguel de Cervantes’s “The Stage of Wonders”
• Jorge Luis Borges’ “Averröes’ Search” & “The Argentine Writer and Tradition”
• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
• Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki
• Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya
• Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car