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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
CLASSIC READINGS, MODERN TECHNOLOGY
Students and Faculty
Embrace Classic Readings,
Modern Technology
“The course is not a museum-like visit.
It’s about the interrogation of texts.”
The origins of Humanities A — as Lit Hum was called originally
— go back to the first days of the Core Curriculum. Emboldened
by a successful experiment with a “war issues” course
during WWI, in 1919 the College launched Introduction to Contemporary
Civilization in the West. A year later Professor of English
John Erskine (Class of 1900), who had championed a “liberal”
education against those who wanted more pre-professional training
at the College, began his General Honors seminar, co-taught
by two professors. This course, spread out across the junior and
senior years, featured one “great book” per class, which was read
in translation and discussed in small sections.
B y T i m ot h y P. Cross ’98 GSAS
Literature Humanities can be described in many ways: ambitious, provocative,
imposing, eye-opening. It is the first class that freshmen encounter —
embodied in the gift copy of The Iliad they receive during the summer from
the Columbia College Alumni Association — and a formative experience,
one whose influence extends well beyond the classroom. Its teaching methods
have expanded with technology, and its texts and the conversations surrounding
them have evolved with attitudes. Indeed, after 75 years, what may be most remarkable
about Lit Hum is how what began as an effort to buck the academic establishment has
proven itself an adaptable and indispensable pillar of the Columbia College experience.
Erskine saw this effort as a remedy for what he and his colleagues
perceived as “the literary ignorance of the younger generation.”
But what was truly innovative was his approach, reading
“The Iliad, The Odyssey and other masterpieces as though they
were recent publications, calling for immediate investigation and
discussion.” As much as it horrified some colleagues — especially
those enamored of German-style instruction that emphasized
memorization and rote learning — Erskine’s approach caught on,
though its impact was limited to those students enrolled in the
General Honors seminar.
Erskine was, and remains, a controversial figure in Columbia’s
Gareth Williams, the Violin Family Professor of Classics and chair of Lit Hum, says that to read the course’s texts “is to introduce yourself
to being unsettled about life.”
PHOTO: MICHAEL DiVITO
history. Charismatic, attention-grabbing and attention-seeking,
he always had ambitions that went beyond being a college professor,
including writing music, poetry and fiction. As his biographer
Katherine Elise Chaddock has observed, Erskine became
America’s first “celebrity professor,” recognized as much for
his potboiler novels — such as The Private Life of Helen of Troy
(1925), which was made into a silent film — as for his educational
achievements. These began pulling him away from Columbia,
and by the late 1920s, when the College decided
to require a second semester of Contemporary
Civilization and abandon the General
Honors course, Erskine was largely out of the
picture.
But the seed Erskine planted had already
taken root. In a few years, a handful of the College’s
professors — including Jacques Barzun
’27, ’32 GSAS, Irwin Edman (Class of 1916,
Class of 1920 GSAS) and Raymond Weaver
(Class of 1910, Class of 1917 GSAS), who had
been Erskine’s students — resurrected the
General Honors course as the Colloquium in
Important Books. The colloquium, which adopted
both the scope and format of the General
Honors course, was taught regularly, then sporadically,
for decades.
More importantly, it planted the idea in
some of the same faculty’s minds that this sort
of course might be appropriate for all undergraduates,
not just a select few who decided
The seminar format, with no more
than 22 students per class, is vital to
Lit Hum’s success.
PHOTO: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS
to enroll as juniors and seniors. Here the success of Literature
Humanities’ older sibling, Contemporary Civilization, proved
crucial. If the College’s freshmen could handle close reading and
discussion in a small class format for CC, why not for literature
The first College faculty meetings to draft a humanities
course convened in 1934. The plan was to have a two-year humanities
sequence in which undergraduates would confront literature,
art and music, but difficulties in integrating music and
art proved too much at first. Music Humanities
and Art Humanities (together originally
called Humanities B) became electives, but in
fall 1937, the College introduced Humanities
A as a new Core requirement.
In many ways, it’s striking how much of
Erskine’s original vision lives on in today’s
Literature Humanities. Classes generally
still read one text per week, in translation.
Students then discuss these texts in small sections,
though there are a lot more of those sections
now — about 65 — compared with only
20 when the course was created.
This format matters. “A student having
book in hand each week makes a difference
in conversation,” says Christia Mercer, the
Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy, a
former Lit Hum chair who will resume the
post this fall. That’s why Lit Hum has never
even flirted with the idea of creating readers,
SPRING 2013
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SPRING 2013
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