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A foundation for education:
the humanities program at Reed

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Humanities 210
Even though the second-year humanities courses are all elective, many students in all majors continue with these courses. Humanities 210 focuses on early modern Europe, beginning in the early fourteenth century and ending with Louis XIV in France and early Enlightenment rationalism in England. Readings this year include works by Dante (The Divine Comedy), Machiavelli (The Prince), Luther (Three Treatises), Galileo (The Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo), Madame de Lafayette (The Princess of Cleves), and Voltaire (Candide).

Their training and background from Humanities 110 prepares students incredibly well for exploration of ideas that are new to them. Knapp, who has taught in both Humanities 110 and 210, he enjoys seeing how students learned from the earlier class. “I’ve talked to colleagues from other institutions and described what we do, and they are green with envy,” he said. “Just to think that you could count on your students having read Homer and Virgil, count on your students knowing something about the differences between Herodotean history and Tacitean history, count on students at least understanding something about the way early empires work.”

The trials of humanities
By Joel Stonington ’03

Humanities 110, my first year at Reed, I hd written some good papers for my professor, but this was my finest paper to date, a labor of love, a finished work of considerable beauty.

I walked into my paper conference and sat down in front of her. She looked up and asked what she always asked at the beginning of a paper conference. “Well, Joel, how do you think your paper was?”

I glanced at her face and as usual I could read no positive or negative signs. So I said exactly how I felt about it: “I think it’s the best paper I’ve written this semester.”

“Well,” she replied, “I think it’s awful, I think it’s the worst paper you’ve written this semester, and there is no question in my mind but that it needs to be completely re-written.”

And so I learned that the path of academia, especially that of humanities at Reed, is fraught with danger and peril, much like the path of Achilleus in the Iliad.

Yet we must remember that there would be no Iliad without blood and death. In the academic world I was well into my own Odyssey and this professor was my Cyclops dismembering my ego.

My quest for education continues with a modern humanities class this year. The journey is still harrowing and difficult, but I believe I will persevere.

Suffering, even in the simple sense of having my paper mauled in front of my very eyes, leads to good things.

My exploration of the history and literature of Western thought through these humanities courses is leading me to an understanding of the roots of my culture. And I know I will be able to walk away from Reed College with an understanding of the past that helps me move towards my own work of cultural and historical significance (whether that means being a reporter, a social worker, a scholar, an author, or any number of other things waits to be seen).

Joel Stonington, a junior from Seattle, Washington, is a student intern in the Reed office of news and publications.