Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Surveying 300+ years of poetry in America, from the Puritans to the avant-garde poets of this new century, the course covers individual figures (Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Williams, Hughes), major poetic movements (Firesides, Modernist, New York, Confessional, L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E) and probes uses of poetry across changing times. Who, and what, are poems for? For poets? Readers? To give vent to the soul? To paint or sculpt with words? Alter consciousness? Raise cultural tone? Students will read, write about and also recite American poems.

Just as a pine or a willow is known from the shape of its branching, so human culture can be understood as a growth-pattern, a ramifying of artistic, intellectual, and political action. This course tries to find the center of the Modernist movement (1872-1927) by studying the literature, music, and painting of the period, to see whether some congruence of effort in all these media can be found. By looking at the range of artistic production in a few key years, we come to know this age of aesthetic extremism, perhaps unparalleled in Western history.

In an age of mechanical - and now virtual - reproduction, we have lost sight of the basic visual unit that structures our experience of the book: the opening. Employing old and new technologies, this course focuses on medieval books, their decoration and their readers in the Middle Ages (ca. 300-1500), when the book as we have known it, along with allied institutions, such as the university itself, first came into being.

A study the poetry of Virgil, his interaction with Homeric and other Greek poetry, and with attention to the literary, artistic, and musical traditions that flow from his work, throughout the history of western literature. Major focus on the Aeneid in its artistic, historical and political contexts, its reception by Dante, Milton, Eliot, and others. Readings of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, and on their place in the traditions of European pastoral and lyric, from Spenser to Tennyson to Heaney. Aims to provide an understanding of important literary and cultural achievements of the last two millennia. All readings in English.

A study of five famous pieces of music, both as timeless works of art and as moments of cultural history. Close attention is given to techniques of musical listening, and to the details of the first performance of each work, with a consideration of the problems involved in assembling such a picture. Works studied are Beethoven, Symphony no. 9; Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique; Stravinsky, Le sacre du printemps; Handel, Messiah; Monteverdi, Orfeo. The course concludes with the first performance of a new work especially commissioned for this course.

Great works of fiction become universal and remain able to surprise, delight, inform, or otherwise overwhelm current readers. What gives them this power? How do writers become adjectives like Babelian, Bellovian, or Kafkaesque? This course moves through the twentieth century through the literature of a multilingual people, with works in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian, Italian, and English. We see how variously Jewish writers interpret modern history and their own situation within it.

During much of the 20th century, the Broadway musical stood at the center of American culture, producing tunes and tales that became the hits of their day. It commented-wittily, satirically, relentlessly-on the ever-shifting social and political landscape, with subjects ranging from new immigrants to poverty, power, westward expansion, and issues of race. This course explores the musical artistry and cultural resonances of a cluster of iconic Broadway musicals on stage and screen, including Shuffle Along, Show Boat, Stormy Weather, The Cradle Will Rock, Oklahoma!, and Pacific Overtures. Readings focus on primary sources drawn from Harvard's illustrious Theatre Collection.

This course is designed to enable students to analyze a wide range of Japanese cultural creations-including the traditional Noh theater, modern Japanese paintings, and contemporary anime-by illustrating the influence of Buddhism both on their forms and at their depths. The first part of the course is a study of major Buddhist philosophy and its impact on Japanese literature. The second part observes Buddhist ritual practices and their significance for Japanese performing arts. The last part traces the development of Japanese Buddhist art, and considers the influence of Buddhism on diverse contemporary popular Japanese art media.

What makes a story prevail through time? We will visit the most beloved, enduring works in the Chinese tradition and discover cultural icons from the Handsome Monkey King to the Nobel prize-winning novel Soul Mountain. We will explore the cultural trends and themes that have been the stuff of popular Chinese novels, TV, cinema, and thought. This course offers a comprehensive, yet unique and unconventional window into Chinese tradition and modernity, past and present.

A study of the emergence of a secular literary tradition in the Russian imperial period. Focus on cultural institutions (religion, art, literature), issues of the aesthetic and social critique, and problems of interpretation for contemporary and modern readers. Analysis of novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.

Examines the visual culture of the Ottoman Empire straddling three continents (Asia, Europe, Africa), together with cross-cultural artistic interactions with Western and Asian Islamic courts (Safavid Iran, Mughal India). Ottoman urbanism, architecture, miniature painting and decorative arts studied in their socio-political contexts that informed their production and reception. The selective fusion of Ottoman-Islamic, Byzantine and Italian Renaissance elements in the codification of a distinctive visual tradition that helped processes of multicultural empire building and identity formation is analyzed. Earliest representations of the East by European artists working in the "Orientalist" mode are also considered.

This course introduces a unique dimension of Chinese modernity: amorous engagement in fiction and lived experience, its discursive and visual representations, and its institutional implementation (gender, marriage, family, law, nation/state, etc.), censorship, and transgression. It examines how the modern lure of free will and emancipated subjectivity drove Chinese to redefine terms of affect, such as love, feeling, desire, passion, sexuality, loyalty, dedication, revolution and sacrifice. It also looks into how the moral, legal and political consequences of affect were evoked in such a way as to traverse or fortify consensual boundaries and their manifestations.

Examines the relationship between literature and medicine through creative texts that question understandings, shatter binaries, and reconceptualize notions of normality/disability, health/disease, and life/death. Pays particular attention to the work of physician-writers and narratives by patients.

Examines German and Austrian art and literature of the Turn-of-the-Century (c. 1880-1920) with a focus on the dominant topics of sexuality, gender, and language that are articulated theoretically in the work of Nietzsche and Freud and insistently exemplified thematically and formally in both the art and literature of the age. The examination of this period, these theories, this art, and this literature serves the primary purpose of developing skills in the interpretation of literary texts and the plastic arts, as well as exploring the possibilities and productivity of bringing these arts and the interpretation of them to bear on one another.

The early comedies, tragedies, and histories, considered in the context of the origins of the English stage and the conventions of Elizabethan drama. Particular attention paid to Shakespeare's development as a dramatist, and to poetic expression, thematic design, stagecraft, and character portrayal in plays.

This class familiarizes students with popular films produced during crucial junctures in the modern history of the United States, from the Great Depression and World War II through the Cold War, McCarthy era, and the 1960s. More specifically, we will study how Hollywood's dream factory responded to dramatic challenges that states of crisis and emergency posed to the founding ideals of our democracy. We will look at the wide range of functions that commercial fantasy productions assumed, how they at times legitimated and bolstered the status quo, but at others also interrogated, exposed, and even indicted social inequity. Course films provide a representative sampling of classical American features from 1932 to 1969, including Scarface, It Happened One Night, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, High Noon, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Manchurian Candidate, and Easy Rider.

As thinking beings we consider the limits of human potential and wonder what is the worst. The Nazis obsess us because they were masters of extremity who brought to the world unprecedented violence, destruction, and murder. They were also masters of propaganda who engineered sophisticated techniques of mass manipulation; in this endeavor cinema and modern media assumed a seminal role. This course considers why films proved to be so essential to the Hitler regime and so captivating to German audiences of the Third Reich. It also reflects on the continuing allure of Nazi sights and sounds for contemporary mass culture.

A critical investigation of the genre's enduring popularity, beginning with Austen's satirical Northanger Abbey and three novels credited with providing narrative templates for contemporary romances (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights). We will then read twentieth-century revisions of these works (Rebecca, Wide Sargasso Sea, Bridget Jones's Diary). Topics: the female writer and reader/consumer of literature; moral warnings against romance, "sensation," and titillation; the commodification of desire; Harlequins; the relationship between high culture and low.

This course introduces major works, genres, and waves of East Asian cinema from the silent era to the present, including films from Mainland China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. We will discuss issues ranging from formal aesthetics to historical representation, from local film industries to transnational audience reception. This course does not assume prior knowledge of East Asian culture or of film studies, but rather seeks to provide students with a basic understanding of modern East Asian cultural history through cinema, and with an essential toolkit for analyzing film and media, including narrative, cinematography, editing and sound. In addition to critical approaches, students are strongly encouraged to creatively respond to course materials by collaborating on their own short films, beginning with the illustration of film terms in the first two weeks and culminating in the Oscar-like "Golden Monkey Awards."

A short history of the Bible. Questions addressed include how the Bible became a book, and how that book became sacred; the advantages and burdens of a sacred text; Jewish-Christian disputations; how interpretive efforts helped create and reinforce powerful elites; how that text became the object of criticism; and how the Bible fared after the rise of criticism.

Examines major forms of folklore (e.g., myths, legends, epics, beliefs, rituals, festivals) and the theoretical approaches used in their study. Analyzes how folklore shapes national, regional, and ethnic identities, as well as daily life; considers the function of folklore within the groups that perform and use it, employing materials drawn from a wide range of areas (e.g., South Slavic oral epics, American occupational lore, Northern European ballads, witchcraft in Africa and America, Cajun Mardi Gras).

The course is an introduction to the fundamental concepts of Islam and the role that religious ideas and institutions play in Muslim communities around the world. Its main concern is to develop an understanding of the manner in which diverse notions of religious and political authority have influenced Muslim societies politically, socially and culturally. Through specific case studies of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, the course considers the role played by ideologies such as jihad, colonialism, nationalism, secularism, and globalization in shaping the ways in which Muslims interpret and practice their faith today. The course briefly considers the contemporary situation of Muslim minorities in Europe and the United States. The course, through on-campus and on-line options, allows those enrolled to engage with students from all over the world.

This course explores the arts and cultures of Andean South America from the Pre-Columbian through Colonial periods. Emphasis is on the place of objects-textiles, ceramics, sculptures, and books-in the construction of meanings, identities and values as these changed over time. Readings are drawn from archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnology, art history and original sources. Students will work with Pre-Columbian and Colonial Andean artifacts in the collections of the Peabody Museum.

The Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians call the "Old Testament" and Jews call the "Bible," are the basis of both Judaism and Christianity. In this course we shall survey how this work of literature, through interpretation and re-interpretation, spawned two different cultural systems. Topics to be surveyed include: canon and prophecy; exegesis and Midrash; Shabbat and Sunday; temple, synagogue, church; the Oral Torah and the Logos; sin and righteousness; messiah and redemption.

Can we trace an "authentic" Jewish identity through history, as distinct from many "cultures" of Jews in the multitude of times and places in which they have lived? This course provides an overview of major trends in Jewish civilization from biblical times through the early modern era (to approximately the 17th century), with this and related questions in mind, by engaging in close readings of traditional Jewish sources on the one hand and seeking contextual understandings of Jews and Judaism within various non-Jewish settings on the other.

Modern society is unthinkable without the photograph, and yet we rarely have occasion to ponder what photographs are, what they do, and how they do it. In this course, we will consider photography from its origins to the digital era, paying particular attention to its role as an engine of belief in various cultural domains. Our goal will be to understand more incisively how photographs define and shape relations between their subjects and their viewers.

Explores themes of journey and quest in world literature and the interplay between their literary and religious dimensions. Considers the relationship between physical and interior journeys, home and exile, quest and peregrination. Emphasis will be on careful reading of, and thoughtful essays on, texts such as Gilgamesh, the Bible, Quest of the Holy Grail, Walden, and works by Tolkien, Dante, Teresa of Avila, Ashvaghosha, Hesse, Basho, Shusako Endo, Charles Johnson, Virginia Woolfe, and Cormac McCarthy.

Psychiatry is one of the most intellectually and socially complex and fraught fields of medicine today, and history offers one powerful strategy for better understanding why. Topics covered in this course include the invention of the mental asylum, early efforts to understand mental disorders as disorders of the brain or biochemistry, the rise of psychoanalysis, psychiatry and war, the rise of psychopharmacology, the making of the DSM, anti-psychiatry, and more.

When the natives of Medieval Rus (later Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians) accepted Orthodox Christianity in the 10th century, their nature-based paganism gave way to a powerfully sensual belief system that made good use of the visual and the verbal to prepare these newest Christians for the coming Apocalypse and Last Judgment. We investigate this transformation from the conversion of Saint Vladimir and the excesses of Ivan the Terrible through the Time of Troubles and the modern turn of Peter the Great. The class features close analysis of architecture, icons and frescoes, ritual, folklore, literature, and history to understand this shift in worldview, including the role of women. Special attention is devoted to the ways in which Medieval Rus is portrayed in film, opera, and ballet.

This course examines "popular culture" as a modern, transnational phenomenon and explores its manifestation in Chinese communities (in People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and North America) and beyond. From pulp fiction to film, from "Yellow Music" to "Model Theater", from animations to internet games, the course looks into how China became modern by participating in the global circulation of media forms, and how China helps in her own way enrich the theory and practice of "popular culture".

What was Communism, and how did it shape the intellectual life of East Central Europe after World War II? How do artists and writers counter the ideological pressures of the state? This course examines how the intense political pressures of invasion, occupation, and revolution shape a country's cultural life and are shaped by it in turn. We look at Czechoslovakia's literature, drama, film, and music from the 1948 Communist takeover, through the Prague Spring and Soviet invasion of 1968, to the 1989 Velvet Revolution, a hallmark of the peaceful overthrow of Communism in Europe. We consider works by Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Vaclav Havel; films of the Czech New Wave (Milos Forman, Vera Chytilova, Jiri Menzel); clandestine publishing and underground art; and theories of political dissent under authoritarian regimes.

This course focuses on the arts of sound practiced by Muslims and on debates associated with "music" in a range of Islamic contexts. The purposes are to understand from a musically informed perspective a set of interrelated musical practices that cut across regions (especially South and West Asia); and how different ideologies, philosophies, and texts-associated with Islam locally, nationally, and internationally-shape local understandings and constructions of sound. The content of classes will include lectures, discussions, live musical demonstrations and careful review of audio-visual materials. Students will also have the opportunity to learn to play or sing Persian music.

An examination of the biblical book of Job along with related texts, ancient, medieval, and modern, that allow us to establish the literary and philosophical traditions in which Job was composed and the literary and philosophical legacy it has left. Particular focus on the ways the texts play off one another in literary form and expression and in their treatment of such themes as divine justice, human piety, and the nature of the divine-human encounter.

What happened in the last half century in European culture and politics? How can we read history through culture, and culture through history? This undergraduate lecture survey offers a general overview of European history since 1945, with a primary focus on some of the greatest works of postwar European film and literature. We will interrogate major trends in cinema and literature (e.g., expressionism, existentialism, neo-realism, minimalism, the New Wave, the realist political dramas of the 1970s, and so forth); in conjunction with new modalities of political discourse concerning communism, democracy, colonialism, and sexuality.

The purpose of the course is to investigate the evangelical tradition from its origins in the religious revivals of the eighteenth century to its contemporary role in American culture, society and politics. Notwithstanding its often stereotypical characterizations, the evangelical tradition is surprisingly eclectic and complex. A central objective of the course, therefore, is to explore that complexity in relation to gender, ethnicity, social class, and political culture. The course will make use of primary and secondary materials to shed light on evangelical theology, spirituality, and cultural expression in America and in a global context.

The Enlightenment creates modern ideas of the self, a just society, and reformed institutions. The course explores six interrelated developments: (1) taking nothing on authority, a spirit of critique examines knowledge, religion, and government; (2) the spread of general knowledge to populations of increasing literacy; (3) debates about human nature-naturally selfish or sympathetic, altered by race or gender, innate or learned? (4) new institutions for equity and justice, even using violent revolution; (5) efforts supporting abolition, women's rights, and religious toleration; (6) self-consciousness in philosophy, art, and psychology. Thinkers include Pope, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, Rousseau, Burke, Lessing, Gibbon, Smith, Kant, Burney, and Wollstonecraft.

This course addresses the representation of religion in Japanese popular culture, with emphasis on anime, manga, and film. The course examines depictions of religious figures, themes, and human dilemmas in contemporary popular culture as a gateway to understanding the significance of religion in Japanese society and history.

A thematic and comparative exploration of questions of identity in Athens of the fifth to fourth centuries BCE and Rome of the 1st cent. BCE to 1st cent. CE, emphasizing connections with our own society and world-view. How did the ancient Athenians and Romans, and sub-groups of ancient Athenians and Romans, imagine connections and differences between themselves and others peoples? How far did the societies of classical identity have concepts of race, ethnicity, citizenship, nations or gender identities and sexualities that correspond at all closely to our own? Why do these issues matter to us, and what can we learn from these ancient societies?

Why are women well represented in some fields of scientific study but not others? Do gender beliefs influence the content of scientific knowledge? How is gender encoded in the practices and norms of science? This course explores the intersection of gender and science from Bacon's seventeenth century call to raise a "masculine" science to the present. Topics include: girls, boys, and science education; gender and technology; women in the science professions; bias and objectivity in science; and gender and science in literature, film, and popular culture.

A commonsensical survey of rational theories of politics comprised of: (1) individual choice, (2) group choice, (3) collective action, and (4) institutions. The underlying theme is that politics may be described and understood as rational, goal-seeking behavior by citizens, politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups in various settings. Students are encouraged to think deeply about current events, history, and public life generally, as well as to analyze the politics of private life--in families, clubs, firms, churches, universities, even Harvard Houses--since private politics, like public politics, may be understood in terms of rational behavior. Instruction is by lecture, small-group section interactions, and experiments.

This course explores the statistical reasoning underlying everyday life: learn to inform ordinary decisions with statistical understanding and critically assess information reported in the news. Topics include the implications and validity of medical studies; the interpretation and common pitfalls of surveys and election polls; the motivation for diversifying stock portfolios; the strategies behind online dating websites; and the optimal design for wine tastings. The course also unravels fallacies and paradoxes that often mislead. Students will develop the ability to identify, appreciate, and question the frequent appeals to statistical principles encountered in real life.

There is the mathematics behind statistics, and then there are the concepts - without a proper grasp of which you will all too likely fall prey to confusion, error, and even outright deception. This course will teach you a bit about the math, and a lot about the concepts. Take it and achieve enlightenment about such topics as the difference between probability and risk, the nature of statistical inference, and the connections between correlation and causation.

Health and medical care pervade every aspect of our lives. This course uses quantitative methods (graphical analysis, algebra, data analysis) to examine issues related to health, disease, and systems for delivering health care. Topics to be covered include differences in health between rich and poor countries, differences in types of medical care and who receives it, and the political context for reforming health care policy. Techniques for analysis will be developed and demonstrated in class and section. The course uses examples from a variety of international settings, but focuses mainly on health and health care in the US.

What we eat determines our well-being every day, our mental and physical performance, and our long-term health and disease prospects. Understanding how to optimize our diet requires in-depth knowledge of the impact of foods and nutrients on our body. In this course we will evaluate scientific research on nutrition and health. We will discuss diet recommendations in the U.S. and abroad, how nutrition policies are created and how food policies can generate controversies. Learn how to evaluate nutrition paradigms and how to separate myths from science. Acquire skills to assess your own diet and make relevant nutrition choices to maintain long-term health.

Criminal trials have served throughout history to enforce revolutionary change, to impose conformity and stifle dissent, or, alternatively, to advance democracy. Students examine trials in their historical and moral context to weigh such issues as who can prosecute; can crimes be defined after the fact; can punishing speech be justified? Cases include Socrates, Louis XVI, General Dyer, the Soviet purges, Nuremberg, Eichmann, American cold-war hearings, and today's international tribunals and truth commissions.

This course will examine the ways in which a concept of God has informed Western moral discourse trying to help students engage the literature as they consider why one might think "if there is no God, all is permitted" and why one might think if there is a God, human moral achievement is impossible.

What is the best way to live a fuller and more ethical life? Concretely what should we do to begin to live in a more flourishing and inspiring way? Questions such as these were at the heart of philosophical debates in China. The answers that classical Chinese thinkers developed in response to these questions are among the most powerful in human history. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, they should be studied and taken seriously by anyone who cares about ethics, politics, and the ways to live life more fully.

An examination of moral questions that arise in the context of social protest in the US during the 20th century, including the central question of political philosophy: How can political authority be justified? After studying the Attica prison revolt of 1971, we will consider the following questions: Is there an obligation to obey the law? What, if any, are the moral limits to this obligation? Can civil disobedience be justified, and does it always need to be? Texts include classic excerpts from Plato, Hobbes, Rawls, and Marx.

A sustained discussion of the obstacles and the opportunities that the established traditions of Western philosophy, social theory and the humanities present to those who see time as real, history as open, novelty as possible, and social and cultural transformation as imperative. The central theme is how thought deals with the creation of the new. Special attention to three European philosophers -- Hegel, Marx, and Bergson, as well as to those strands in contemporary philosophy and social thought that bear most closely on our concerns. No prerequisites other than willingness to consider a wide range of problems, materials, and ideas.

Philosophers and politicians alike struggle to set the terms for living a good life in a world of conflict. How do court counselors and professional philosophers speak truth to power? How do rulers - and citizens like ourselves - weigh the competing demands of liberty and order, self-fulfillment and self-restraint? Moving from Plato and the Bible to responses to Hitler's Mein Kampf, this course will examine particularly rich examples of relations between the pursuit of wisdom and the pursuit of power, from the extremes of conflict (the executions of Socrates, Jesus, Sir Thomas More) to the opposite dream of the philosopher king.

Disease and medicine have generated ethical dilemmas that have challenged patients and doctors for centuries, from abortion and euthanasia to informed consent and compulsory treatment. Although moral philosophy can clarify the relevant issues, resolution often depends on the details of the specific clinical and social contexts. Taking a historical approach to medical ethics, this class explores how the moral discourse in health care has changed over time in order to understand how social factors influence the persuasiveness of moral arguments. The focus will be on medical practice in the United States in the twentieth century.

Ethical relations among people have always implied (whether directly or covertly) a preferred connection between people and nature. This course offers a critical and historical analysis of selected texts that identify human beings as a distinctively ethical species within the natural world, with particular attention to the emergence of normative theories that rank people with and against other natural beings. Topics include: definitions of wilderness and property; social hierarchies based on "natural" differences; agriculture, modern science, industrialization, and consumer economies as historic redefinitions of the human place within nature; animal rights; and environmentalism and its critics.

What is the power of a story? For several thousand years Adam and Eve were the protagonists in the central origin myth of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds. That myth was the arena for ethical reasoning about transgression and innocence, sexuality, gender roles, labor, suffering, and death. Jointly taught by History of Art and Architecture and English, our course focuses on this enigmatic story and its spectacular elaborations in theology, philosophy, literature and art. Above all, looking closely at some of the greatest achievements of European art and literature- from Durer, Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Milton's Paradise Lost- we will compare the possibilities of the verbal and visual arts in portraying human being.

What should be the role of money and markets in our society? Are there some things that money should not be able to buy? For example: Should people be permitted to buy sex, votes, babies, citizenship, or college admission? What about buying and selling the right to pollute, procreate, immigrate, discriminate, or to hunt endangered species? Should we use markets to allocate health care, education, and military service?

Molecules form the basis of heredity, govern how our bodies develop, allow us to respond to changes in our environment, and carry our thoughts. This course explores the roles of molecules through case studies of our bodies' messengers, modern drugs, and the future of medicine. Examples include sexual development, metabolism, diabetes, nerve transmission, psychiatric disease, infectious disease, cancer, aging and stem cells. Students will connect to lecture material in discussion section through hands-on activities and role-playing scenarios.

Developmental Psychology explores, first, how universal human capacities arise in ontogenesis and, second, how people come to have their unique suite of skills and personalities. First, the origins and development of space perception, mathematical capacity, moral judgments, and concepts of objects, agents, and social relations are studied in relation to two larger time scales: biological evolution and historical/cultural change. Second, the course looks at individual differences in IQ, executive functioning, and social relationships. The interplay between psychological and biological levels of analysis in accounting both for universal development and for individual differences is discussed throughout.

The course emphasizes neural, cardiopulmonary, endocrine, and reproductive human biology, with a focus on important public health issues. Students will explore critical determinants of their own health as well as the health of diverse communities in rich and poor countries. Topics include the normal functioning of the human body and its responses to infection, injury, and environmental stress. We will discuss the relative power of diagnosis and treatment of disease (medicine) versus primary prevention of disease (public health) in promoting global health. Activities include lectures, demonstrations, 3 guided laboratories, and a directed term paper.

An introduction to the sciences of mind, including foundational concepts from neuroscience, evolution, genetics, philosophy, and experimental methods, and specific topics such as perception, memory, reasoning and decision-making, consciousness, child development, psychopathology, personality, language, emotion, sexuality, violence, morality and social relations.

Forests cover nearly one third of the earth's land surface area. They provide a vast range of products and services to human civilization, and are important for economic and cultural reasons. This class will provide students with an introduction to the biology and ecology of forest ecosystems. An overarching theme throughout the course will be to understand how climate change will affect forests and the ecological services we derive from them, and in turn how forests can affect their own growth environment and climate change itself.

Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, claim thousands of lives and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage each year. Moreover, changes in Earth's climate are raising sea level, changing precipitation patterns, and likely causing an increase in the occurrence of damaging storms, putting more of our increasing exposed global population at risk. In this course we develop an understanding of these natural hazards from an earth science perspective, and examine several case studies to assess their catastrophic impacts. Given our scientific understanding of these phenomena, we examine ways to assess and forecast future natural disasters, and to mitigate the adverse impacts to our societies. Sections will emphasize the use of GIS technology to measure the impacts of natural hazards.

The story of Earth from the inception of the universe at the Big Bang to the revolution in planetary function and capability associated with the rise of human civilization. The aim of the course is to place human beings in a universal and planetary context, and to see the steps in planetary evolution as an essential perspective on how we relate to Earth today. Topics covered include the Big Bang, origin of the elements, formation of minerals, origin of the solar system, formation of planets, climate regulation, origin of life, co-evolution of ocean, atmosphere, solid earth and biosphere, development of plate tectonics, the modern Earth as an interconnected system, and the human era and its consequences for the planet. Current environmental problems can then be considered in a planetary context. Finally we consider whether Earth may be a microcosm reflecting laws of planetary evolution that may be common to a class of planets throughout the universe, or alternatively may be a low probability accident.

We study how our understanding of time and of related issues, such as the predictability of the future, have evolved over the past three centuries. We start with Newtonian mechanics, which envisions a universal time, symmetric between past and future. This leads to the concept of a clockwork universe. We then see how developments in the 19th and 20th centuries destroy this view of time. In the 19th century, the distinction between past and future emerges from considerations of statistical processes. In the 20th century, the theory of relativity forces fundamental changes in the concept of time. Time ceases to be universal and becomes entangled with space and gravity. Quantum mechanics limits the predictability of the future and introduces verified effects so weird that Einstein wrote of them, "No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this."

This course views life through multiple lenses. Quantum physics involves uncertainty and randomness, and yet paradoxically it explains the stability of molecules, such as DNA, that encode information and are critical to life. Thermodynamics is about the universe's ever increasing disorder, and yet living systems remain ordered and intact. This course will examine how these physical laws underpin life and how life itself has diversified since originating 3.5 billion years ago.

Science is like well-woven, ever-expanding fabric, designed to (un)cover Nature's secrets. This course emphasizes the strong connections between subfields of science, showing it as the never-ending and greatest detective story ever told, with evidence always the arbiter. These characteristics are exhibited in the semi-historical treatment of three themes: unveiling the universe, the earth and its fossils, and the story of life.

The course provides an historical account of the evolution of the modern energy system, from early dependence on human and animal power, to the subsequent use of wind and water, to more recent reliance on fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - and even more recently to the development of the ability to tap the energy contained in the nucleus. It will discuss the important historical advances in the applications of energy, notably in the production and distribution of electricity and in the transportation sector - where oil-derived products provide the motive force for cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes. It will highlight the energy related problems we confront today, with particular emphasis on air pollution, on the threat of global climate change, on the hazards of nuclear proliferation, and on the risks to national security imposed by our increasing reliance on imported sources of oil. It concludes with a discussion of options for a more sustainable energy future.

This course is a collaboration between world-class chefs and Harvard professors. Each week, a chef will lecture about some aspect of gastronomy. This lecture will introduce and motivate a lecture about the science of soft materials by a Harvard professor. The course will cover the basic concepts in the science of soft materials, providing a solid understanding of their properties and behavior. All food is made of soft materials, and cooking relies on many of their fundamental properties. The course will also include laboratory work that uses concepts of cooking to understand and motivate experimental measurements on soft materials.

This course will examine future climate change in the context of Earth history, and then consider various strategies for what might be done to deal with it. The likely impacts of continued greenhouse gas emissions will be explored, emphasizing the scientific uncertainties associated with various predictions, and how this can be understood in the context of risk. In the latter third of the class, the question of how to mitigate climate change will be discussed, including an examination of various options for advanced energy systems.

The course provides an overview of the energy resources that we use to sustain our global economies, and explores the impact of these activities on our environment. We address the full life cycle of each energy resource, including its origins, methods used to explore for and exploit it, how it is used in our economies, and the environmental impacts of these activities. Topics include coal, petroleum (conventional and unconventional), nuclear power, geothermal systems, and renewable energy options (hydro, tidal, solar, wind power). Lectures and labs will introduce students to data and methods used in these energy and environmental sectors.

Japan is a collection of islands, but its past and present unfolds through continuous interaction with wider worlds. This course places Japan in contexts of Asian and global history. It begins with the people, institutions, and ideas of premodern Japan, from the emergence of a court-centered state 1500 years ago to a warrior-dominated society centuries later. We then examine the tumultuous process of change from the 19th century through the present and explore how people in Japan have dealt with the dilemmas of modernity that challenge us all.

Focus on the insurrectionary war, the consolidation of power, Fidel Castro's role, the role of organized labor and the peasantry, the US-Cuban conflict, the alliance with the Soviet Union, the choice of economic strategy, the "remaking of human beings," the role of intellectuals, and the support for revolutions in Africa and Latin America. The instructor debates himself, presenting two or more views on each topic. Readings include original documents in translation.

From the scientific revolution to the industrial revolution, from representative government to the consumer society, from capitalism to nationalism and socialism, the ideas and institutions of "the West" (meaning Europe and its colonies of settlement) came to dominate the world in the five centuries after around 1500. But what were the mainsprings of Western power? Taking a comparative historical approach, this course seeks to identify the key economic, cultural, social, political and military differences between the West and "the Rest."

How did we come to live as we do? Why do we eat what we eat, wear what we wear, play the games that we play, take the SATs? The roots of a surprisingly large number of things that we now take for granted, as parts of everyday American life, lie deep in the Asian past. In this class you will learn to perceive global history in the American present, and more importantly, to make new historical discoveries yourself. You will master powerful new tools of research and presentation that will allow you to uncover the hidden ties binding our lives here and now with Asia centuries or even millennia ago, and to broadcast your original findings. No prior knowledge of Asian history or languages required. Limited enrollment.

Examines, through lectures and case-based discussions, a collection of global health problems rooted in rapidly changing social structures that transcend national and other administrative boundaries. Students will explore case studies (addressing AIDS, tuberculosis, mental illness, and other topics) and a diverse literature (including epidemiology, anthropology, history, and clinical medicine), focusing on how a broad biosocial analysis might improve the delivery of services designed to lessen the burden of disease, especially among those living in poverty.

This course seeks to provide a broad historical context in which to understand the contemporary political division on the Korean peninsula. It examines key historical forces that have created and shaped the two Koreas before, during, and after the actual partition of the country in 1945. Topics include nascent nation-building efforts between 1876 and 1910, the impact of Japanese colonialism and the Cold War, and North/South development and interaction after 1948. The course interweaves political, socioeconomic, and cultural themes within an historical framework centered on nation-building while also highlighting a number of major historiographical issues in modern Korean history.

Explorations of the mythical and social origins, glory days and political collapse of the Aztec Empire and Maya civilizations followed by study of the sexual, religious and racial interactions of the "Great Encounter" between Mesoamerica and Europe. Focus on the archaeology, cosmovision, human sacrifice, divine kingship, the mystery of 2012 and rebellion in Mesoamerican cities and in colonialism. Hands-on work with objects at the Peabody Museum aid in examining new concepts of race, nation and the persistence of Moctezuma's Mexico in Latino identities in the Mexico-US Borderlands.

Tokyo has been one of the world's great metropolitan centers since the 17th century, both the urban hub of Japanese society and culture, and the place where Japanese domestic society and global influences have intersected. This course examines trajectories of change in Tokyo's urban culture, lifestyles, social structure, and spatial environment across the city's history, using ethnography, history, literature, diaries, architecture, photography, art, cartography, animation, film and the Internet to explore Tokyo as an urban culture in comparative perspectives drawn from anthropology, history, and other social sciences.

This course is a study in the relations between majorities and minorities in modern Europe, using the Jews as a focus. It will examine the ways in which the equal status of a minority is negotiated through cultural and political interaction, both subtle and blunt. It will further focus on the role that such negotiations have in the formation of identities of both the majority and the minority. Finally, it will examine the ways in which majorities can exercise control over minorities rendering them conditionally rather than fully equal participants in the national projects of the age.

This course introduces the emigration of people from China to other parts of the world over the last five centuries. It considers the causes of emigration, the ties that emigrants retained to China, and the communities that Overseas Chinese created abroad. It compares the experiences of emigrants and their descendants in Southeast Asia and in North America. Last, it tries to situate the recent wave of Chinese migration to North America in global and historical context.

This course guides students on an exploration of the largest and most complex civilization of Pre-Columbian America-the Inca Empire of Andean South America. We will address such questions as how did a civilization emerge and thrive at 12,000 feet above sea level? How could a state-level society exist without markets, the wheel, or writing? In addition to lectures and discussions, students will experience the products of Inca civilization through hands-on study of artifacts in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Examines the origins, military history, and successive postwar settlements of World Wars I and II in the framework of evolving empires, fascist, communist, and democratic ideological mobilization, forced resettlement and cultures of mass violence, ongoing economic and social change (and persistence). Attention to Asian and African as well as European and American transformations.

This course surveys the nature, types and extent of modern servitude, distinguishing broadly between those resulting from international trafficking such as trans-national prostitution, human smuggling into bonded labor, child soldiering and organ trafficking, and more intra-national forms such as debt-bondage and the domestic exploitation of women and other vulnerable groups. Examines the conceptual and theoretical issues raised in attempts to distinguish among these types of differential power relations; the empirical difficulties of estimating the magnitude of what are inherently secretive processes; and the ideological controversies surrounding the subject. Explores ethical, socio- political and practical issues raised by these trends.

The Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Oman and Yemen) is the focus of this course. Among topics to be addressed are: tribal organization and its continuing importance; gender relations; varieties of Islam and their influence; old and new forms of urbanism. Primary reading materials are ethnographic.

China was home to the world's largest economy two centuries ago. Two decades from now, it will be the world's largest economy again. This course uses business as a lens through which to study modern China. Using new Harvard Business School cases, we explore traditional family firms and internet startups; state-owned enterprises and their private-sector challengers; and the catalytic role of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and foreign enterprise in shaping contemporary China. Case studies cast light on larger themes: the role of party and government (national and local) in business and society; the legal environment; and the global impact of China's development.

This course examines the historical, social, and political life of nature in its many manifestations--as a source of life and livelihood, as a resource for exploitation, as a heritage to be protected, and as a post-industrial hybrid--in order to understand the variety of human interactions with the natural environment. Through a focus on property relations, imperialism, development, and science, students will be exposed to the intimate connection between social inequality and ecological degradation, and encouraged to envision possibilities for a future of greater equality and sustainability.

Uses the latest results of archaeology, written sources, environmental sciences, genetics, GIS, etc., to study the changes, violent or subtle, that transformed the Roman world to produce medieval civilization between ca. 300 and 700. Topics include Constantine's conversion; economic recovery, collapse and climate change; the barbarians; women and power; pandemic disease; emphasizes reading of ancient sources in translation, archaeology, and the sciences of the human past.

Health care in America poses fundamental policy challenges to our ability to protect low income Americans from the costs of illness; to produce high quality care; to efficiently use health care resources, and to allow Americans to die without pain, in the company of family, as they desire. This course aims to offer students a solid understanding of the American health care system, the potential impact of new reform legislation, and challenges that will remain in the future.

Surveys major developments in the history of American medicine since 1500. Emphasis on setting the practice of medicine and the experience of health and disease into broad social, cultural, and political contexts. Topics include the social and cultural impact of epidemic disease; the nature of demographic and epidemiological change; the development of medical therapeutics and technologies; the growth of health care institutions; the rise of the medical profession; and debates about the allocation of health care resources. Evaluates the role of medicine in addressing social needs as well as the social and economic determinants of patterns of health and disease.

This course offers historical perspective on the social relations and relative power of the sexes, tracing changes and continuities over the past century in family lives, work, popular culture and politics. We will look at sexuality, masculinity, and femininity, centering these in US social, cultural and political history in the context of a wider world.

Europeans "discovered" America in search of foodstuffs, specifically spices. And food has been central to the American experience from the starving time in early Virginia to the problem of obesity in the United States today. But what is American about American food? How have individual food choices and national food policies connected Americans to the larger world, both the social worlds of other human beings and the natural world of all other living beings?

American cities have changed in extraordinary ways. In the last half of the 20th century, there was gloom about urban life and many cities were projected to decline and decay. Many did but Boston and other cities blossomed, becoming models of urban renaissance. Using Boston as a case, this course considers issues of economic change, technology, neighborhood inequality, political governance, elite relations, cultural institutions, crime, race and ethnic relations, immigration, gentrification and suburbanization. Regular guest speakers. Requirements: Several short memos on neighborhood visits, midterm essay,1 term paper, and active participation in class and section.

This course treats the history of the 19th-century US and the Civil War in light of the history of US imperialism, especially the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the illegal invasions of Cuba and Nicaragua in the 1850s. Likewise, it relates the history of slavery in the US to the Haitian Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, Indian removal, Atlantic cotton, land and money markets, and the hemispheric history of antislavery.

People make history through the things they make, collect, exhibit, exchange, throw away, or ignore. Over four centuries, Harvard has not only amassed books and manuscripts but art works, scientific instruments and specimens, ethnographic objects, and historical relics of all sorts. By learning how and why particular things arrived in Cambridge and what happened to them when they got here, students will discover how material objects have shaped academic disciplines, reinforced or challenged social boundaries, and defined America's place in the world. This is an interactive course, with weekly visits to museums and close-up investigation of specimens and artifacts.

An exploration of the dynamic religious landscape of the US with special focus on Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions in the most recent period of post-1965 immigration. How are faith and freedom negotiated in a more complex society? In what contexts do minority religious communities encounter long-dominant Christian and Jewish communities? How is America changing as religious communities struggle with civic, constitutional, ethical, and theological issues, especially in the post-9/11 period? Readings, films, discussion, and class projects will focus on particular cases and controversies.

This interdisciplinary course reframes traditional understandings of the Civil War in three ways. First, by showing that civil conflict in the United States began well before 1861 and ended well after 1865, taking the form of slave uprisings and Klan terrorism, as well as conventional war. Second, by showing that the former Confederacy won this longer Civil War by establishing a new order of black freedom. And third, by placing this war in the context of international politics and trade. "Readings" range from fiction, film, letters, and speeches to poetry, pamphlets, prints and photographs, songs, and history.

What gives rise to entrepreneurial opportunity and innovative activity? How do innovators and entrepreneurs think about the world? How are organizations born and how do they grow? How can innovation and entrepreneurship address the major challenges facing the world? The course will address these questions by bringing together faculty members of Harvard University to provide a diverse set of perspectives on the nature of innovation and entrepreneurship. The course has three complementary pedagogical methods. Members of the Harvard Business School faculty will provide a set of interactive lectures using case studies that illustrate how for-profit and not-for-profit organizations recognize and capitalize on opportunities. Second, faculty members from around the University will provide lectures on specific areas related to their expertise. Third, a set of group projects that allow students to work in the field with sponsoring organizations will be completed over the course of the semester.

Today we often hear that American democracy is broken-but what does a healthy democracy look like? How has American democratic governance functioned in the past, and how has it changed over time? This course approaches American history with these questions in mind. Based on the case method, each short reading will introduce students to a different critical episode in the development of American democracy, from drafting of the Constitution to contemporary fights over same-sex marriage. The discussion-based classes will encourage students to challenge each other's assumptions about democratic values and practices, and draw their own conclusions about what "democracy" means in America.

This course charts the key events, actors, ideas and strategies of collective movements for social change during the "long 1960s." It situates these mobilizations within the key economic, social and political developments in the post-World War II period in the United States and the world. Topics include Cold War politics from Eisenhower to Nixon, the civil rights movement, the new left, the women's movement, the war in Vietnam, black power, as well as the emergence of a revitalized political Right. The legacies of these movements and the more recent economic and political shifts that have challenged some of their core assumptions are also considered.