Download this issue as a PDF - Columbia College - Columbia ...

LIT HUM FOR LIFE
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
LIT HUM FOR LIFE
Some first-years embrace Lit Hum, others are more skeptical, but none
are unaffected by the course.
PHOTO: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS
And Lit Hum is a great way to do that.”
“Perhaps one of the most important lessons I took from Lit
Him — and from the Core in general — was a feeling of empowerment
to search and to question,” says Scott Koonin ’02, an investment
adviser and a member of the Columbia College Alumni
Association Board of Directors as well as a Class Agent for the
Columbia College Fund. “I left Columbia with an understanding
of the power of asking the right questions and now, in my professional
life, thoughtful questions have revealed a deeper understanding
of my clients’ needs, fears and desires. Questions have
been a differentiator.”
The College’s incoming students fall at many points along
the Lit Hum spectrum. At one end there are those who
arrive with reservations of some kind — they may be
intimidated or disinterested — and at the other end
are those who are eager to dive into the course. With the former,
conversion stories are common. And with the latter, the seminar
experience serves only to amplify their enthusiasm.
“I came to Columbia largely because of the Core Curriculum
and more specifically because of Lit Hum,” says Zoe Wood ’16.
“As someone who grew up without once opening a bible, the
fact that the first semester of Lit Hum studies the New and Old
Testaments was hugely appealing. The course is about creating
a base of knowledge, about having a point from which you can
go in any direction and, as you go about your career in neuroscience
or programming or Russian literature, maintain with you
a basic understanding of the most important voices in Western
thought.”
“I was really daunted by the idea of engaging with the texts,”
says Anna Couturier ’10. “I came from a middle-class California
public school and, while I really enjoyed European literature,
ancient texts seemed completely above my head.” She adds
that, through Lit Hum, she gained confidence in her analytical
abilities. “It set the pace for the next four years, in which
I grew both as a critical thinker and an individual. Lit Hum
made me understand that we are not alone in our creations.”
Kathryn Reggio ’14 admits she’d always been more interested
in science, “with English being the most intimidating
class on my schedule. And then when I found out that I’d been
assigned to the chair of Lit Hum’s class” — then Christia Mercer,
the Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy — “I was
definitely going to switch.
“But on the first day that changed. Christia was a great
professor with such a kind and accepting personality. Class
was never intimidating; it truly felt like a sanctuary where
all thoughts were heard and encouraged. And although the
books were challenging, I got much out of them. Most interesting
were the interpretations we made during class about
the texts … these books are masterpieces because they relate
to everyone and incite a different feeling in each person.”
As with Reggio and Mercer, many students credit their
seminar teachers for shaping the experience.
“My instructor, Nancy Workman, [adjunct assistant professor
in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures],
knows how to run a seminar. She took — and takes, every year
— a class of wet-behind-the-ears first-years and makes readers
out of them,” says Conor Skelding ’14. “And students met her
challenge and behaved intelligently. We weren’t dutifully raising
our hands once per class to ramble on about nothing for a ‘class
participation’ grade; we were discussing literature.”
“I have to give full credit to my instructor, Professor Richard
Sacks, [adjunct associate professor of English and comparative
literature], who taught me how to be both a more critical reader
“These books are masterpieces because they relate to
everyone and incite a different feeling in each person.”
and a more emotionally invested one,” says Claire Sabel ’13. “He
constantly impressed upon us that all of these books are asking
fundamental questions about what it means to be human, and
that they’re usually undermining their own premises rather than
offering substantial answers.”
Patrick McGarrigle ’86 recalls his experience with James V. Mirollo,
now the Parr Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative
Literature. “He brought the varied collection of classics to life
with energy, humor and passion. I recall his ‘juxtaposition’ — one
of his favorite words at the time — of Confessions and Inferno and
how fortunate I was to hear this titan’s love for Dante.” McGarrigle
adds that the class both prepared him for and encouraged
him to pursue other literary challenges at the College, including a
Quixote class with Selig and an Eliot, Joyce and Pound class with
the now-deceased Wallace Gray ’58 GSAS.
“Looking back and connecting the dots from Mirollo to Selig
to Gray, the veritable Tinker to Evers to Chance of CC’s English
and comp lit department, it’s clear that Lit Hum doesn’t really
end that first year, or ever,” McGarrigle says.
Students also sound appreciation to their teachers for direct-
ing them to the resources of the University as well as New
York City at large.
“We visited the Met to see Greek and Roman art, attended
a Medea reading at Miller Theatre and watched Oresteia at
the Broadway Theatre,” recalls Caroline Shang ’13E. “These
experiences added another dimension of appreciation for
these works, and I will never forget them.” She notes that as
an engineering student with the option of taking Lit Hum, it
was no contest: “I was ecstatic about sinking my teeth into
the classics.”
Of course, the books themselves are at the heart of
any Lit Hum experience. When asked, most every
student — past or present — can cite one (or more
than one) that had particular impact.
“The Histories, Don Quixote and Pride and Prejudice had the
greatest impact on me,” says Valerie Comenencia Ortiz ’14.
“One of the greatest things about Lit Hum is that, while it
makes no assumptions about your previous knowledge of
the texts, it takes books and authors that you already seem to
know and shows you an entirely different side of them”
Ramon Giron-Melendez ’14 also points to The Histories: “It
shows that even ‘recorded events’ are triangulated through the
evaluation of a variety of perspectives. I learned that although
our own introspection is an indispensable leap forward to figuring
out life, a variety of examining voices is still needed to discover
an entire truth.”
“I distinctly remember discussing a particular section of Virginia
Woolf’s To the Lighthouse that opened up the novel for me in
a way that deeply touched me and has remained with me since,
and which led me to explore her other novels and discover her
genius,” says Lena Moffitt ’05, who majored in environmental
biology.
“Before coming to Columbia, I got my Iliad and thought, cool,
I’m gonna read the book that the movie Troy is based on,” Mondesire
says. “But after reading it and discussing it in class, I realized
that the epic was so much more than what Hollywood portrayed
it as.”
Wood cites Lysistrata. “I found it incredible that the people of
411 BCE were making essentially the same jokes that we make
nearly 2,500 years later. I guess that could be seen as disheartening
— should our collective sense of humor have made some
more progress — but I found it to be life-affirming, unifying,
just funny.”
With so many texts, it’s not surprising that many current students
speak to the difficulty of taking in what amounts to a book
a week. But some see benefits to the pace.
“We go from Homeric poems to psychoanalytical 20th-century
fiction — and, instead of feeling your way through the texts, you
have to take the plunge and let the texts confront you,” says Amir
Safavi ’14, a 2011 Core Scholar. “This is both a necessity — there
is simply no time to leisurely muse about your reading — and a
blessing, as it encourages us to trust our instincts and heightens
our senses.”
Sarah Fakhry ’14 says the pace was both surprising and enjoyable.
“I did not think it would be possible to do each book justice,
but I was surprised at how much we covered. As a result, I am
now probably one of the best speed-readers! It also was exciting
when we found connections and similarities between the texts,
such as the theme of friendship in The Iliad and The Aeneid.”
Lit Hum provides a unifying experience for first-years, who read the
same books at the same time.
PHOTO: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS
Significantly, Lit Hum creates a sense of community on several
levels. It provides, first, a point of connection for firstyear
students as they get to know each other and, later, a
reliable source of debate. Many also speak to the comfort
that comes from being in the trenches together through late-night
study sessions.
Hannah Rosner ’14 says one of her favorite memories is camping
out with friends in John Jay’s lounge to study for the Lit Hum
final. “All the freshmen were walking around with these huge
boxes of books, trying to remember what happened in book six
of The Iliad three months ago, and the lounge was full of other
groups doing the same thing.”
Wood echoes the sentiment: “It was nice to be able to come out of
my room at 1 a.m. and say to anyone who happened to be out at that
time, ‘I’m only on book four,’ and receive their much-needed empathy.
It’s not that we all constantly discussed Medea’s plight or Odysseus’
pig-headedness, but the books really do come up in conversation
sometimes, and when they do, everyone has something to say.”
“There is always an opportunity to encounter someone who
is contemplating the readings and engage in a discussion,” says
Justin Brathwaite ’14. “As everyone is reading the same books,
we are all aspiring to understand the themes at a much deeper
philosophical level. … The course captures the essence of what it
means to be a Columbian, which involves being part of an intellectual
community where all its members debate ideas like suffering,
truth and life’s meaning.”
In addition to forging bonds among first-years, Lit Hum connects
all students — current and former — to each other and to
the College.
“Lit Hum is the great unifier for Columbia alumni, not because
of the conclusions that we arrived at through the texts but by the
act of searching for answers in the words,” Couturier says. “I have
been lucky enough to meet and work with Columbia alumni from
many different generations and, while we often differ in our interpretations
and takeaways, we share the camaraderie that comes
from the hard work of critically engaging with the great texts.”
As Reggio puts it, “If anything, talking about Lit Hum is one
conversation I know that I can have with any alumni.”
Alexis Tonti ’11 Arts is CCT’s managing editor.
SPRING 2013
28
SPRING 2013
29