The University of Chicago Summer
Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange I - 10

Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange I - 10


Course Code

HUMA 14000 10

Course Description

This course in the Reading Cultures sequence is devoted to the analysis of "collection" as a form of cultural activity. Reading texts such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, and Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men that offer collections of stories in lieu of a single tale, we consider the extent to which culture comes into being through the accumulation, assemblage and transmission of narratives.

In other words, students in this course learn how to think about narrative and storytelling in terms of the production, organization and control of culture. Who gets to collect and to tell the stories of a culture, we ask, and what difference does their identity make to cultural representation?

Course Criteria

This course is only open to incoming UChicago transfer students. Please visit the Summer Session Incoming Transfer Students page to apply.

This course must be taken alongside HUMA 14100, Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange II, as well as an afternoon writing course that runs August 3-September 11, 2026 (no class September 7).

Instructor(s)

Valerie Levan

Session

Session 3

Course Dates

August 3rd - August 21st

Class Days

Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri

Class Time

9:00 am - 11:00 am

Core Course

Part of UChicago Core Curriculum

Modality

In-Person

Other Courses to Consider

These courses might also be of interest.

  • Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange II - 20
    Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange II - 20

    This course in the sequence of Reading Cultures considers the centrality of movement, migration and travel to the study of culture.

    Turning to texts such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place and Tomás Rivera's And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, we ask how cultures have retained their coherence, historically, under conditions of migration, diaspora and violent or enforced movement.

    We also consider the ways that cultures themselves travel and change, and analyze the ways that language and narrative function as mediums of cultural movement and transmission.

    Residential