🐯 Princeton Humanities Council unofficial reading list, fall 2026
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European Cultural Studies
Landmarks of European Identity ECS 302
- ✔️ Neuromancer by William Gibson (my highlights)
- Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Mephisto by Klaus Mann
- Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
- Dr. Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend by Thomas Mann
Wandering Utopias: Writing & Rewriting Reality ECS 309
- Friday & Robinson: Life on Speranza Island by Michel Tournier
The Modern Period ECS 319
- ✔️ A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (my highlights)
- The Fourth World by Diamela Eltit
- The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
- The Burrow by Franz Kafka
- Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
Revisiting Paris ECS 327
- Kiffe Kiffe demain by Faïza Guène
- Cannibale by Didier Daeninckx
- Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano
East European Literature ECS 354
- The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister by Olesya Khromeychuk
- Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future by Svetlana Alexievich
- The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
- The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
- Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz
- The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz
- Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertész
- The Appointment by Herta Müller
- The Door by Magda Szabo
- The Trial by Franz Kafka
- Satantango by László Krasznahorkai
Romanticism & the Age of Revolutions ECS 368
- Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey
- The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2A: The Romantics & Their Contemporaries by David Damrosch et al.
19th-Century European Art: Painting & Literature in 19th C. France and England ECS 450
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Masterpiece by Émile Zola
- The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac
- Like Death by Guy de Maupassant
- Villette by Charlotte Brontë
The Age of Democratic Revolutions ECS 487
- The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin by Dan Edelstein
- ✔️ The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89 by Edmund S. Morgan (my highlights)
- The Freedoms We Lost: Consent & Resistance in Revolutionary America by Barbara Clark Smith
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
- The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature & the French Revolution by Dan Edelstein
- When the King Took Flight by Timothy Tackett
- A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkin
- The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal
Humanistic Studies
The Byzantine Empire HUM 204
- ✔️ Byzantium: A Very Short Intro. by Peter Sarris
- The Social History of Byzantium by John Haldon
- A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales & Surprising Facts from History’s Most Orthodox Empire by Anthony Kaldellis
- Secret History by Procopius
- Alexiad by Anna Komnene
- Three Byzantine Military Treatises by George T. Dennis
- Accounts of Medieval Constantinople: The Patria by Albrecht Berger
- Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions by Elizabeth Jeffreys
Classical Mythology HUM 212
- Persians by Aeschylus
- Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
- Agamemnon by Aeschylus
- The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus
- The Eumenides by Aeschylus
- Antigone by Sophocles
- Oedipus the King by Sophocles
- Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
- Electra by Sophocles
- Alcestis by Euripides
- Medea by Euripides
- Hippolytus by Euripides
- Hecuba by Euripides
- Electra by Euripides
- The Trojan Women by Euripides
- Iphigenia among the Taurians by Euripides
- The Bacchae by Euripides
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation by Trzaskoma et al.
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Theogony by Hesiod
- Work & Days by Hesiod
- Ajax by Sophocles
- The Women of Trachis by Sophocles
- Philoctetes by Sophocles
- The Trackers by Sophocles
- Library by Apollodorus
- Fabulae by Hyginus
- ✔️ Jason & the Golden Fleece by Apollonius of Rhodes
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture I: Literature & the Arts HUM 216
- The Satyricon by Petronius
- A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia by Curd & McKirahan
- The Oresteia by Aeschylus
- Questions on Love and Charity: Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, Questions 23–46 (Rethinking the Western Tradition) by Thomas Aquinas
- Aristophanes: Frogs and Other Plays by Stephen Halliwel
- The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
- Poetics by Aristotle
- Confessions by Saint Augustine
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version
- The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter
- ✔️ The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
- Selected Political Speeches by Cicero
- The Divine Comedy by Dante
- Cyclops by Euripides
- The Histories by Herodotus
- The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer
- The Epistles of Horace
- Hannibal’s War by Livy
- The Nature of Things by Lucretius
- Poetry by Marie de France
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- Republic by Plato
- Symposium by Plato
- Plato: The Last Days of Socrates
- Euthyphro
- ✔️ Apology
- Crito
- Phaedo
- Four Comedies: The Braggart Soldier; The Brothers Menaechmus; The Haunted House; The Pot of Gold by Plautus
- If Not, Winter: Fragments by Sappho
- The Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
- The Annals by Tacitus
Great Books in Buddhism HUM 229
- The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha
- Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma
- Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side: A Guide to the Lotus Sūtra by Lopez & Stone
- The Life of Milarepa by Tsangnyön Heruka
- The Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche
East Asian Humanities I: The Classical Foundations HUM 233
- ✔️ Analects by Confucius (my highlights)
- Zen Sourcebook: Traditional Documents from China, Korea & Japan by Addiss et al.
- The Complete Writings by Zhuāngzï
- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
- A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the 21st Century by Charles Holcombe
Identity in the Spanish-Speaking World HUM 251
- I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchú
- Love After Death by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Pompeii HUM 253
- The Complete Pompeii by Joanne Berry
- The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost & Found by Mary Beard
- The World of Pompeii by Dobbins & Foss
- Pompeii & Herculaneum: A Sourcebook by Cooley & Cooley
Violence HUM 264
- Righteous Dopefiend by Bourgois & Schonberg
- After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives by Edward W. Said
- Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman
- Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability & Political Violence in Turkey by Salih Can Aciksoz
- Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul by Deniz Yonucu
- Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War & the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani
- The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens by Bernard E. Harcourt
- Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon
- States of Terror: Begoña Aretxaga’s Essays
- Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America by Hansen et al.
- The Land of Open Graves: Living & Dying on the Migrant Trail by Jason De León
- Violence in War & Peace by Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois
- The Notion of Family by LaToya Ruby Frazier
- Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory & Storytelling in Palestine by Rana Barakat
- Leave If You Can: Migration & Violence in Bordered Worlds by Amelia Frank-Vitale
- Do Muslim Women Need Saving? by Lila Abu-Lughod
- ✔️ The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- Illuminations: Essays & Reflections by Walter Benjamin
The Anthropology of Lying & Deception HUM 294
- How to Do Things with Words by J.L. Austin
- The Modernity Bluff: Crime, Consumption & Citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire by Sasha Newell
- Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money by Jacques Derrida
- Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City by Rihan Yeh
- Mistrust: An Ethnographic Theory by Matthew Carey
- Mules & Men by Zora Neale Hurston
- Defacement: Public Secrecy & the Labor of the Negative by Michael Taussig
Musical Theatre & Fan Cultures HUM 340
- Fandom in Musical Theatre by Jessica Hillman-McCord
- John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower
The Bible as Literature HUM 390
- The Literary Guide to the Bible by Alter & Kermode
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version
Translation, Migration, Culture HUM 400
- Migrant Brothers: A Poet’s Declaration of Human Dignity by Patrick Chamoiseau
- Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli
- In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Translations by Brian Friel
Between Selves: Living Letters from Antiquity to the Present HUM 416
- Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka
- The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
- ✔️ The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (my highlights)
- Heroides by Ovid
- The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder
- The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
- Selected Letters by Seneca
19th-Century European Art: Painting & Literature in 19th C. France and England HUM 451
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Masterpiece by Émile Zola
- The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac
- Like Death by Guy de Maupassant
- Villette by Charlotte Brontë
20th-Century French Narrative Prose: Reading Proust HUM 524
- In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, The Prisoner & Finding Time Again by Marcel Proust
Modern Art: Science & Its Fictions in the Long 19th Century HUM 577
- ✔️ Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- ✔️ Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
- ✔️ The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (my highlights)
Journalism
Writing about Science JRN 349
- The Perpetual Now: A Story of Amnesia, Memory & Love by Michael D. Lemonick
- Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
International News: Migration Reporting JRN 449
- The New Censorship: How the War on the Media is Taking Us Down by Ayala Panievsky
Medieval Studies
The Byzantine Empire MED 205
- ✔️ Byzantium: A Very Short Intro. by Peter Sarris
- The Social History of Byzantium by John Haldon
- A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales & Surprising Facts from History’s Most Orthodox Empire by Anthony Kaldellis
- Secret History by Procopius
- Alexiad by Anna Komnene
- Three Byzantine Military Treatises by George T. Dennis
- Accounts of Medieval Constantinople: The Patria by Albrecht Berger
- Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions by Elizabeth Jeffreys
Europe from Antiquity to 1700 MED 211
- The West: A New History by Grafton & Bell
- Confessions by Augustine
- On the Freedom of a Christian by Martin Luther
- ✔️ The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (my highlights)
- Letters of Abelard and Heloise
- The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf
Judaism, Christianity & Islam: Their Emergence in Antiquity MED 246
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha
- The Qur’an
The New Testament & Christian Origins MED 251
- The Jewish Annotated New Testament by Levine & Brettler
- Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers by Louth & Staniforth
- The New Testament: A Historical Intro. to the Early Christian Writings by Ehrman & Méndez
The Nature of Old English: Select Old English Literature MED 315
- A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse by Richard Hamer
- The Unstill Ones by Miller Oberman
- The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen
- Intro. to Old English by Peter S. Baker
Middle High German Literature: An Intro. MED 508
- Erec by Hartmann Von Aue
- Nibelungenlied
- Middle High German Verbs by Scott Shay
- An Introduction to Middle High German by Jones & Jones