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Caltech Course Catalog / 2026-2027 Catalog / Courses 2026-27 / Department / Hum

Courses 2026-27: Humanities

Hum/H 1

The Classical and Medieval Worlds

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms

This course will survey the evolution of Mediterranean and European civilization from antiquity through the end of the Middle Ages. It will emphasize the reading and discussion of primary sources, especially but not exclusively literary works, against the backdrop of the broad historical narrative of the periods. The readings will present students with the essential characteristics of various ancient and medieval societies and give students access to those societies' cultural assumptions and perceptions of change.

Instructor: Brown
Hum/H 2

The Automaton: From Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
The term “automaton,” often used today as a near-synonym for “robot,” derives from the Greek α ὐ τόματον ( automaton ), meaning “self-moving.” This course examines the cultural and social history of automata from antiquity through the medieval and Renaissance periods, focusing on how the imitation of lifelike motion contributed to the development of mechanical technologies. Challenging modern assumptions shaped by cybernetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence, the course situates automata within their historical contexts, exploring their multiple meanings as both technical and symbolic objects. Field trips to the Huntington Library will be included.
Instructor: Zanetti
Hum/H 3

Environmental History of U.S. Empire

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
This course offers an introduction to the key questions, methods, and sources in the field of environmental history. We will ground our study of environmental history in place-based case studies drawn from across areas over which the United States has claimed sovereignty, throughout North America, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Arctic. Drawing examples from across what has sometimes been called “the Greater United States,” the course explores how nature, people, and environmental change transcend and trouble the boundaries of the nation-state. By thinking transnationally and comparatively beyond the traditional bounds of U.S. environmental history and the continental United States, we will consider the environmental and social impacts of the far reach of U.S. empire and colonialism. Over the course of the semester, we will focus on themes such as conservation, extraction, science, and migration as we consider the history of how various agents of U.S. empire and communities living in U.S. territories and colonies have thought about and interacted with nature and state power at large and small scales.
Instructor: Sears
Hum/H 5

Byzantium and the Legacy of Rome (c. 300-1453)

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
When the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great founded his city, Constantinople, as a new Rome in 330 CE, he could hardly have dreamed that his great empire would endure for yet another millennium. During this long millennium, the Roman Empire, also known to historians as the Byzantine Empire, underwent profound cultural, religious, political, and legal transformation. This course will examine that history from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 to the Ottoman conquest in 1453. It will focus on the changing meaning of ‘Rome,’ both within the empire and without, the dynamic cultural production of the Roman people, and how the political and legal history of the Empire was intertwined with both Western Europe and the Islamic world. The emphasis of the course will be on learning to read and analyze primary sources—histories, hagiographies (the lives of saints), poetry, and legal texts—and how to deploy these sources as evidence in historical writing.
Instructor: Morgan
Hum/H 6

History of Modern Biotechnology

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
Over the past two centuries, human uses of life as technology have intensified tremendously. During this period, hybridizations of industrial capitalism and university life science yielded a cornucopia of innovations, altering essential features of life and engendering unusual life forms. Modern biotechnology, epitomized in entities like in vitro cell cultures and transgenic organisms, rearranged nature’s order while simultaneously driving scientific efforts to understand living nature. This course pores over ways in which users of biotechnology refashioned life, as well as the serendipitous ramifications these undertakings had. Ultimately, the history of biotechnology reflects the protean place of humanity in nature, providing an unsettling perspective on the instability of our current ways of life.
Instructor: Kollmer
Hum/H 10

Medieval Europe: The Problem of Violence

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first, second terms

This course will explore how people understood violence in Europe between ca. 500 and ca. 1400 AD. It will focus on the various norms that governed the use of violence in a period when the right of free people to carry and use weapons was considered self-evident. Working through primary sources, students will explore the relationship between violence and vengeance, the law, central authority and public order, religion, emotions, public ritual, and economics. As they go along students will consider whether violence can coexist with or even promote stable, ordered societies, or whether it by definition creates disorder. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Brown
Hum/H 11

Love and Death: Using Demography to Study the History of Europe from 1700

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first, third terms

Demographic events-births, marriages, deaths-have always been highly responsive to changes in the local environment. Decisions about when to marry, how many children to have, or what kind of household to live in have always been closely correlated to decisions people take in other areas of their lives and, as a result, can tell us a great deal about the economic, social, and cultural worlds people inhabit. This course examines differences in demographic trends in Europe across space and time, from 1700 to the present, as well as existing explanations for these differences, including political economic factors, social and cultural norms, biology and disease environments. Some topics include: the demographic effects of war, industrialization, and urbanization; changes related to the emergence of reliable contraceptive technologies; changes related to the expansion of economic opportunities for women; the effects of government policies on demographic decisions. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Dennison
Hum/H 13

Brave New Worlds: Race, Human Rights and the Age of Discovery

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms

This course traces the origins of modern racism and, perhaps surprisingly, of human rights advocacy itself, to a seminal moment in global history sometimes called the Age of Discovery. At this time, two small European kingdoms, Spain and Portugal, first conducted trade and conquest in Atlantic Africa, the Americas, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans, forging the world's first truly global empires. We study the legacy of racism and humanitarianism in eye-witness accounts, maps, images and other materials attesting to Spain's seminal encounters with the Americas.

Instructor: Wey-Gomez
Hum/HPS/H 14

History of the Atomic Bomb

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms
It took less than seven years from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 to the ignition of the first atomic bomb in the summer of 1945 and its subsequent use against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this course, we will take a deep dive into this development, which forever changed the dynamics of global politics — as well as our views on science. In addition to the Manhattan project, the course will also cover the nuclear weapon programs in other countries, in particular Nazi Germany. We will place the rapid development of the war years in a wider historical context, from the first anticipations of atomic weapons to the rise of “big science” in the postwar years. In this way, we will be able to address the pressing ethical questions (and their continuing relevance to scientists today) in a nuanced, historically informed way.
Instructor: Blum
Hum/H 16

Environment and Environmental Expertise in Premodern World

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
This course offers an introduction to environmental history with a particular focus on the field's intersection with the histories of science and knowledge. We will discuss how historians write about the environment in the past, how they approach the interactions of states and societies with the environment, as well as examining what and how people in the past knew about their environments. The course will stretch chronologically and geographically and cover a broad range of topics from Graeco-Roman Antiquity in the Mediterranean, through the early modern Atlantic world, to the early nineteenth-century United States. We will examine people's interactions with climate, forests, waterways, wildlife, and natural disasters, to name just a few themes, and learn how societies understood, described, and managed the natural world in premodern times.
Instructor: Falkowski
Hum/Pl 17

Science and Pseudoscience

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
Why do some people believe in Bigfoot, crystal healing, or red-light therapy? What distinguishes science from pseudoscience? This course begins with classic cases of pseudoscientific belief, from homeopathy to conspiracy theories, and moves on to issues like climate denialism and vaccine misinformation. But our goal isn’t to laugh at bad ideas. We ask deeper questions: Why should science be trusted? What does the replication crisis reveal about the scientific method? How do corporate interests—like those of Big Pharma or fossil fuel companies—shape what gets published, funded, or believed? How should non-experts evaluate scientific claims in a world of information overload? We’ll explore philosophical tools for evaluating evidence, identifying biases, and distinguishing reliable authority from manufactured doubt.
Instructor: Shi
Hum/H/HPS 18

Introduction to the History of Science

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms

Major topics include the following: What are the origins of modern Western science, when did it emerge as distinct from philosophy and other cultural and intellectual productions, and what are its distinguishing features? When and how did observation, experiment, quantification, and precision enter the practice of science? What were some of the major turning points in the history of science? What is the changing role of science and technology? Using primary and secondary sources, students will take up significant topics in the history of science, from ancient Greek science to the 20th-century revolution in physics, biology, and technology. Hum/H/HPS 10 may be taken for credit toward the additional 36-unit HSS requirement by HPS majors and minors who have already fulfilled their first-year humanities requirement and counts as a history course in satisfying the first-year humanities breadth requirement. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Blum
Hum/VC 20

Ecological Media

9 unit (3-0-6)   |  third term
In this class, we will explore the meanings and challenges of environmental communication. Engaging an interdisciplinary approach to ecology, we will address the nuances of environmental perception, the complexities of ecosystems, and the difficulties of translating scientific knowledge into persuasive storytelling, particularly in relation to politicized issues like climate change. The course will pair theories from the environmental humanities with diverse examples of ecological media: from literature, comics, and film to interactive art and video games to GIS mapping and data visualization. We will consider the affordances and limits of these cultural forms and ask what they can contribute to environmental debates.
Instructor: Earhart
Hum/En 21

Monsters and Marvels

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms

Marvels flourish at the boundaries of literary invention, religious belief, and scientific inquiry, challenging assumptions about natural processes and expected outcomes. From Grendel, the monstrous foe of Beowulf, to Satan, Milton's charismatic antihero, this seminar examines the uses of the marvelous in a variety of texts and genres, including Shakespearian drama, medieval romance, and early travel-writing. Readings may include Beowulf, Marie de France, Chaucer, John Mandeville, Shakespeare, Milton. Not offered 2026-27.

Instructor: Jahner
Hum/En 22

Inequality

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
This class studies a sample group of social hierarchies and explores whether they are natural or artificial, real or perceived, just or unjust. Topics from past years have included covid-19 vaccine inequality; IT worker inequality; happiness inequality; animal inequality; and inequality between humans and generative AI chatbots. We will treat the idea of inequality not as an abstract concept but as a heuristic question that can help us compare and analyze concrete readings.
Instructor: Haugen
Hum/En 23

Literature and Medicine

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term

The relationship between patients and doctors, the ill and the well, involves a constant exchange of stories. In this course we will look more closely at the relationship between medicine and narrative through a selection of fiction, essays and poems that investigate the interplay between doubt and diagnosis, the idea of the case study, the problem of medical responsibility, and the language of pain and illness. Authors covered may include Sontag, Mantel, Conan Doyle, Freud, Woolf, Dickinson, Ishiguro and Shelley.

Instructor: Gilmore
Hum/En 24

The Scientific Imagination in English Literature

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term

This course considers three periods of major scientific development-the Renaissance, the nineteenth century, and the modern period- to explore the influence new ideas, discoveries, and theories had on the imagination of English writers. We will look at the early modern interplay between magic and science, Romantic and Victorian debates about evolution, and the twentieth-century advent of modern physics as we confront consistent tropes like the mad scientist, the scientist-hero, and the problem of uncertainty. Authors covered may include Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bacon, Shelley, Darwin, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, Auden, McEwan, and Stoppard. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Gilmore
Hum/En 25

The Human Animal

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term

European literature has long been a testing ground for radical new ideas which have come to shape our basic understanding of what it means to be a thinking, speaking and perhaps even autonomous human being. The question of what - if anything - makes us different from animals was debated from numerous points of view: including talking dogs, philosophizing women, bestial men, humanlike beasts, and other creatures that defied the conventions of the time. This course explores some of the key literary texts that shaped this debate and pays careful attention to their cultural environments. Selected readings from Cervantes, La Fontaine, Swift, Rousseau, Buffon, Aikin, and Wollstonecraft, among others. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Holland
Hum/En 26

What Is Imagination?

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

Albert Einstein once said that imagination is everything, and even more important than knowledge. This course invites you to think about - and use - your imagination as we explore how the act of imagining has been viewed over time in the service of memory and creativity, in both the arts and the sciences. Readings will focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and will include Hume, Moritz, Kant, Novalis, Hoffmann, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Holland
Hum/En 27

Black Literature and Politics in the Twentieth Century United States

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
Spanning roughly The Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement this course will look at a range of Black writing from that time, and ask what it tells us about both the specificity of Black art and thought as well as politics in the United States. In a country constituted by the histories of slavery and segregation, work during this period reckoned with that history while imaging new forms of freedom. Alongside literature, the course will consider how literature was in dialogue with visual arts and music, the period’s political movements, and look at the relationship between race, gender, class, colonialism, and other questions of social difference.
Instructor: Bartell
Hum/En 28

Telling Time in American Modernism

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
This course will explore modernist literature's relationship to time. We will identify the methods that modernist narratives use to characterize the experience of lived time, or temporality, such as stream of consciousness, non-linear storytelling, and narrative omissions. We will ask: what challenges does temporal experience pose to clock time and, more broadly, historical time? The course will emphasize the influence of new technologies on modernist representations of time and space, including rural and urban space, and modernism's engagement with changing attitudes regarding race, gender and sexuality. Students will learn about key movements within American modernism, including the Harlem Renaissance, and may opt to analyze modernist literature's relationships to other genres, including music and visual culture. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Masterton
Hum/En 29

Dream Narratives

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

Dream narratives reveal as much about cultural beliefs and superstitions as they do about techniques of narration and interpretation. This course investigates key developments in the literature on dreams and dream interpretations with examples drawn from the Renaissance through the beginning of the nineteenth century. Selected readings from Boccaccio, Descartes, Calderón, Shakespeare, and Diderot, among others. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Holland
Hum/En 30

Medieval Networks

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first, second, third terms
Language and literature in the Middle Ages runs like a network between different political entities sharing and exchanging new cultural protocols. In Medieval Networks, we will look at how English medieval literature is the product of a series of contacts with the Celts, Germanic mercenaries, Norse Vikings, Latin scholars and French fashion all for the making of a new kind of literature. Medieval England is always in flux. No period remains stable, forms and genres change. In this class, you will watch the English language, and its literary fashions, change in startling ways when in contact with other languages. Two ideas will be fruitful when thinking about this class: translatio or “translation,” the literal movement of an object—usually a precious relic—from one location to another, and rejuvinatio or “rejuvenation,” the act of making an old image or idea fresh by moving it from an expected literary locale to an unexpected one. We will watch not only how authors dealt with a changing language, in a variety of seemingly stable genres, like lyric poetry, narratives and drama, but also how they adopted to new trends, often from foreign sources, and altered old ones, to create exciting new texts. Our reading will include a Danish king with monster problems (Beowulf) to a supernatural knight crossing the threshold into King Arthur’s court looking for a fight (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), as well as selections from a new kind of love lyric and comical dramas rooted in the Bible. By the end of the course, you will not only be comfortable reading Old and Middle English literature, but you’ll also discover how enjoyable older literature can be.
Instructor: Matthews
Hum/En 31

Understanding Modern Poetry

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
This course offers an introduction to reading and writing about modern poetry in English. At the heart of the course is the practice of close reading—learning to pay careful attention to words, sound, and form—but we will also work to situate these poems in their literary, social, and historical contexts. Students will develop the skills to make sense of so-called “difficult” poetry and discover why that difficulty is so often worth the effort. Poets covered may include Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Mina Loy, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Hart Crane, and Gwendolyn Brooks.
Instructor: Schneiderman
Hum/En 32

The Origins of Science Fiction: Fictions about Science

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
This course considers a set of classic, often-adapted nineteenth-century literary works that helped to pave the way for modern "science fiction," and that simultaneously supplied us with many forms and terms we still use for imagining the monstrous and the horrifying. Why does the depiction of scientific work and scientists so often shade into the terrain of nightmare in fiction? What separates the "mad scientist" from the ambitious scientist? How and why do the literary inventions of the past still resonate in the present? Works considered may include: Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Coming Race. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Gilmore
Hum/En 33

Modern Metamorphoses

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term

Narratives of metamorphosis have traditionally used their dramatic subject matter-a radical change of form-as a vehicle for social criticism. This course explores the ways in which twentieth-century writers experiment with the concept of metamorphosis to take on the most pressing political and social issues of their day, including slavery, women's rights, and critiques of capitalist excess. Readings to include Kafka, Garnett, Orwell, Tawada, and Erpenbeck. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Holland
Hum/En 34

Literature and Deception

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term

In this course, we will be considering lying and other types of deception from the point of view of literature and philosophy, with two main goals in mind: 1) to compare cultural practices of deception at various times in European history and 2) to think in general terms about the ability of a literary text to convey truth and falsehood. Can a fictional text be "true" in any meaningful sense, such as a political one? Or, as many people have thought over time, is it more accurate to think about literature as a beautiful lie? Readings will include the legend of Till Eulenspiegel as well as texts by Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Diderot, and those relating to the Ossian controversy. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Holland
Hum/En 35

Masterworks of Contemporary Latin American Fiction

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms

This course studies Latin America's most influential authors in the 20th and 21st centuries, with a focus on short stories and novellas produced by the region's avant-garde and "boom" generations. Authors may include Allende, Bombal, Borges, Garcia Marquez, Quiroga, Poniatowska, and Vargas Llosa. All readings and discussions are in English. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Wey-Gomez
Hum/En 36

American Literature and Culture

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second, third terms

Studies of American aesthetics, genres, and ideas from the birth of the nation to the present. Students will be introduced to the techniques of formal analysis. We will consider what constitutes evidence in relation to texts and how to develop a persuasive interpretation. Topics may include Nature's Nation, slavery and its aftermath, individualism and the marketplace, the "New Woman," and the relation between word and image.

Instructor: Weinstein
Hum/En 37

Welcome to Dystopia

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
This course surveys a number of literary destinations you would never want to visit in real life: places with near-unsurmountable political and environmental threats where individuality is crushed and where happy endings are hard to come by. Given that life in a dystopia is so awful, what makes this genre of fiction so popular? And what can fictional dystopian societies teach us about our own? We will look for answers to these questions in the work of some of the greatest writers of the past century, including Franz Kafka, Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Cormac McCarthy, and Ursula K. Le Guin, among others.
Instructor: Holland
Hum/H 38

Leonardo da Vinci & Co.: How to Understand Technological Invention in the Long Renaissance

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
How do we understand technology? How do we define technological invention? How does technological innovation circulate? This course explores major technological achievements across different historical contexts, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean world between the 14th and 17th centuries. It also examines processes of technological transfer among Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. We will investigate how technological innovations emerged, circulated, interacted, and shaped societies-as well as new ideas in science. Analyzing the concept of invention will be especially useful in critically assessing traditional narratives of rupture-such as the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution-as well as narratives of continuity in the development of scientific knowledge and technology. Students will take part in collaborative projects, including 3D-printing historical tools and machines. They will also work with sources from special collections in libraries, museums, and archives. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Zanetti
Hum/En 39

The Ethics of Friendship

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
Is there such a thing as an ideal friend? What responsibilities do friends have to each other? How can friendship negotiate differences, and what are its limits? To explore these enduring questions, we will read texts that both theorize the nature of friendship and put these theories to the test. As our course material will draw from philosophy and literature, we will also consider how these disciplines each approach the pursuit of knowledge. Authors read may include Aristotle, Cicero, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Austen, and Shelley.
Instructor: Morstein
Hum/Pl 40

Right and Wrong

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first, second terms

This course addresses questions such as: Where do our moral ideas come from? What justifies them? How should they guide our conduct, as individuals and as a society? What kind of person should one aspire to be? Topics the course may deal with include meta-ethical issues (e.g., What makes an action right or wrong? When is one morally responsible for one's actions? How should society be organized?) and normative questions (e.g., Is eating meat morally acceptable? What should we tolerate and why? What are society's obligations toward the poor?). In addition, the psychological and neural substrates of moral judgment and decision making may be explored. The course draws on a variety of sources, including selections from the great works of moral and political philosophy (e.g., Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Hobbes's Leviathan, Kant's Groundings for a Metaphysics of Morals, and Rawls's A Theory of Justice), contemporary discussions of particular moral issues, and the science of moral thought. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Staff
Hum/Pl 41

Knowledge and Reality

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
This course introduces students to philosophical thinking about the nature of reality and the limits of knowledge. It is structured around three topics of perennial philosophical importance: 1. Skepticism. How much can I know about the world? Can I be certain of anything? Is it possible that most of what I believe is false? 2. The Mind-Body Problem. What is the nature of the mind? How is the mind related to the body and to the physical world more generally? 3. Personal Identity. What is the nature of a person? Am I the same person today that I was yesterday and will be tomorrow? If so, what makes me the same person? Readings will include both classical and contemporary sources such as Plato, Zhuangzi, Descartes, Locke, and Russell.
Instructor: Hitchcock
Hum/En 42

Climate Fiction

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
Climate change is a narrative as well as a planetary crisis-it transforms the stories we tell about our world. In this class, we will look at works of fiction that speculate on the shifting relationships between humans, society, and the environment, offering both hopeful and sobering possibilities. Through classic and more recent works of climate fiction, or cli-fi, we will explore the dynamics of resilience and vulnerability, hope and fear, that inform the contemporary environmental imagination. Expect readings from authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Ernest Callenbach, Octavia E. Butler, Amitav Ghosh, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Earhart
Hum/En 43

Nature Writing

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
Cultural theorist Raymond Williams once said that nature is "perhaps the most complex word in the language." And yet, when we think of nature, certain images probably come to mind-from oceans and rivers to forests and mountain peaks. Here, we will engage a long arc of environmental writing in the United States to investigate the conventions and contradictions of the "natural world." We will consider Transcendentalist and early environmentalist literature, as well as contemporary critiques of the nature-society divide, particularly as it relates to questions of race, class, and gender. Authors include Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Lauret Savoy, among others. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Earhart
Hum/Pl 44

Philosophy Through Science Fiction

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

This course will provide a broad introduction to philosophy using examples from science fiction to make abstract philosophical problems vivid. Topics may include: time travel and the reality of the past and future; teleportation and what makes someone the same person over time; fictional tales of extended deception and Cartesian skepticism; futuristic utopias and the question of what make a life good; the moral status of aliens and animals; intelligent robots and the relation between mind and body; parallel universes and the philosophical foundations of quantum physics.

Instructor: Sebens
Hum/Pl 45

Ethics and AI

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
How do we reconcile the possibilities of modern machine learning with ethical and moral demands of fairness, accountability and transparency? This course will cover several challenges at the interface of algorithms and human values. By exploring existing debates on algorithmic bias, explainable AI and data ownership, students will be exposed to the relevance of ethical systems of thought to modern social questions.
Instructor: Eberhardt
Hum/En 46

Race and Labor in Modern American Literature

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
Mass immigration and the abolition of slavery transformed the nature of the American workforce in the 19th century. Since then, American labor has been a key arena in which racial division and solidarity have been experienced and negotiated. How did racial hierarchies structure the everyday encounters and struggles of American workers? How did literary writers make sense of these tensions while imagining political alternatives? This class will provide a historical overview of how the interplay between race and labor was contested in 20th-century American literature. Authors covered may include Claude McKay, H. T. Tsiang, Muriel Rukeyser, Carlos Bulosan, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Li
Hum/H 47

Religion in America, from the Reformation to the Rapture

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
This course is an introduction to the study of American religion, with a focus on how different groups and communities have practiced their faith in different eras. Starting with an overview of Reformation-era battles over doctrine and ritual, the course then considers Native, African, and European roots of colonial American religious culture; the legal and political history of church and state after the Revolution; the place of women in major religious traditions; the emergence in the U.S. of immigrant communities of believers representing the world's major religions in the 19th and 20th centuries; and contemporary battles over religion in public. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Juster
Hum/VC 48

Ways of Seeing

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term

"The knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet," wrote artist László Moholy-Nagy in 1928. "The illiterate of the future," he warned, "will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen." Almost a century later, this pronouncement rings as true as ever in a world so profoundly shaped not just by photography but also films, advertisements, and video games, cartoons and comics, molecular graphics and visual models. In this course we will explore how visual culture shapes our lives and daily experiences, and we will learn to find wonder in its rich details. In doing so, we will develop the visual literacy that Moholy-Nagy envisioned: essential skills in reading, analyzing, discussing, and writing about visual materials and their circulation through the physical and virtual networks that structure our world.

Instructor: Jacobson
Hum/VC 49

Seeing Race

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
From colorblind casting to racial profiling, visual culture is at the heart of contemporary conversations about race and racism. We are living in a moment where representations of racial differences are both highly visible and highly contested in art, popular culture, and mass media across the US and in many other parts of the world. Rather than treat these representations as reflections of reality, this course takes a critical look at the relationship between visual culture and the production of (racialized) knowledge and situates this relationship in a broader global and historical context. We will consider how images shape our 'common sense' ideas about race and its intersections with ability, gender, and sexuality, and explore how race informs what - and how - we see. In addition to reading landmark literature by scholars like Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Richard Dyer, Edward Said, and Jodi Byrd, students will engage with artists, filmmakers, and activists who work to dismantle what Nicholas Mirzoeff (2023) calls "white sight" or the distinctive ways of seeing that characterize white supremacy. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Staff
Hum/VC 50

Introduction to Film

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first, third terms

This course examines the historical development of film as a popular art and entertainment medium from the 1880s to the present, with a focus on the American and European contexts. Students will learn how to watch a film - how to pay attention to significant visual details and to the ways films construct meaning from the language of images - and will develop the skills to write fluently about what they see. The course covers some of the most influential genres and movements from the earliest actuality films, through the French New Wave, to the Disney/Marvel Universe. Films covered may include short comedies from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, M , It Happened One Night , The Seven Samurai , The Battle of Algiers , and Black Panther .

Instructor: Jurca
Hum/VC 51

Icons and Iconoclasm

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term

How does something - an image, a person, a thing, an idea - become iconic? Drawing from the worlds of art and film, advertising and PR, science and technology, politics and propaganda, this course explores what makes certain people, places, and things "icons." To do so, we will first deploy a range of methods for closely analyzing images as signs and symbols, including the practice art historians term "iconology." We will then examine histories of how objects have circulated through culture - from newspapers and magazines to postcards, jpegs, and memes - and thereby become ubiquitous features of everyday experience. Finally, we will consider iconoclasm, the destruction of icons, and the beliefs and logics behind powerful interdictions against visual representation. Students will leave the course with a stronger understanding of image power as well as foundational tools of visual and media literacy. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Jacobson
Hum/VC 52

Color

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
This course will take us from the ancient caves of Indonesia to the caravan trades of Medieval Sahara, the mines of early modern Afghanistan, the codices of colonial Mexico City, the gardens of the Incan empire, the alchemical recipes of China, and, finally, the pink "rouge" makeup on the French queen Marie Antoinette's cheeks. We will examine color across geographies and cultures in history with a thematic approach, exploring each week a different facet of color as it relates to visual culture, art, and architecture: from environmental cultivation and extraction to alchemy, magic, chemistry, technology, commerce, anthropology, literature, physics, medicine, psychology, race studies, culture, and aesthetics. This class will emphasize visual analysis, the reading of primary and secondary sources, and the crafting of original research and writing. We will have on-site visits to the Huntington Museum, Library, and Botanical Gardens, and discussions with contemporary color-makers and artists.
Instructor: Linden
Hum/H 53

The Early Islamic World (c. 600-1453)

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
In the middle of the seventh century, the tribal followers of a new religion called Islam burst out of the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and rapidly overwhelmed the armies of the ancient Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. By the middle of the next century, they had conquered much of the western Eurasian world, from the Central Asian steppe to the Straits of Gibraltar. The Muslims' extraordinary achievement bound together lands formerly ruled by two ancient empires-the Roman and Persian-and transformed the cultures, societies, economies, and laws of the diverse peoples now subject to their rule. This course explores the political, social, and institutional history of the Islamicate world from its origins in seventh-century Arabia to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It will pay particular attention to relations between Islam and the other cultures of the Mediterranean as they are revealed in episodes such as the conquest of Spain, the Crusades, and repeated conflicts with the Byzantine Empire. It will also explore internal political, cultural, and religious conflict among the followers of Islam themselves.
Instructor: Morgan
Hum/En 54

Introduction to English Renaissance Poetry

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first term
This course will provide an introduction to English poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries, with an emphasis on exploring how poems served as vehicles to make sense of the political and social contradictions of early modern England. How do Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare's sonnets blend themes of unrequited desire with political critique? How does Hester Pulter develop early ideas of physics through her lyrics, like imagining the apocalypse through the dissolution of atoms? Other authors covered in the course may include Katherine Philips, John Donne, Margaret Cavendish, and John Milton.
Instructor: Li
IC/Hum 55 abc

Integrated Core: Introduction to Energy Humanities

3 units (1-0-2)   |  first, second, third terms
Prerequisites: concurrent enrollment in other integrated core classes and instructor permission.
This sequence of humanities courses will introduce students to political philosophy and ethics, historical research, and literary analysis, in conjunction with themes treated in other parts of the integrated core. Key topics will include the ethics of space travel, the history of Caltech energy research, and contemporary climate fiction. All three terms together count as the equivalent of a single 9-unit first-year humanities class; students may choose their other first-year humanities class from any area of humanities instruction.
Instructor: Jahner
Hum/En 56

Special Topics in Humanities/English

Units are by arrangement   |  Offered by announcement
This course will count as a first-year humanities course in English. It is usually taught by new or visiting faculty. This course is not repeatable. Limited to 15 students. See registrar's announcement for details.
Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers
Hum/H 57

Special Topics in Humanities/History

Units are by arrangement   |  Offered by announcement
This course will count as a first-year humanities course in history. It is usually taught by new or visiting faculty. This course is not repeatable. Limited to 15 students. See registrar's announcement for details.
Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers
Hum/Pl 58

Special Topics in Humanities/Philosophy

Units are by arrangement   |  Offered by announcement
This course will count as a first-year humanities course in philosophy. It is usually taught by new or visiting faculty. This course is not repeatable. Limited to 15 students. See registrar's announcement for details.
Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers
Hum 59

Special Topics in Humanities/Visual Culture

9 units (3-0-6)   |  offered by announcement
This course will count as a first-year humanities course in visual culture. It is usually taught by new or visiting faculty. This course is not repeatable. Limited to 15 students. See registrar's announcement for details.
Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers
Hum 75

Selected Topics in Humanities

Variable units   |  offered by announcement

A course on a specialized topic in some area of the humanities, usually taught by new or visiting faculty. Recent offerings have included courses on film-making, poetry writing, speculative fiction, and the difference between humans and other animals. The course may be re-taken for credit except as noted in the course announcement. Class size is normally limited to 8-15 students. See registrar's announcement for details.

Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers
Hum 80

Frontiers in the Humanities

1 unit (1-0-0)   |  offered by announcement

Weekly seminar by a member of the Caltech humanities faculty or a visitor to discuss a topic of their current research at an introductory level. The course can be used to learn more about different areas of study within the humanities. For those interested in (or who become interested) in pursuing a second option in the humanities, the course will introduce students to the kinds of research carried out by members of the humanities faculty and help them find faculty advisers.

Instructor: Staff
Hum 105

Topics in French Literature

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
Prerequisites: L 103 abc or equivalent.

Hum 105 and Hum 116 are taught in alternate years. Topics may include the 20th-century major French novels; French modern theatre; conflicting memories of the second world war; coming of age novels; the French Muslim identity. Conducted in French. Students who write papers in French may enroll in this class as L 105. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Orcel
Hum 115 abc

Hispanic Cultures in Film and Literature

9 units (3-0-6)   |  first, second, third terms
Prerequisites: L 112 abc or equivalent.

Offered concurrently with L 115. This course introduces students to narrative film and literature from the Hispanic world, with an emphasis on the hero figure. It also takes up hybridization and transculturation in the Americas, specifically in Mexico, Peru, and Cuba, as well as film and narratives of Spain from the Civil War to the present. Conducted in Spanish. (a) Basics of Hispanic films and narratives, and their socio-cultural roots (b) Hybridization and mestizo cultures in the Hispanic world (c) The last century in Hispanic film and narrative. Each term can be taken independently. Students who write papers in Spanish may enroll in this class as L 115.

Instructor: Garcia
Hum 116

Topics in French Culture

9 units (3-0-6)   |  second term
Prerequisites: L 103 abc or equivalent.

Offered concurrently with L 116. Hum 105 and Hum 116 given in alternate years. The course focuses on contemporary France. Topics may include France and the European Union; political parties and elections; family life; social protection; religion; education; media and technology. Conducted in French. Students who write papers in French may enroll in this class as L 116.

Instructor: Orcel
Hum 119

Selected Topics in Humanities

Variable units   |  offered by announcement

This is an advanced humanities course on a specialized topic in some area of the humanities. It is usually taught by new or visiting faculty. The course may be re-taken for credit except as noted in the course announcement. Limited to 15 students. See registrar's announcement for details.

Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers
L/Hum 150

Japanese Literature in Translation

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

Read and examine the selected classical Japanese literature and its traditions from 7th to 11th century from the perspectives of women, anti-heroes, and religions. A comparative analysis is applied to many genres such as oral traditions, performing arts, films, picture scrolls, comics, and anime to understand how Japanese think, and how Shinto and Buddhism have formed their ways of life, ethics, and concepts of life and death. Read selected portions of "The Kojiki", "Manyoshu", "The Tale of Ise", "The tale of the Bamboo-Cutter" (The Tale of the Moon Princess), and "The Tale of Genji." Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Hirai
L/Hum 151

Japanese Literature in Translation from Medieval to Pre-modern Japan

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

Read and examine the selected Medieval to pre-modern Japanese literature and its traditions from 11th to 18th century from the perspectives of women, anti-heroes, and religions. A comparative analysis is applied to many genres such as oral traditions, performing arts, films, picture scrolls, comics, and anime to understand how Japanese think, and how Shinto, Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, as well as the social systems, have formed their ways of life, ethics, and concepts of life and death. Read "The Princess Who Loved Insects" from "The Tsutsumi-Chunagon Monogatari", selected chapters of "The Tale of The Heike", "The Konjyaku Monogatari", and "Otogizoshi". Also read "The Double Suicide at Sonezaki" and "The Double Suicide at Amijima."

Instructor: Hirai
L/Hum 152

Classical French Literature in Translation

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

This course introduces students to French theater and fiction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from Molière's comedies (The Misanthrope, Tartuffe), and Racine's tragedy Phaedra to the novels of Madame de Lafayette, Marivaux, and Laclos. Topics include the aesthetics of neoclassical theater, the rise of the novel, historical and social contexts (the reign of Louis XIV, libertinage, Rousseauism), and writers' creative development. Covers the period 1643-1789. Conducted in English, but students may read the French originals. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Merrill
L/Hum 154

The Modern French Novel in Translation

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

This course introduces students to the French novel of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the realist masterpieces of Stendhal (The Red and the Black), Balzac (Old Goriot), and Flaubert (Madame Bovary/Sentimental Education) to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Topics include the literary representation of reality, historical and social contexts (the Bourbon Restoration, 1848 Revolution, the Third Republic), and the decline of the French nobility. Covers 1814-1918. Conducted in English, but students may read the French originals.

Instructor: Merrill
L/Hum 162

Spanish and Latin American Literature in Translation

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term

This class is an introduction to the literary masterworks of the Hispanic tradition from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Readings and discussions are in English, but students may read Spanish originals. Not offered 2026-2027.

Instructor: Staff
Hum 169

Chinese Cinema

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
Offered concurrently with L 169. This course offers an overview of Chinese-language films from the early twentieth century to the present. We will view a selection of cinematic masterpieces and place each film in its historical context, considering both the aesthetic form and socio-cultural content of the film. Lecture topics include the Golden Ages of early Chinese cinema, Hong Kong New Wave, the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, Taiwan New Cinema, the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, Chinese animation, Asia-Pacific co-productions, and sci-fi movies. Students who write papers in Chinese may enroll in this class as L 169. This course can be repeated for credit when the course content changes. Not offered 2026-2027.
Instructor: Wang
Hum 174

Topics in Masterpieces of Chinese Writing

9 units (3-0-6)   |  third term
Prerequisites: instructor's permission.

Offered concurrently with L 174. Reading and discussion of representative Chinese written work throughout Chinese history, including philosophical texts and literary works in different genres. Students are expected to examine these works in light of their sociopolitical and historical contexts. Students who write papers in Chinese may enroll in this class as L 174. This course can be repeated for credit when the course content changes.

Instructor: Wang
Published Date: July 28, 2026