humanities

The fast swing rhythm moves along with Nina Simone as she expresses her exhaustion over the wait for racial equality in her piece, “Mississippi Goddamn.” Richie Havens strums his guitar as he draws upon the spiritual song “Motherless Child” to improvise his first performance of “Freedom.” Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, and Dannie Richmond protest against then-Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus through dialogue sung between and over rich jazz sounds in “Fables of Faubus.” These works of music are all from Black performers and composers only recently added to the Core Curriculum.

Her words reverberated throughout the classical dome of Low Library’s rotunda, evoking the ancient Greek literature to which she alludes in her plays. She began with her first of a million suggestions: “Entertain all your far-out ideas.” She paused, looking up at the expansive ceiling and out at the sea of faces before her in Low Library’s rotunda. “It sounds good in here.”

As students pass between classes in Schermerhorn Hall, its eighth and ninth floors provide an artistic respite from endless bulletin boards overfilled with flyers. Students have the chance to see a number of art pieces created by incarcerated individuals, bringing their rarely-heard voices to Columbia’s campus.

Starting fall 2020, students entering the School of General Studies with under 30 credits will be required to take Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization if they have not already fulfilled their literature/humanities and social science requirements. According to administrators, the effort comes as part of a broader move to slowly integrate General Studies students into the Core Curriculum.

For Aaron Stout, GS ’21 and a veteran, Columbia offered a unique opportunity through the School of General Studies to integrate and interact with the larger undergraduate student body both socially and academically, something other universities often do not offer for students in continuing education programs.

Summer in globally-warmed New York City is the cruelest of seasons. The 90-degree sun melts the skyline to a sooty mirage, and the air curdles. A merciless landscape for a curly-haired 18-year-old prone to fainting in the heat. Even the gum-scarred sidewalks sweat. In the past, I had escaped to the verdant hills of the Adirondacks to study violin. But music costs money until you’re trained, lucky, and brave enough to make your own. This summer, it was time to get a job and save for college expenses, and practicing in my room wasn’t going to cover the cost of my Lit Hum books.

When I ask professor Edward Mendelson, a veteran English literature professor and longtime Literature Humanities instructor, what he hopes his students take away from his Lit Hum class, he pauses mid-thought. A moment later, he reaches over to the overflowing bookshelf along one wall of his office. His eyes quickly bounce from left to right, scanning through the titles until—The English Auden, an early 20th century collection of writings by W.H. Auden. Instinctually, he flips to page 371 and reads the words of Auden: “I’m quite certain [the arts] makes us more difficult to deceive.”

In 1989, Laura Hotchkiss Brown, GS ’89, attempted to protest the lack of female inclusion in Columbia’s curriculum by hanging a banner above the names of male writers on Butler Library. The banner—made by Brown and four of her friends—featured the names of eight influential female writers.

For the first time in over 70 years, the Art Humanities curriculum is the subject of serious review. The art history department hopes to create a more diverse and inclusive syllabus that will be adopted by next fall.

In an effort to broaden the curriculum’s diversity, Literature Humanities will now include a “Contemporary Core” component consisting of an annually rotating text to be chosen based on annual faculty and student discussion, the first major syllabus update since Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” was added in 2015.