HIP Sample Reading List

This is a sample of the texts, films, and other materials discussed during our 2019-2020 Humanity in Perspective (HIP) 6-credit course.

Essays

  • Harrell Fletcher, Towards a Tender Society of Thoughtful Questions and Answers

  • Audre Lorde, Transformation of Silence into Action (Philosophy) (excerpt from Sister Outsider)

  • Patricia Smith, Talking Wrong

  • John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

  • Brian Yazzie Burkhart, "What Thales and Coyote Can Teach Us: An Outline of American Indian Epistemology" (excerpt from American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays, edited by Anne Waters)

  • Gloria Anzaldua, How to Tame a Wild Tongue

  • Luis Camnitzer, Wonder Bread and Spanglish

  • Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

  • Hannah Arendt, We Refugees

  • Amy Tan, Mother Tongue

  • Kao Kalia Yang, Cry of Machines

 

Excerpt/chapter from nonfiction

  • Anne Lamott, Shitty First Drafts (excerpt from Bird by Bird)

  • Plato, Apology (excerpt from Introduction to Western Philosophy)

  • Descartes, Meditations 1 and 2

  • Orhan Pamuk, excerpts from Istanbul: Memories and the City 

  • Rebecca Solnit, Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters 

  • bell hooks, All About Love (excerpts from All About Love: New Visions)

  • Moustafa Bayoumi, selection from How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? 

 

Online Media

  • Artspace article: 8 Contemporary Native American Artists Challenging the Way We Look at American History by Jillian Billard

  • Selection from The 1619 Project 

  • Letter from Bioscience: “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency”

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story (TED Talk)

 

Fiction

  • Ursula K LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

  • Rebecca Roanhorse, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™

  • Toni Morrison, Recitatif

  • Tommy Orange, There There (novel)

 

Poetry

  • Louise Erdich, Advice to Myself (poem)

  • Claudia Rankine, selection from Citizen: An American Lyric 

  • Layli Long Soldier, selection from Whereas 

  • M. NourbeSe Phillip, selection from Zong!

  • Joy Harjo, selection from An American Sunrise 

  • Joy Harjo, Perhaps the World Ends Here

  • Joy Harjo, I Give You Back: A Poem to Get Rid of Fear

 

Movies

  • Birds of Passage (dir. Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra, 2019)

  • The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (dir. Göran Olsson, 2011)

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