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)