AI has taken over our lives and times, in every field, including the world of letters. From debates about the validity of award-winning literature being generated by AI, to the bane of professors having to assess assignments written, courtesy ChatGPT, the literary and academic world no longer seems to have time and space for physical books, housed in physical spaces once venerated as libraries.
This is also a time when Humanities have been relegated to the hazy background as a field of choice for students who would rather opt for degrees in more technical fields which have better future “job prospects”.
In such times, it is a pleasant surprise to learn that one of the most popular courses at Harvard University entails the in-depth reading of physical books. The course is Humanities 10a, or Hum 10 as it is known as. It forms the first part of a two-semester course available only to first year students.
Harvard’s Course Catalogue introduces their Humanities courses with an invitation that reads: ‘We know that many students come to Harvard excited about the humanities but aren’t always sure where to begin. These new courses are built to meet you where you are – engaging, expansive, and relevant to the world you live in now. Taught by some of our most passionate and creative faculty, they’re designed to show how humanistic thinking can challenge, inspire, and shape your path forward, no matter what you choose to study.’
Of these courses, the Humanities 10a course is described thus: ‘Six professors! Twelve books! 3000 years! We cover interesting and important books from Homer’s Odyssey to the present. Experts lecture each week, and students meet in seminars led by professors to discuss the text. Students also meet in writing labs, led by specially trained Teaching Fellows’.
For students who had always intended to “read the classics” someday, to those with secret dreams to be a published author one day, the invitation reads like an Open Sesame password. But having entered the cave of treasures, the course reveals its rigorous demands. Students need to read a hefty book a week, and write regular essays, as well as participate in class discussions. Digital devices are forbidden in the class. Attendance is taken in every lecture, and late arrivals get a pink slip.
If the course demands a lot from the students, it is equally rigorous for the teachers. The idea for the course began with a dinner discussion by two friends, Stephen Greenblatt and Louis Menand, both renowned professors and bestselling authors, as a way to counter the falling interest in Humanities. Now the course has a rotating faculty made up of some of the best in Harvard including historians, novelists, critics and philosophy professors. Each of the six faculty nominates two books to include in the year’s coursework. Each one leads two lectures and a weekly seminar, but they all attend every lecture, and lead seminars on books they may not have previously read, as well as books from other disciplines. The teachers become learners too.
Despite the rigour required, there are many who are eager to be a part of this elite teaching-learning team. For professors teaching the same courses year after year, teaching something that they have not taught before is refreshing, as is interacting with first-year students who enter the university full of enthusiasm and curiosity.
What is it that attracts students to sign up for Hum 10a?
Among those who sign up are the handful that feel somewhat out of place in the current climate that thrives on quick scans, ready-made summaries, and superficial AI generated overviews, which does not leave time and space for slow reading, deep thinking, serious discussions with similar-minded peers, and personal engagement with writing.
For those students who are still readers in the old-fashioned sense of the term, the course provides a setting in which they can read, explore, discover, think, question, and write about books. It provides opportunities to form a view, find supporting evidence and discover where that view fails
The course provides a structure which can help students to do something they value but tend to postpone, always with the excuse that other deadlines take precedence. The students must attend a 75-minute lecture plus a 75-minute discussion seminar led by professors every week. Preceded, of course, by reading the assigned book. The scheduled seminar means that the student must make the time and effort to not only read the book, but prepare cogent arguments which will address the teacher’s questions, as well as stand up in peer-group discussions. As one of the earlier students put it: “You didn’t want to disappoint the seminar by being the one person who didn’t read or whose comment really didn’t add to the discussion. We all felt like we were building something, and that was a remarkable feeling.”
In more academic terms students get to interact directly with professors, who are teaching works that they love, but which are difficult to understand on one’s own. They also get a formal space and time to work on their writing, guided by specially trained staff in the writing labs. Students are encouraged to question what is on the printed page, annotate, identify patterns, contextualize material and compare texts.
It is also an opportunity to be a part of a like-minded community of students, and access to multi-disciplinary faculty. In more practical academic terms, the course also fulfils Harvard College’s writing requirement.
The course is not an easy walk-in. Admission is based on an application essay. But students take on the challenge because they see relate to the purpose of the course, and receive support in meeting it. And of course, for the freshmen, it is the high reviews from the seniors or Hum Alums that gives the final push to sign up for Hum 10a. The result? There were 180 applications for 90 places on the course for this Fall semester.
Even in this fast-paced AI-dominated place and time, there are still many that want to be challenged by the best minds and the best books. For some reason, parts of the educational system, even the elite parts, seem to have forgotten this. Harvard seems to remember and revive this need.
–Mamata
