Classes

    Morality, Leadership, and Gray-Area Decisions

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    Joseph L. Badaracco (Harvard Business School)
    First-Year Seminar 70K     4 credits (fall term)     Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    Everyone with serious responsibilities, at work and throughout their lives, faces gray area decisions. In organizations, these highly uncertain, high-stakes decisions are delegated upward, to men and women in...

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    Political Violence and Power

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    William P. Whitham (Committee on the Social Studies)
    First-Year Seminar 72O 4 credits (fall term) Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    You were likely born after September 11th, 2001, the day of one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in world history. Since then, publics have often perceived terrorists as shadowy jihadis striking across state borders,...

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    A Brief History of Surgery

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Seminar Site

    Frederick H. Millham  (Harvard Medical School)
    First-Year Seminar 24G       4 credits (fall term)     Enrollment:  Limited to 15

    The history of surgery begins with the Hippocratic physicians whose principles were based, at least partly, on observation and measurement.  However, surgical thinking for first three quarters of the “modern era” was dominated by Galen of Pergamum...

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    Finding Connections: Perspectives on Psychological Development and Mental Illness

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    Nancy Rappaport (Harvard Medical School)
    First-Year Seminar 25N       4 credits (fall term)       Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    The seminar's challenge will be to deepen our understanding of human development and how individuals cope with serious emotional or social...

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    Skepticism and Knowledge

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Seminar Site

    Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard Graduate School of Education)
    First-Year Seminar 31J   4 credits (fall term)  Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    Descartes wrote his Meditations because he realized that, although he had received the best education in the world, much of what he had learned was false or unfounded.  This led...

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    The Art and Craft of Acting

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    Remo F. Airaldi (Committee on Theater, Dance, and Media)
    First-Year Seminar 35N   4 credits (fall term)  Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    Note:  Students will be required to attend or watch theater performances during the course of the term. There will be no charge to the student.

    We’ve all watched a great performance and wondered, “How did...

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    The Creative Work of Translating

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    Stephanie Sandler (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)
    First-Year Seminar 36G   4 credits (fall term)   Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    Translation makes culture possible. Individual writers and thinkers draw sustenance and stimulation from works created outside their own cultures, and artists working in one format get ideas from those working in entirely different media. Translation between languages and...

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    Serious Illness, Death and Dying

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024
    CANVAS SITE LINK

    Susan D. Block (Harvard Medical School)
    First-Year Seminar 71O 4 credits (spring term)

    Note: If circumstances permit, additional field learning opportunities (e.g., participation in hospital-based teaching rounds) will also be available outside of class.

    Sickness and death are universal human experiences.  Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought this reality home, in many difficult ways, to all of us over the past 2 years, thinking about our own losses and vulnerability and that of people...

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    The Symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024
    CANVAS SITE LINK

    Anne C. Shreffler (Department of Music)
    First-Year Seminar 63C    4 credits

    The symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) are just as relevant and controversial today as they were during the composer's lifetime. Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies span his entire creative life; starting with his First Symphony, which made the 19-year old composer famous overnight, and ending with his Fifteenth, completed four years before his death. As a public genre,...

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    Transformative Ideas in Brain Science: War, Technology, and Disease Pioneered Discovery

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    Jeffrey D. Macklis (Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (FAS), Center for Brain Science, and Harvard Medical School)
    Freshman Seminar 26K 4 credits (fall term) Enrollment: Limited to 12

    Prerequisites: No background with this material will be assumed.

    This seminar will offer an integrated historical-neurobiological-...

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    What Is Avant-Garde?

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2023
    Canvas Site link

    Nariman Skakov (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)
    First-Year Seminar 63T 4 credits (fall term) Enrollment:  Limited to 12

    Avant-garde art sometimes seems to make a complete break from the art that precedes it. The very name, ‘avant-garde’ (from French, literally ‘advance guard’) carries military connotations that suggest a total, violent break with the...

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    The Seven Sins of Memory

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2024
    CANVAS SITE LINK

    Daniel L. Schacter (Department of Psychology)
    First-Year Seminar 23S 4 credits (spring term)

    How do we remember and why do we forget? Can we trust our memories? How is memory affected by misinformation such as “fake news”? Do smartphones and the Internet help our memories or hurt them? Are traumatic experiences especially well remembered or are they poorly remembered? What are the best ways to study for exams?... Read more about The Seven Sins of Memory

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