Lists of Works

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

Fall 2026: Intelligent Lives

• Plato, Ion
• Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
• Françoise de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman
• Immanuel Kant, selections from The Critique of Judgment on Art and Genius
• Rudyard Kipling, “The Secret of Machines”
• T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
• Alfonso Cuarón, Y tu mama tambien
• Nnedi Okorafor, “The Mother of Invention”
   

Additional works still to be determined; check back in early July for a final list!

Winter 2027: The Arts of Care

The faculty for HUM II is currently developing this list, which will be posted in July 2026.

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