Changes Coming to HUM 110 Syllabus
Major structural changes are coming to the HUM 110 syllabus! There will be a new syllabus this fall; the new spring syllabus will join it the following year (spring 2028). The changes are mostly structural, but there are also some content changes. To learn more, the Quest met with Tom Landvatter (Greek, Latin and Ancient Mediterranean Studies), Naomi Caffee (Russian), and Kritish Rajbhandari (English), three professors who were on the subcommittee who worked on the proposal for the new changes.
The professors emphasized that the main focus of the changes was on structure. In the new syllabus, there will be three to four week units, each focused on a theme and core skills rather than a geographic area. The content isn’t changing drastically—they tried to keep two-thirds of the old material to ease the transition–—but it is rearranged, and there’s less of it, so that students will spend more time on most readings. For instance, there are six days of Herodotus’ Histories instead of two, which necessitated cutting other material. Additionally, each unit focuses on specific skills that students are intended to learn from that material.
These changes were based on student and faculty feedback that was received via multiple surveys, including student surveys in 2020 and 2024. The professors emphasized concerns that students felt the HUM 110 syllabus was incoherent, “cobbled together,” and lacking focus; that they felt lost; and that it was unclear what the point was; all of which the new syllabus hopes to alleviate. The new units highlight not only what is being focused on, but why, by focusing on specific skills. Additionally, they hope that this new structure will make it easier to adjust a unit at a later time, rather than the “Jenga” of changing a whole semester, where removing one thing will make the whole syllabus topple. Thus, in the future, professors will be able to change out individual units, which will make it easier to add more geographic areas. Landvatter also mentioned that they sought to disrupt the implicit narrative of Greek triumph.
Following the 2018 HUM 110 changes, revisions to the syllabus were supposed to be discussed every three years, but three years after that was during the pandemic, so the cycle was disrupted. Since then, the professors said, proposals were brought up every year in the HUM 110 committee, but none were successful. In fall 2024, a group including Kritish Rajbhandari brought a proposal which was deemed viable. The subcommittee worked on developing the proposal throughout last year and integrated feedback at multiple points, before getting the syllabus approved by the full committee in spring 2025. In fall 2025, they continued work on revising the syllabus, and now it is finally done and able to be shared. A number of professors were involved in the creation of the new syllabus: the subcommittee worked on the proposal as a whole, and then different “squads” of faculty put together each unit.
In the new syllabus, the first unit is titled “Beginnings and Foundations,” with a focus on reading primary sources. Readings are The Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis, and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, a text which has been on the HUM syllabus in prior years and is being brought back. The second unit is titled “Empire, Cultural Contact, and the Construction of Self and Other” and aims to teach a sustained focus on long narrative texts. It has The Tale of Sinuhe, excerpts of Herodotus’ Histories, and Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, another text that has been on the syllabus before. The third unit is titled “Art, Spaces, Objects” and focuses on how to engage with material culture. The professors emphasized that the goal of this unit was to put all the art together to really focus on engaging with art and combat the common sentiment of art as a “break.” It features sculptures, landscapes, architecture, and material culture. Some of the material was on the syllabus last year, like the Kouroi sculptures and the Athenian Acropolis, but it also features new material like a shipwreck and an article on what can be learned from looking at trash. The fourth and final unit is titled “Inclusion, Exclusion, Belonging,” and has a goal of synthesizing ideas. Its readings are Exodus, Euripides’ Medea (which has also been on the syllabus before), and Plato’s Republic.
The spring syllabus is not finalized yet, the professors said, but the plan is to stick with Mexico City and Harlem but split it into four units. They said it will have more emphasis on how to approach secondary sources. They hope that in the future the syllabus might bring in units from more geographic areas.
Astute readers will notice that the main content changes are simply spending more time on fewer texts, with some additional texts being brought back from the dead. However, a number of texts were also cut, such as Hesiod, Homer, the Oresteia, Lysistrata, and several others. I asked about how they chose to cut Homer, as an example, and they said the committee had a Herodotus versus Homer debate and ultimately settled on Herodotus because it allows the syllabus to look at historical thought. Landvatter emphasized that “Homer isn’t permanently banished” and may return in future years. Ultimately, the team simply had to make decisions about what best fit their goals.
The full draft of the fall syllabus is available on the Quest’s website, and will be published with the new lecture titles on Reed’s main website sometime this spring!
