Insistent Change: Columbia’s Core Curriculum at 100

Coeducation and the Core

1983 marked the entry of female students into Humanities A and CC as Columbia College finally became a coeducational college. As the staffs of the CC and Humanities A prepared for the arrival of female students, the question arose whether and to what degree syllabi should include texts by women authors. Some instructors argued against the idea of adding women authors merely because they were women. Some feared that a shift to "representation" of identity groups would threaten some standard of literary quality; more feared that such a move – once it started and every group wanted its own authors – would destroy the curriculum's discursive coherence.

The Woman Question

The critical evaluation of Columbia general education was an important part of a University-wide process of consciousness-raising as can be seen in the documents below.

In this teaching guide, prepared for the Committee on the Woman Question, historian Felice Lifshitz points out the profound blind spots to women in the curriculum.

Women on the Syllabus

In 1985, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice became the first female-authored text to appear on the Lit Hum syllabus. Sappho and Madame de Lafayette were added the following year. In Contemporary Civilization, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor Mill, Rosa Luxemburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Alexandra Kollontai and Hannah Arendt were all listed on official syllabi as "suggested" or "additional" readings through the late 1980s. But because of a lack of uniformity across CC sections that began in the 1970s, some instructors assigned several women authors while others assigned none.