the 1968 student protests, and evolved into the course it is today. The humanities sequence The "General Honors" course was instituted in 1920, formed around a list of "Great Books" created by professor John Erskine, who would go on to create the core curriculum at the University of Chicago. The course was discontinued in 1929, but was resurrected three years later as the "Colloquium in Important Books". The Great Books curriculum was officially incorporated into the Core in 1937 with the inauguration of the humanities sequence, which consisted of "Humanities A", a first-year survey of Western literature and philosophy from classical antiquity to the end of the 18th century, and "Humanities B", a sophomore elective that covered the visual arts and music. Structured after "Contemporary Civilization", "Humanities A" expected students to read one book per week, a workload that placed unique burdens on freshmen. "Humanities A" would eventually morph into the modern "Masterpieces of Western Literature" course, while "Humanities B" split into "Music Humanities" and "Art Humanities" in 1941. The list of books read in "Literature Humanities" would constantly shift over time; the first female author to be included in the curriculum was Jane Austen, with the addition of Pride and Prejudice to the syllabus in 1985, two years after Columbia College became coeducational, while the first Black author to be incorporated into "Literature Humanities" was Toni Morrison, whose Song of Solomon was added in 2015. Changes to the Core In the later half of the 20th century, many US universities moved towards a more elective system. Some historians see the change as a response to social activism—the civil rights, feminist, and various other social movements saw the Core Curriculum as an inflexible way to promote the canon of "dead white males" and as a failure to acknowledge the essential contributions of other global cultures. Others interpret it as a concession to increasing calls for earlier specialization to prepare students for post-graduate scientific and professional studies. The Extended Core was created in 1990 following a report from professor Wm. Theodore de Bary in which he urged the university to expand the Core to include topics in non-Western cultures, in line with its original mission to facilitate discussion in contemporary issues. It consisted of a requirement that students take two courses in non-Western cultures from a list drawn up by the Committee on the Core Curriculum, and was soon renamed to