Teacher Resources:
Sample Assignments Written by Teachers

Want to get a sense of how other teachers have made use of the readings in The New Humanities Reader? Want to get a better idea what assignments teachers actually hand out in class look like? The links below will take you both to extended assignments and briefer assignments that teachers of The New Humanities Reader have used successfully.

And, if you have an assignment that's worked well for you and you'd like to share it with other teachers using The New Humanities Reader, please send your assignment on to us: we'd be happy to have the opportunity to consider publishing your work here. Just send your assignment or assignments as an attachment to us at NHR Sample Assignments.

Abram, David. "The Ecology of Magic." The Spell of the Sensuous.

Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Honor and Shame." Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories.

Armstrong, Karen. "Does God Have a Future?" A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Boyarin, Jonathan. "Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eighth Street Shul." Thinking in Jewish.

Chua, Amy. "A World on the Edge." Wilson Quarterly.

Dillard, Annie. "The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century's Measure." Harper's.

Faludi, Susan. "The Naked Citadel." The New Yorker.

Gertner, Jon. "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness." The New York Times Magazine.

Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime," The Tipping Point.

Gould, Stephen Jay. "What does the dreaded 'E' word mean anyway? A Reverie for the Opening of the New Hayden Planetarium." Natural History.

Greider, William. "Work Rules." The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.

Guinier, Lani. "Second Prom and Second Primaries: The Limits of Majority Rule," Boston Review.

Johnson, Steven. "The Myth of the Ant Queen." Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software.

Kaldor, Mary. "Beyond Militarism, Arms Races, and Arms Control." Talk delivered at the Nobel Peace Prize Symposium, December, 2001.

Krakauer, Jon. "The Alaska Interior" and "The Stampede Trail." Selections from Into the Wild.

Loffreda, Beth. "Selections from Losing Matt Shepherd: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder."

Nafisi, Azar. Excerpt from Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Nussbaum, Martha. "Women and Cultural Universals," Sex and Social Justice.

O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." The Things They Carried.

Pollan, Michael. "Playing God in the Garden," The New York Times Magazine.

Postrel, Virginia. "Surface and Substance." The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness.

Relman, Arnold S. and Marcia Angell. "America's Other Drug Problem: How the Drug Industry Distorts Medicine and Politics." The New Republic.

Sacks, Oliver. "The Mind's Eye." The New Yorker.

Schlosser, Eric. "Global Realization," Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

Scott, James C. "Behind the Official Story." Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts.

Stille, Alexander. "The Ganges' Next Life." The New Yorker.

Stock, Gregory. "The Enhanced and the Unenhanced." Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future.

Stout, Martha. "When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday." The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness.

Tannen, Deborah. "The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue." The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue.

Tenner, Edward. "Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead." Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences.

Thurman, Robert. "Wisdom." Infinite Life.

Frans de Waal. "Selections from The Ape and the Sushi Master: 'Survival of the Kindest' and 'Down with Dualism,'" The Ape and the Sushi Master: Reflections of a Cultural Primatologist.

Back to top