2008-2009 Seminars

Please note: seminars for 2008-09 will be posted here in the upcoming weeks.

Applications for enrollment in Fall 2008 courses will be accepted August 1 - September 10 by 12 noon.

Please use the "How to Apply" link at left for instructions.

Links below are to individual course webpages.

Freshman Seminars are offered for half-course credit, and are normally taken as part of the regular program of four half-courses in each term of the year. Ordinarily a student will take a seminar as part of, not in addition to, a full program of regular courses. Any student who enters Harvard as a freshman may apply to any Freshman Seminar during the first two terms of residence. A student may enroll in only one Freshman Seminar in a term, though it is possible to take one in each term of the first year if space is available. Seminars are not letter-graded: a student's work in the seminar is evaluated as Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Students who neglect the work of the seminar or do not perform satisfactorily will be excluded from the seminar and/or denied credit. Seminar instructors report in writing on each student's performance in a seminar; these reports are available to the student through established procedures.

All seminars count towards degree credit. Some seminars may be counted towards concentration requirements or regarded as "related" courses in a field of concentration; this decision is made by the department or the committee of the concentration.

Students entering Harvard College as freshmen may apply for a freshman seminar during the first two terms of residence. Freshman Seminars may not be audited.

For a print copy of the catalog contact the Freshman Seminar Office, 6 Prescott Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
telephone: 617-495-1523; email: seminars@fas.harvard.edu. A print copy of the catalog will be mailed to all freshmen in mid-July .

PLEASE NOTE:
The seminars listed below are from 2007-08. Seminars for 2008-09 will be posted here in the upcoming weeks.

Spring 2008 SEMINARS

(Fall 2007 Seminars listed below)

*Freshman Seminar 21f. Unraveling HIV: One molecule at a time
Catalog Number: 0245 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Victoria D'Souza (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 2-4.
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a particularly lethal retrovirus that has caused more than 20 million deaths over the past 20 years. Approximately 39 million additional individuals are currently living with the infection, and in some sub-Saharan countries nearly 40% of the population are estimated to be HIV-positive. Combinations of drugs that target some viral proteins exist, but they are unlikely to lead to a cure as they eventually give rise to drug resistant strains. Why is it so hard to combat this virus that is made up of only 9 genes? What do we know about the virus, its genome and proteins? How does one study the virus in atomic detail? The seminar will start with a brief overview of the HIV viral life cycle and the mechanisms it uses to manipulate the host cell. Subsequent sessions will involve studying the various viral proteins and biophysical methods used to determine their structures. The seminar will also explore the prospect of making a successful vaccine to combat the virus. Sessions will include field trips to a Biosafety Level 3 facility that studies live viruses and structural biology labs that determine the atomic structure of proteins and nucleic acids. There will be demonstrations of software used for calculating high-resolution three-dimensional structures of viral molecules. The rationale for structure-based drug design will also be covered.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 21j. Human Evolution (CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 0746 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
David Pilbeam (Department of Anthropology)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
The seminar will explore some major events in our biological history: the evolution of bipedalism about seven million years ago as the human lineage separated from that of the chimpanzees (hominid origins); shifts in diets of our early bipedal apelike ancestors; the origin, or origins, of our larger brained and more effectively bipedal ancestor (Homo) around two million years ago; changes in food preparation and social organization; the emergence of complex social and cultural behaviors; and the final appearance, very late in the evolutionary story, of our species (Homo sapiens) with modern language capacities and life history patterns. Unraveling, describing, and explaining these events will involve a fascinating and challenging integrative exploration of many different sciences, including paleontology, paleoecology, archeology, functional anatomy, behavioral biology and ecology, molecular genetics, and developmental biology. Members of the seminar will learn how to read various levels of scientific writing critically.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 21q. Nature and Imposters: Mimicry and Crypsis
Catalog Number: 8762 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Michael R. Canfield (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)
Half course (spring term). Thursday, 1-3.
Mimicry is the process by which biological organisms imitate one another and their surroundings, whereas crypsis is a special type of mimicry in which plants and animals use that deception to escape notice. There are countless examples of these phenomena in the biological world, and natural selection has shaped mimetic forms such as the eggs of cuckoo birds, the lures of anglerfish and the flowers of bee-mimicking orchids. This seminar will explore the evolution of mimicry using case studies that reveal the range of visual, behavioral, acoustical, and chemical means by which this deception is accomplished. We will seek an understanding of both how mimetic relationships are structured and why they have evolved in certain species and not others. Through reading and discussing papers from the scientific literature, we will consider mimicry theory from its development in the early days of Bates and Müller to its application in modern ecological and genetic studies on the evolution of mimetic forms. In addition to discussions and readings, we will make frequent visits to the Museum of Comparative Zoology to examine specimens relevant to our case studies.
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 22e. Molecular Motors: Wizards of the Nanoworld
Catalog Number: 6565 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Dudley R. Herschbach (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology)
Half course (spring term). Thursday, 2-4.
Molecular motors, typically enzymes coupled to biochemical reactions, perform myriad tasks within cells. However, molecular motors operate in an environment dominated by random thermal fluctuations, so such motors must function on principles very different from macroscopic machinery. Recent research is beginning to elucidate these principles. Particularly striking is how molecular motors achieve high efficiency, not by trying to overcome random noise, but by exploiting it. The seminar will focus on prototypical experiments and basic theoretical ideas, stemming chiefly from thermodynamics and elementary probability theory. As well as reading and writing about selected topics, students will lead the discussions and devise games or computer simulations to illustrate key notions. High school science and algebra will provide adequate preparation. The seminar aims to exemplify an exciting research frontier with eclectic applications and also to trace its historical roots as an inspiring saga of intellectual exploration.
Prerequisite: High school science and algebra.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 22j. Seeing by Spectroscopy
Catalog Number: 4039 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
William Klemperer (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
The seminar will explore diverse topics and areas of science in which spectroscopy—the observation of energy emitted from a radiant source—plays a leading role. Although there are many practical applications of spectroscopy, the seminar will concentrate on selected topics from chemistry, physics, astronomy, and atmospheric science. Among these are the structures of molecules from the simple measurement of the bond length of a diatomic species to finding out the structure of proteins. The seminar will emphasize spectroscopy as the basis for remote sensing, choosing the grand topic of looking out—astronomical observations and seeing what is in the universe. Participants also will study (Nuclear) Magnetic Resonance Imaging as a model for looking in. This seminar will exploit the great increase in understanding nature that occurred throughout the twentieth century as a result of the invention of quantum mechanics. Participants will cooperate in developing and maintaining a seminar web page. Although the seminar is directed towards students with an interest in physical science, the required background is not extensive since the seminar will not derive relations but rather state and use them. Participation will involve some use of computational packages.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 22l. Climate Change
Catalog Number: 7180 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Peter Huybers and Eli Tziperman (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 3-6.
Want to know more about the future of Earth's climate? Whether you are skeptical, concerned, or simply curious about climate change, we will host a critical discussion of some of the more intriguing and relevant aspects of the climate. Some of the obvious questions are what will the Earth's temperature be in one hundred years? What will the sea-level be? And how bad might our best estimates be? Other questions include why are some mountain glaciers growing while others retreat? Are tropical cyclones intensifying? How warm was it in the past thousand years? What is the fate of Greenland's ice? Students will come away with a more complete understanding of the science of climate change. Course materials will include readings, presentations, group discussion, and the exploration of simple mathematical models of the climate.
Prerequisite: students should have some background in high-school physics and calculus.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 22m. The Human Brain
Catalog Number: 6810 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
John E. Dowling (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 3-5.
Clinical cases have told us much about human brain function. This seminar will examine some of the famous neurological cases and what we have learned from them. Included will be Broca’s patient “Tan” whose case led to the identification of one of the brain’s language areas; Phineas Gage, whose injury to a specific brain region changed his personality dramatically; and patient HM who, after brain surgery, no longer can remember things for more than a few minutes. We will fill in the cases by reading from my book Creating Mind which is an introduction to brain and mind mechanisms in language accessible to anyone who has had basic high school science. Many of the chapters describe other medical cases, not as well known as the classic cases described above, but instructive nevertheless. I especially invite those students who are not planning to concentrate in neurobiology or a natural science to join the seminar.
Please note: This seminar is designed for students who do not anticipate majoring in a Life Sciences concentration.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 22o. Principles of Industrial Fermentation: Beer, Wine, Bioethanol, and Beyond
Catalog Number: 3683 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Kevin Verstrepen
Half course (spring term). Monday, 4:30-6:30.
The main aim of this seminar will be to explore how biology, genetics, chemistry, and engineering are integrated in a deceivingly complex industrial production process. The process of fermentation, that is, the conversion of sugars to alcohols and acids using microorganisms, is one that has been harnessed by humans since ancient times, and that continues to be of great importance. This seminar will investigate the elements involved in industrial fermentation as a vehicle to introduce concepts as varied as plant sciences, microbiology, biochemistry, genetics, engineering, history, and marketing, using a real world example with relevance to everyday life. How are raw materials chosen, processed, and used for industrial-scale fermentation? Which microbes are involved, and how do they convert raw materials to ethanol? What is the difference between beer, wine, and bioethanol? What makes ales different from lagers, and where do flavors come from? How have humans refined this process? Will bioethanol be a viable alternative energy source for the future? Beer will be used as an example to gain background and to delineate how to investigate topics in this area. Participants will then develop their own topics for further investigation. The seminar will visit an industrial plant that uses fermentation to provide insight into scale and process.
Prerequisite: Applicants should have enrolled in high school biology and/or chemistry and/or genetics. Suited for students planning to take more biology or biochemistry.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 23g. Darwin’s Finches (CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 1902 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Kathleen Donohue (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
By focusing on one of the most important and charismatic research systems developed in the field of evolutionary biology, Darwin’s Finches, this seminar will initiate an exploration of evolutionary theory. The diversification of finches on the Galapagos Islands became one of Darwin’s most convincing examples of evolution in progress. The members of this seminar will study why the finches were so important to the development of evolutionary theory and how they are still being used to test fundamental hypotheses of evolutionary biology today. Because of their long history of importance in the field, the finches have been studied using eclectic methodology to address a broad range of evolutionary questions. They thereby provide a unique opportunity to study diverse evolutionary questions and techniques within a single, fascinating natural-history framework. Readings will include original material from Darwin, Melville, Lack, and Peter and Rosemary Grant as well as supplementary background reading from current texts, primary literature, and historical sources.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 23k. Insights from Narratives of Illness
Catalog Number: 1904 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Jerome E. Groopman (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (spring term). Thursday, 1-3.
A physician occupies a unique perch, regularly witnessing life’s great mysteries: the miracle of birth, the perplexing moment of death, and the struggle to find meaning in suffering. It is no wonder that narratives of illness have been of interest to both physician and non-physician writers. This seminar will examine and interrogate both literary and journalistic dimensions of medical writing. The investigation will be chronological, beginning with “classic” narratives by Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Kafka, and then moving on to more contemporary authors such as Richard Selzer, Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag, and Anne Fadiman. Controversial and contentious subjects are sought in these writings: the imbalance of power between physician and patient; how different religions frame the genesis and outcome of disease; the role of quackery, avarice, and ego in molding doctors’ behavior; whether character changes for better or worse when people face their mortality. The presentation of illness in journalism will be studied in selected readings from the New York Times’ and Boston Globe’s Science sections, as well as periodicals like Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic Monthly. The members of the seminar will analyze how the media accurately present the science of medicine or play to “pop culture.” The seminar will study not only mainstream medical journalists, but so called alternative medical writers such as Andrew Weil also. Patients with different diseases will be invited to speak to the members of the seminar about their experiences. Students will try their hands at different forms of medical writing, such as an editorial on stem cells and cloning that would appear in a newspaper and a short story that describes a personal or family experience with illness and the medical system.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

Freshman Seminar 24j. Planets Around Other Stars (CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 2697 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Myron Lecar
Half course (spring term).
Our solar system contains four rocky planets, two gas giants and two ice giants. Jupiter, the largest gas giant, is about 300 times more massive than the earth. To date, we have found about 200 planets, mostly gas giants, in orbit around other stars. Recently a 5 earth mass planet has been detected by the slight diminution of star light as the planet passed in front of a red dwarf star. The planet orbits at a distance where water would be liquid (the "habitable zone"). In this decade we expect to detect a number of earth-like planets. Has life developed on extra-solar earth-like planets? We will explore the physics of planet formation, the methods of detecting extra-solar planets, and speculations on the origin of life. Students will perform computer simulations of planet detection and formation and will read, discuss, and write about the chemistry and biology of life.
Prerequisites: AP high-school Physics and Calculus
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 24x. Global Mental Health
Catalog Number: 7270 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Alexander Cohen (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday,3-5.
Global Mental Health is increasingly becoming an important focus of public health. This is evidenced by the World Health Report 2001, Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope and the September 2007 Global Mental Health series in The Lancet. The seminar will begin with a review of basic definitions--mental health, depression, anxiety, psychosis--current knowledge of the incidence and prevalence of mental disorders cross-nationally, and mental health treatment resources around the world. Other topics to be covered will include: stigma and discrimination, social determinants of mental health, and the association between immigration and psychosis. Films will be shown to supplement some of the assigned readings. Students will be required to write 5-6 response papers (2 pages each) and a final paper (10-12 pages).
There are no prerequisites.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 25t. AIDS in Africa
Catalog Number: 0024 Enrollment: Limited to 14.
Myron E. Essex (Public Health) and Tun-Hou Lee (Public Health)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-3.
Recognized for the first time in 1981, HIV/AIDS has now infected or killed more than sixty million people. About two-thirds of the infections are in sub-Saharan Africa, in just ten per cent of the world’s population. Much has been learned about the virology of HIV and how to treat clinical AIDS disease; however, in Africa infection rates remain very high and few patients receive life-saving treatment. A vaccine will not be ready in the next five to ten years. This seminar will explore the dimensions of AIDS in Africa ranging from the evolution of HIV and the pathobiology of AIDS to the epidemiology of HIV and options for prevention of infection and treatment of disease. The seminar will encourage a multidisciplinary approach to the problem, and use country-specific examples to illustrate successful interventions. Readings will include both texts and recent journal literature.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 25v. Avian Influenza: Emerging Infectious Disease
Catalog Number: 4807 Enrollment: Limited to 14.
Tun-Hou Lee (Public Health) and Myron E. Essex (Public Health)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 3-5.
The spread to humans of influenza viruses that normally just infect birds has attracted significant attention globally. Even though the number of people infected by avian flu is still small, the high mortality rate observed has raised the prospect that millions of people may die if avian flu ever becomes a global pandemic. This seminar will explore the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the swine flu scare of 1976, and current developments and research on the H5N1 influenza virus, with an emphasis on examining how avian influenza viruses gain their ability to infect different hosts. Students with an interest in biomedical sciences will gain familiarity with the subject through readings and discussions of original scientific literature, government documents, journalistic writings and films.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 25w. Responsibility, the Brain, and Behavior
Catalog Number: 0049 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Ronald Schouten (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 7–9 pm.
The individual’s responsibility for his or her behavior is a subject of constant inquiry in our society. This seminar will explore the philosophical and legal bases of the concept of individual responsibility as it is applied in the criminal justice system. We will examine how forensic mental health professionals assess an individual’s mental state at the time of an alleged criminal act, the legal standards applied, and the social and political forces that help to shape the legal decision. In the process, students will consider historical and modern examples of the insanity defense, including modern attempts to expand the range of disorders offered as a basis for an insanity defense, e.g. battered women’s syndrome, urban trauma syndrome, Gulf War syndrome. The seminar will examine modern concepts of the biological basis of behavioral disorders and their relationship to existing standards of criminal responsibility. A visit to Bridgewater State Hospital, Massachusetts’s maximum security forensic hospital, may be scheduled.
There are no prerequisites, but an interest in law, psychology, or related fields would be advantageous.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 26k. Euclidean Lattices and Sphere Packings
Catalog Number: 4047 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Benedict H. Gross
Half course (spring term). Monday, 2-4.
The seminar will explore the problem of placing spheres of the same radius in a regular way in Euclidean space of dimension n. What is the largest amount of space that we can pack inside the spheres? For n=1, this is a simple problem since a sphere of radius 1 is just an interval of length 2, and these intervals exhaust the line. For n=2 and 3 the answers are interesting: bees discovered the answer to the first millions of years ago by storing their honey in a hexagonal lattice of circles in their hives; for the latter, the best answer is how vendors at Haymarket stack their oranges or towns in New England stack their cannon balls -- a laminated packing of hexagons. For mathematicians, the really interesting sphere packings occur in dimensions n= 4, 8, 12, 16, and 24. To discuss these the seminar would take a tour of Euclidean space of higher dimensions, compute the volume of an n-ball of radius 1 (which for n=2 is in Euclid and for n=3 is due to Archimedes), and discuss the theory of lattices (which is where the spheres are centered). The seminar even may be able to cover some recent work on packing spheres in dimension 24. The seminar could be taken by anyone with a good high school background in mathematics (including calculus); students will need to learn to integrate functions of several variables.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.
Prerequisites: Strong high school background in mathematics (including calculus).

*Freshman Seminar 26m. Developmental Origins of Physical and Mental Health and Disease
Catalog Number: 7084 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Charles A. Nelson (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-3.
It has long been known that early adverse experiences can have a detrimental effect on the course of human development; for example, early child abuse or early neglect elevates the risk of certain forms of mental illness in adolescence and adulthood. Presumably the mechanisms underlying such effects include alterations in brain development (most likely in how the brain is wired). Complementing the work on early experience is very recent work on developmental programming. The premise underlying this work is that biological events that occur during fetal and postnatal life predispose the child to an elevated risk of subsequent physical and mental health disorders; for example, simply being born small (low birth weight) elevates the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The mechanisms thought to be responsible for such programming are unknown, although there is speculation that basic biological processes such as altered cell division are involved. This seminar will explore developmental programmingand early experience as causative mechanisms in the course of human development, with a particular focus on neurological and psychological health. Initial sessions will introduce participants to the general topic and develop a list of possible areas of investigation. Participants then will be responsible for preparing and leading discussion on a particular question or issue, primarily by reading in a given area and perhaps even interviewing relevant experts on campus. Each of these reports would consist of two parts: a review of current knowledge followed by a discussion of what research needs to be done in the area in order to move the field forward. The seminar is suitable for students with some background especially in psychology, neuroscience, or biology.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 26s. Mathematical Structures and Gödel's Completeness Theorem
Catalog Number: 0012 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Gerald Sacks (Department of Mathematics)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
Mathematics is about structures. Some examples of structures are: the integers, the real numbers, and Euclidian plane geometry. Model theory, a branch of mathematical logic, provides a useful definition of structure. Gödel's completeness theorem shows how logically consistent definitions imply the existence of arbitrary mathematical structures. Model theory is applicable to problems that arise in algebra. An example is: the elementary theory of the real numbers is decidable. Applicants to the seminar are expected to have taken high school algebra and to have a strong interest in fundamental mathematical problems.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 26t. Americans Explore: The United States Exploring Expedition
Catalog Number: 8537 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Donald Pfister (Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)
Half course (spring term). Thursday, 1-4.
The United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), under the command of Charles Wilkes, “…was the first… fitted out by national munificence for scientific objects that has ever left our shores.” The fleet of six ships, about 600 crew and scientists of various stripes, circumnavigated the globe with concentrated surveying, collecting, and observations taking place particularly in the Pacific. In this seminar students will study the expedition first through secondary published accounts, and then by consulting original sources: more than 60,000 natural history collections and 2,500 cultural artifacts were brought back. Harvard is one of the richest repositories of US Exploring Expedition specimens, field notes, illustrations, diaries, letters, and artifacts. While some of Harvard’s collections are well documented and cataloged, others await discovery and analysis. Each student will choose a group of specimens, artifacts, or a member of the Expedition to study for a final term end paper; we will also develop an on-line exhibit based on the discoveries we make. For students this seminar will be an opportunity to delve into collections and to gain fluency in historical and biological research. The instructor welcomes students with broad interests across disciplines.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 30l. George Balanchine: Russian-American Master
Catalog Number: 7650 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
John Malmstad (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 3-6.
This seminar will address the life and major works of George Balanchine, the Russian-American ballet master who shaped classic ballet for the modern age and whose achievement in dance is often compared with that of Picasso and Stravinsky in painting and music. Through readings and films we will focus on his view of dance and on analysis of the ballets that he made in a career that spanned some sixty years in Russia, Europe, and the United States. Among the topics we will consider are the heritage of the Imperial Russian ballet; Balanchine’s role in the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev; his American period: starting the School of American Ballet in New York City in 1934 and then a series of dance companies, culminating in the founding of the New York City Ballet; continuity (“tradition”) and innovation; the relationship of his works to the intellectual and cultural climate in which they were made (pre- and post-revolutionary St. Petersburg, “neo-classicism,” surrealism, the jazz age, Broadway, Hollywood, New York City); the troubled question of the preservation of his legacy. Finally we will address the question: Is there a need for dance? Among the ballets to be discussed: Apollo, The Prodigal Son, Serenade, On Your Toes, The Goldwyn Follies, Concerto Barocco, The Four Temperaments, La Somnambula, Symphony in C, Theme and Variations, Orpheus, The Nutcracker, Western Symphony, Divertimento No. 15, Agon, Stars and Stripes, Liebeslieder Walzer, Jewels, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Duo Concertant, Chaconne, Vienna Waltzes, Ballo della Regina, Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbündlertänze”, Mozartiana.
For more information, syllabus and bibiography, please click on the seminar title above for a link to the course website.
Note: Open to Freshmen only. No knowledge of ballet and its vocabulary is required or assumed.

*Freshman Seminar 30o. What is College and What is It For?
Catalog Number: 1897 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Paul J. Barreira (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 3-5.
In the fall of 2001, nearly sixteen million students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. Who are these students, and why do they go to college? What are they seeking? Is college the place where, as one Rutgers first-year put it, you can learn to “be a happy, well-rounded person?” Or is a university education, as Cardinal Newman argued, an immersion into an “intellectual culture?” This seminar asks students to think and write critically about American higher education—its history, purpose and ongoing challenges. Throughout the semester, students will consider, in Clark Kerr’s famous phrase, “the uses of the university” from a variety of perspectives: historical, sociological, economic, and developmental. As they do so, the seminar will address the questions that have continually faced students, faculty, and public legislatures: What constitutes a liberal arts education? What are its goals? How should students be assessed? What role do extracurricular activities, such as sports or fraternities and sororities, play in a college education? Does a bachelor’s degree certify a vocational education, a cultural one, or a moral one?
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 30w. New York Intellectuals, An Episode in the History of American Thought
(CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 8072 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
John H. Summers (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
his seminar will examine the social and political thought of three “New York Intellectuals”: C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell, and Richard Hofstadter, two sociologists and a historian, respectively. As friends and colleagues at Columbia University in the 1940s and 1950s, Mills, Bell, and Hofstadter gave differing answers to an old set of questions. What is the relationship between politics and ideas? Does democracy promote cultural excellence, or does it inhibit the full flourishing of the mind? What do intellectuals owe society and state? What is a public intellectual? Mills, Bell, and Hofstadter ventured their answers at a pivotal moment. As part of the first generation of Americans born after the closing of the frontier, they presided over a major rupture in our history. With a close reading of Mills's White Collar (1951), Bell's The End of Ideology (1960), and Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition (1948) among other books and essays, we will examine the origins of recent American thought. At the same time, we will use the interconnected biographies of these three men to explore methods in the social and institutional history of intellectual life, giving special attention to New York City as a rallying ground for cosmopolitanism.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 31o. Negotiating Identity in Postcolonial Francophone Africa and the Caribbean
Catalog Number: 6293 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Mylène Priam (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-3.
This seminar will explore the question of postcolonial identity through the trans-regional study of literature, poetry, cultural works, and critical theory from Africa and the Caribbean. It will provide an overview of the major theoretical definitions of the postcolonial in an attempt to find formulations of postcolonial identity not only in terms of aesthetic, but also historical, geographical, linguistic, and institutional discourses. Topics will include: Colonialism, neo-colonialism, and nation-building; issues of race and racism; discourses on nationalism and citizenship, modernity, myths of empire, and migration and exile; multiculturalism, Self and Other, and text and orality. Reading will include "Diaspora Texts" in French and English by Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Senghor, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Aschroft, Bhabba, and others.
The seminar will be taught in French. Discussions may be lead in English and assignments may be written in English.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 31s. Heist: The Culture and Politics of Art Theft, Grave Robbery, and Looting
Catalog Number: 2258 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Nenita Ponce de León Elphick (Committee on Degrees in History and Literature)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
During the night of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as police bound and gagged security guards at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and stole thirteen valuable paintings, including Vermeer’s The Concert and three Rembrandts. Despite a $5,000,000 reward, the case remains unsolved, along with hundreds of other art heists that the FBI and other police agencies continue to investigate. This seminar will consider art theft from a number of angles, looking first at the popular appeal and glamorization of art heists in fiction and film, then focusing on different types of art theft (heists, grave robbery, and looting) to critically examine and debate the ethical issues and thorny legalities of provenance that concern public and private collectors, museums, institutions, and the international art market. Controversial topics will include the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, Nazi looting during World War II, the Machu Picchu collection at Yale University, ancient Greek and Italian acquisitions at the Getty Museum, and the recent looting of national treasures in Iraq. The class will take fieldtrips to examine how Harvard and local museums have dealt with theft from their collections and how they have managed their collections after the institution of NAGPRA (the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act) in 1990 and other allegations of illegal acquisition.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 32v. The Art of Storytelling
Catalog Number: 7011 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Deborah Foster (Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4
Throughout the centuries and across all continents, men and women have told stories to express the values they find in their common experiences of everyday life. While the multiple storytelling traditions of the teller influence the content and form of the emergent tale or legend, each narrator shapes the story to reflect his or her own intentions, making it personally expressive as well as publicly meaningful to a particular audience in a specific place and time. Drawing on scholarship of oral storytelling traditions and reading (in translation) myths, tales, legends and other forms from several traditions, this seminar will examine the nature of storytelling, its enduring appeal, and its ability to adapt to multiple new technologies (print, film, internet). Participants will engage in the storytelling process itself in order to understand better the interrelationship of structure, plot, character, imagery, rhythm, voice and gesture to the story as a whole in a variety of media, ranging from mime to video.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 34m. Leonard Bernstein and His World
Catalog Number: 0175 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Carol Oja (Department of Music)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 1-3.
Leonard Bernstein was one of the most celebrated musicians of the twentieth century. Conductor, composer, teacher, television personality, he embraced the new technologies of his era and brought classical music to a wider audience than ever before. As composer of West Side Story and longtime conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein continually challenged traditional cultural hierarchies. This seminar will explore Bernstein's career in the round, looking at concurrent cultural patterns and contemporaneous figures. Special focus will be placed on his relationship to mass media, including both radio and television. Student projects will focus on local archival and ethnographic research.
Music literacy is desirable but not required.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 34n. Cruelty to Animals: Art, Innocence, Suffering
Catalog Number: 4589 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Jacob Emery (Department of Literature and Comparative Literature)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
This seminar will examine a series of artworks that contain vivid scenes of cruelty to an animal. Focus will remain on the specific texts, but in the process we will necessarily consider some broader questions in aesthetics and ethics. What does it mean for us to derive pleasure or value from scenes of cruelty? How does art engage in and manipulate ethical questions? Authors will include Euripides, Ovid, Aristotle, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Angela Carter, and Andrei Tarkovksy.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 34q. Languages of the Body: Physiognomy, Phrenology, and Hysteria in Western History and Literature
Catalog Number: 5429 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Sharrona Pearl (Committee on Degrees in History and Literature)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 2-4.
This interdisciplinary seminar will explore the ways in which the invisible "internal" of personality and behavior has been seen to mark the body in historical, literary, and visual representations. Starting with the doctrine of maternal impressions in France and England, we will examine the relationship between a pregnant woman's experiences and the appearance of her children. We will then move to the historically professed scientific doctrines of bodily marking in physiognomy, phrenology, and eugenics as represented in medical texts, novels, and visual representations of photographs and caricatures. Drawing on late and post Victorian notions of hysteria, we will discuss the relationship between biologically-informed approaches and their later biographically interpretation in the theories of Sigmund Freud. We will end with a gendered analysis of hysteria and shell-shock in the First World War.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 35v. Eating and Drinking in the Classical World
Catalog Number: 4905 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Kathryn Topper (Department of the Classics)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
This seminar will investigate the Classical world's eating and drinking practices to explore its understanding of the human being’s place in the world. From Greek pottery and lyric to Etruscan tomb paintings and Roman dining rooms, much of our evidence from the Classical world relates to communal dining. Far from simply being occasions for consuming food and drink, the meals of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans were elaborate social rituals that strengthened and articulated the relationships that defined communities. By studying the art, literature, and architecture connected to Classical dining, we will learn not only about dining practices, but also about ancient conceptions of the relationships between male and female, native and foreigner, free and slave, civilization and nature, and human and divine. We will pay attention to the following issues: the character of the dining group; private and public dining; women's roles at communal meals; eating, drinking, and death; ritual feasts; body language and status at meals; the liminal space opened by wine-consumption; and dining and the gods. The seminar will visit the Sackler Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. Students will be encouraged to learn more about the dining practices of the societies studied through a final research paper.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 35w. Language, Sex, and Culture (CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 2788 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Sue Brown (Department of Linguistics)
Half course (spring term). Thursday, 2-5.
The seminar will take a cross-cultural perspective, comparing language use in the United States with other parts of the world, especially non-Western cultures, and will focus on differences in pronunciation, vocabulary choice, and/or communicative style that serve as social markers of gender identity and differentiation within these cultures. Questions to be addressed include: Do males and females use language differently? If so, how and, the vexed question, why? How do language differences, where they exist, contribute to the social construction of gender difference? How do these differences affect the lives/social identities of males/females? What do “male” and “female” mean, anyway? What factors besides gender lead to language differentiation, and how do they interact with gender? Is language itself sexist? If so, what can or should be done about it? Seminar participants will explore the following topics: sex as cultural difference; politeness, power, and solidarity; gossip; ambiguities of silence and invisibility; language, sex, and political economy; language choice and code-switching; media constructions of gender through language; cross-addressing (gender-switch or gender-reversal in language); lavender language; sexism in the linguistic “code”; and verbal violence.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 36m. Noisy Art
Catalog Number: 2611 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Damon Krukowski (Department of Visual and Environmental Studies)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 3-5.
We might think of the museum as an especially quiet place -- time was, art made no sound. However, an exhibition of contemporary art like the Whitney Biennial is today saturated with noises, whether from installation art, video art, sound art, or the addition of sound to traditionally silent media like painting and photography. This seminar will examine the history and poetics of the noisy artwork, and -- as a collective studio project -- explore possibilities for making art from noise. Taking as its starting point John Cage’s influential composition class taught in the late 1950s at the New School in New York -- attended primarily not by musicians but by artists and writers -- we will consider the poetics of sound introduced by Cage to the generation of artists who would develop Fluxus, Pop, and Conceptual art. Topics in 20th-century connections between art, music, and poetry will be examined through this historical and theoretical lens, with an emphasis on the merging of media, and of the senses, in art since Cage. As a group, the seminar will undertake a collective studio project that uses noise as a material: the Itchy and Scratchy Orchestra (no formal musical background required). Artistic/musical/poetic strategies to be explored include the use of instructional scores, simultaneous though unrelated events, chance and non-intention, and social action. Students will be responsible for seminar presentations; written exercises; and a group performance in the Carpenter Center at the end of term.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 37k. China’s Confucian Classics: A Close Reading of Four Books
Catalog Number: 5310 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Wei-Ming Tu (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 3-5.
The seminar will study through personal knowledge and critical interpretation the core values in the foundational texts of the Confucian tradition. It will explore their historical significance and contemporary relevance. As one of the longest continuous civilizations in human history, Confucianism has profoundly influenced the peoples of Asia (in particular China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam). For the last eight hundred years, the Four Books (the Great Learning, the Analects, Mencius, and the Doctrine of the Mean) have been revered as the most prominent wisdom books in East Asia. The seminar will read all four texts closely, discuss the five cardinal virtues (humanity, rightness, civility, wisdom, and trust), and explore the inclusive humanistic vision in the Confucian worldview: integration of the body and mind through self-cultivation, fruitful interaction of self and community, harmonious and sustainable relationship between the human species and nature, and mutual responsiveness between the human heart-mind and the way of Heaven.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 37p. Reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace
Catalog Number: 3826 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Julie Buckler (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 1-4.
Tolstoy's massive masterwork War and Peace has always posed a challenge to the reader, who must follow multiple narrative strands and navigate between the alternating “history” and “fiction” sections. The seminar will apply itself to a thoughtful and luxurious reading of Tolstoy's novel, illuminated by (1) the broader pan-European cultural legacy of the Napoleonic wars, including literature, art, and architecture, 2) changing interpretative approaches to War and Peace from the 1860s to the present, and (3) topics such as author studies, the novel as a form, cultural “invasion” in Russia (i.e., the French language, Western intellectual trends and fashions, Napoleon), historiography, and literary canon formation. In light of the current debate over cultural literacy and the university curriculum, Tolstoy's novel deserves a fresh look. Members of the seminar will consider Tolstoy's War and Peace as world classic, Russian literature, family novel, Bildungsroman, historical romance, war story, experimental fiction, national epic, and serialized sudser. All reading will be in English. Assignments include two papers (5-7 pages and 15 pages), individual research projects, and class presentations.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 38i. Morality, That Peculiar Institution
Catalog Number: 0745 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
A. Selim Berker (Department of Philosophy)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 2-4.
The practice of making judgments about right and wrong, of ascribing praise and blame, of deliberating about what one should and should not do -- in short, the entire network of commitments, duties, and customs that makes up that peculiar institution known as "morality" -- is at once the most firmly grounded and the most problematic of human institutions. On the one hand, morality (or something like it) seems an inevitable and perhaps inescapable component of human life. On the other hand, all attempts to find an ultimate basis for morality -- whether it be in the will of God, the dictates of science, the authority of self-evident truths, or the whimsies of subjective desires -- have met with failure. Where does this leave us? What should we do? Is there even such a thing as "what we should do"? Or must there be such a thing, even if we don’t yet know what its ultimate basis is? By drawing on the works of Plato, Hume, Moore, Mackie, Camus, Korsgaard, and others, this seminar will explore a variety of challenges for any attempt at explaining what morality is and what grounds it. Along the way, seminar members will learn how to carefully read a philosophical text, and how to convincingly argue (both in writing and in person) for a philosophical position.
No prerequisites, other than an interest in the subject.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 39i. Mephisto Goes to Hollywood: Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and Its Context
(CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 0754 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Bo-Mi Choi (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
This seminar will examine Thomas Mann’s novel, Doktor Faustus and the politically catastrophic yet culturally exciting context in which it was conceived. Written in Los Angeles during the 1940s while Mann was exiled from Nazi Germany, the novel is a modern remake of the classic Faust story. While most interpreted Doktor Faustus as a literary allegory on Germany’s demonic pact with National Socialism, Mann sought to unearth the cultural roots of fascism in nineteenth-century aesthetics and conceptions of art. The seminar will explore this critique by reading, in addition to the novel itself, the memoir Mann wrote about its inception, titled Novel of a Novel, as well as selections from Theodor W. Adorno, a philosopher, musicologist and fellow emigré, who collaborated with Mann on the music passages of the story. By reading a text through its context and vice versa, students will familiarize themselves with interpretive methods employed in intellectual history and literary criticism, and will be introduced to a fascinating array of intersecting topics, including German fascism, European emigré culture in Hollywood during World War II, and the subsequent rise of the Cold War and McCarthyism in the United States.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 39u. Printmaking, Art, and Communication
Catalog Number: 7082 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Henri Zerner (History of Art and Architecture)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-4.
This seminar will explore the dichotomy between prints as works of art and prints as a medium of communication (dissemination of artistic motifs and styles, but also information about the world -- scientific illustration being an obvious example). It will examine the development of graphic techniques from the appearance of woodcuts in the West sometime around 1400 (now generally understood by historians as the beginning of modern times) until the twentieth century. The revolution effected in the graphic arts by the invention of photography will be part of the story. Students will learn to recognize different graphic techniques by understanding the relationship between how these images are made and what they look like. The seminar will study the works of some great artists (Dürer, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Piranesi, Goya, Warhol) but also the function of prints in the culture at large. The thrust will be to understand the relationship between technical developments and the function of images. No background in art is expected, but participants will be expected to acquire a general sense of the development of art from initial background reading.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 40g. 9/11–The Event and the 9/11 Commission Report
(40g) Catalog Number: 4343 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Ernest R. May (Department of History)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 4-6.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, are often said to have marked a watershed in U.S. history. The seminar will explore this set of events through the eyes of the ten commissioners, five Republicans and five Democrats, who accepted late in 2002 the assignment of investigating all “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks.” More or less following the Report they issued in mid-2004, the seminar will review some of the evidence and testimony available to them, asking how they arrived at their conclusions and, more generally, how anyone ever arrives at conclusions about what happened in the past. Though the seminar’s focus will remain throughout on 9/11, topics to be studied will range from the origin and character of Islamist extremism, to character, cultures, and operations of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to the formulation of national security policy in the White House and oversight of policy by Congress and the news media. Participants in the seminar will seek to understand the events of September 11, to analyze how the members of the 9/11 Commission investigated and understood what had happened, and to judge whether these attacks did in fact mark a watershed in United States history.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 40i. The Supreme Court in U.S. History
Catalog Number: 7142 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Richard H. Fallon, Jr. (Harvard Law School)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 4-6.
The Supreme Court of the United States has often been described as the world's most powerful court. But the Court has not always enjoyed high prestige or unquestioned authority. During the early years of U.S. history, its role was uncertain, its authority precarious. Since then, the Court's significance has waxed and occasionally waned, with the variations typically depending on surrounding currents in the nation's social and political history. This seminar will examine the history of the Supreme Court from the nation's founding to the present day. Main subjects of concern will involve the relation between constitutional law and ordinary politics, and the ways in which they influence one another. Readings for the seminar will include books and articles by historians, political scientists, and legal scholars, as well as selected Supreme Court opinions.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 40n. Art, Knowledge, and Faith at the end of the Nineteenth Century
Catalog Number: 7938 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Christine Smith (Graduate School of Design)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 1-4.
This seminar will explore what the choice of architectural style in buildings reveals about institutional and civic identity. Throughout Europe and America in the nineteenth century, faith-based organizations struggled in response to challenges from science, industrialization, and urbanization while previously marginal institutions like libraries, museums, and universities replaced churches as the principal targets of public interest, expenditure, and civic pride. The Library of Congress, British Museum, and the Paris Opera all show how urban centers competed in erecting great buildings for knowledge and art, buildings whose almost sacral significance for modern life was explicated through the lavish paintings and sculpture of their decorative programs. In Boston, it seemed that faith, established on divine revelation, and knowledge, built up by human reason, had “squared off” when Trinity Church ( 1872-77, H.H. Richardson architect) and the Boston Public Library (1888-95, McKim, Mead, and White architects) were erected facing each other across an irregularly-shaped unbuilt area at the edge of town. That institutional and architectural confrontation, now Copley Square, is the paradigm through which we will explore the competing values of art, knowledge, and faith in late nineteenth-century society. Why were medieval and classical styles thought to be appropriate to, and expressive of, the functions and purpose of the church and library? Why is the legend of the Holy Grail depicted in the library rather than in the church? And why was it that these institutions shaped their modern identities and visions of the future through selective choices from the past? To explore these questions we will situate the church and library projects in their particular urban and historical circumstances with visits to Copley Square and map collections, reading contemporaneous sources as well as recent historical studies. And we will situate them in their broader historical, intellectual, and artistic contexts with visits to other buildings in Boston, museum collections, and collections of architectural drawings. Each participant will prepare two research topics for class presentation, each about twelve pages in length.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 40q. The Evolution of Cooperation
(40q) Catalog Number: 9310 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Robert Neugeboren (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 1-3.
“Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?” The question goes back at least as far as Hobbes, and it has been posed more recently by evolutionary biologists interested in understanding how the “selfish gene” could give rise to cooperative kinship and more distant social relations. In 1979, Robert Axelrod employed a model from the mathematical theory of games, known as the prisoner’s dilemma, to study the evolution of cooperation, establishing a paradigm now shared by social scientists, biologists, computer scientists, and others. Study of the prisoner’s dilemma has great power for understanding the problem of cooperation and how it might be resolved, whether by genes or by nations. In this seminar, we will learn some basic game theory, focusing on the prisoner’s dilemma and evolutionary games, and we will recreate Axelrod’s famous experiment, with students designing strategies to play a repeated prisoner’s dilemma tournament.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 41i. Technology, Self, and Society
Catalog Number: 0832 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Stefan Sperling (John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Department of the History of Science)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-4.
Technologies pervade our individual and collective lives as never before. They fundamentally shape and structure our physical environments, our interpersonal relationships, and our everyday habits and activities. And yet our relationship to new technologies is often highly ambivalent. Technological innovation is constantly celebrated on the grounds of liberating the self, bettering humankind, and improving social conditions. At the same time, such optimism is frequently countered by voices that warn of technological hubris and overreaching. This seminar will examine how these critical confrontations configure relationships among technology, society, self, and culture in various historical and social settings. We will address questions such as: What is the role of the human imagination in promoting, or hindering, the development and design of new technologies? Under what circumstances, and for whom, has technology delivered on its promises of social improvement? When, and in what ways, has it made living conditions worse? To what degree has technology helped us to control nature better? To what extent has technology come to dominate us? Why, despite all the investments we make in technology, and all the benefits we expect from it, have utopian visions not been entirely convincing? We will draw on films and fiction, as well as scholarly work from fields such as anthropology, history, and science and technology studies, in order to illuminate the interplay between the technological imagination and the unintended consequences that often result when the imagination is put into practice.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 41k. Language and Politics
Catalog Number: 0091 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Frederic C. Schaffer (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Thursday, 12-2.
This seminar will investigate the multiple roles that language plays in politics. Four broad themes will be explored: the place of language in political action and organization, linguistic relativism and political reality, language as a political resource, and the language of politics in America. The seminar will attempt to answer questions such as: Can speaking itself be a form of political action? How does the mode of communication affect political organization? Are our political views and conceptualizations shaped by the language we speak? How is language used as weapons of domination and resistance? How can we characterize political discourse in the United States? What, for instance, should we make of the "war on terrorism"?
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 41l. Race and Psychoanalysis
Catalog Number: 0500 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Rani Neutill (Committee on Degrees in History and Literature)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 2-4.
Race is a powerful means of understanding identity and fueling fantasy. Recent theorizations of race argue that it is a social construction rather than a biological fact. If race is no longer determined biologically, how do we comprehend its persistence in structuring identity? How do we translate the racial into the psychic? How do racial and ethnic differences facilitate social and psychic dynamics? This seminar will consider a cross-cultural selection of literary texts and films in combination with short readings from psychoanalytic theory in order to uncover some of the meanings of race and its roles in the construction of identity. We will first discuss the shifting meanings of race and racism, and the ways in which psychoanalysis has historically contributed to the construction of race. Then we will look at the field of psychoanalysis and the possible avenues it may offer to help us determine the psychic effects of racism. Finally, this course will turn to literature and film as a means of better understanding the psychological impact of race as it constitutes identity. Topics will include: "race" as fantasy, speaking historical trauma, racial melancholia/mourning, and racial fetishism. Authors considered: Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong-Kingston, Jean Rhys, Chang Rae-Lee, Tsitsi Dangeremba, William Faulkner, and Amitav Ghosh.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 41z. Who should help the global poor? Cosmopolitan philosophy and its critics
Catalog Number: 6405 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Patti Tamara Lenard (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 3-5.
How should the needs of distant others, strangers, be weighed against the needs of our fellow citizens? Should the needs of those close to us -- our family, our neighbors, our co-nationals and so on -- be prioritized over the needs of strangers living in far away places? Either way, what kinds of political institutions are implicated in justly accommodating the needs of others? This seminar will provide students with an opportunity to read through the writings and arguments of the most powerful exponents of these differing views, and they will be asked to weigh in their merits and demerits -- morally and pragmatically. Students will be provided the opportunity to read arguments from philosophers who argue that we ought to think of ourselves as a member of a "common humanity", in which the needs of all members should be treated with equal respect and consideration. On this view, the ways in which we presently prioritize the needs of our fellow citizens (say, by investing in publicly accessible health care and education), as well as by the choices we make with respect allocating resources on a national scale (by funding space exploration or the National Institute for the Humanities, rather than on foreign aid and humanitarian intervention) are unjust and must be restructured. Students will also have the opportunity to read responses to this "cosmopolitan" position. Many scholars argue that there are morally justified reasons to prioritize the needs of fellow citizens. We are, after all, implicated in a shared culture and a shared political system with our fellow citizens, in which we ought to take responsibility for their needs in particular. Students will have the opportunity to deal with the moral arguments distinguishing cosmopolitans from patriots, and the principles of distributive justice to which these positions are committed. They also will engage with the political aspects of these debates, in terms of what kinds of political institutions -- and what principles should underpin them-- are appropriate at the global level.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 42k. Comparative Law and Religion
Catalog Number: 9992 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Ofrit Liviatan (Department of Government)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
Law’s primary functions are to settle disputes and ensure social peace. Religion has persistently been the most prominent source of conflicts in modern societies. The seminar will explore how modern democracies use their legal systems to address religion-based conflicts, and will evaluate the effects of the legal process on the resolution of these conflicts. Through an in-depth cross-national study of religion-related issues, the seminar will familiarize its participants with major themes of constitutional thinking, including: the processes of law making, implementation and enforcement of constitutions, the scope of protection afforded to fundamental rights, constitutional accommodation of diversity, and the relationship between societies and their constitutions. The seminar will examine different philosophical approaches to the role of religion in public life and discuss their legal manifestations drawing on legal cases from the US, Turkey, India, Israel, Spain, Canada, and England. These cases will also provide the basis for a methodical study of contemporary debates about the funding of religious institutions, the wearing of Islamic headscarves, and more.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 42w. The Book: From Gutenberg to the Internet
Catalog Number: 6004 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Robert Darnton (Department of History)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 1-4.
This seminar will explore the printed book as a force in history and literature from the time of Gutenberg to the present. It will be thematic rather than chronological in organization, although it should convey a general idea of the history of books in the West over the last five centuries. Because it will study books both as objects and as vehicles for transmitting ideas, it will include a good deal of hands-on instruction by book professionals -- printers, editors, publishers, and librarians. Students will be encouraged to experiment with setting type, correcting proof, analyzing rare editions, and interpreting art work. These workshops will follow seminar sessions, which will involve both general discussions and examinations of actual books in Houghton Library, and students should schedule additional time after the seminar meeting for these workshops. The questions to be discussed include the following: What exactly was Gutenberg’s invention, and what were its effects? How did the King James version of the Bible come to be created? What does the First Folio of Shakespeare tell us about Shakespeare’s texts? How and why were issues of copyright and censorship joined in early modern Europe? Was there a "reading revolution" at the end of the eighteenth century? In what ways did Samuel Johnson represent the arrival of the modern author as a force to be reckoned with? How did mass book production shape mass culture in modern America? What is the future of the book in the age of electronic communication?
Please Note: the first regularly scheduled class will meet on Wednesday, February 6, not January 30.
Admitted seminar participants will be contacted during January about arranging a make-up class.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 42z. Shaping Modern China and India
Catalog Number: 0634 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Tarun Khanna (Harvard Business School)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-3.
It is now clichéd to comment on the renewed importance of China and India -- either due to their rising weight in the world trading system and world economy, the significant share of world population that they house, or, less happily, as a potential source of political and health challenges to the world order. In this seminar, we will explore how individuals and organizations, operating from within and outside China and India, are actively shaping the countries. These are entrepreneurs in a "big tent" sense of the term, that is, the entrepreneurship in question is not confined to starting new companies, but encompasses creative action in society, politics, and media. There will be two distinguishing organizational features of this seminar. First, we will adopt an explicitly comparative view to understand how each country is embracing the world economy, on its own terms, or on terms imposed by others. Second, we will pair readings that are on-the-ground in each country with more conventional academic readings, so that scholarship can be used to inform "field observation" and vice versa. The readings, in turn, will draw from a smorgasbord of disciplines -- including economics, political science, sociology, and history. The seminar is organized in three main areas covering societies and politics, business and economics, and relations with the world.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 43x. The Poor: Who Are They and Why Can’t They Get Ahead; Philosophical Perspectives
Catalog Number: 2081 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Stefan Bird-Pollan (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
Liberals and libertarians from John Locke to Robert Nozik, have suggested that the poor and disenfranchised need only to work a little harder to extricate themselves from their circumstances and that societal success is only a matter of individual determination. This course will start by examine the theory of agency that this view implies. The libertarian view will be contrasted with the view of thinkers such as Hegel and Marx who argued that widespread institutional change is necessary in order for individuals to realize their full potential. In contemporary debate, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum seeks to show that individual choice is always a function of those options made available to the individual by society. Thus, the individual’s poverty is conditioned by but not determined by her society. By developing a philosophical understanding of agency, this course seeks to shed some light on the often obscure language of individual freedom and social determination. I envision this course as a hybrid between philosophical interpretation and policy discussion in which class discussion also treats contemporary political issues from a philosophical perspective. Readings will include texts by Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Sen and Nussbaum.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 44e. Shouting Fire: Laws and Limits of Free Speech
Catalog Number: 0909 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Mary Anne Franks (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 1-3.
Whether it’s over Danish cartoonists drawing caricatures of Mohammed or abortion protests, the debate over the limits of free speech remains one of the most divisive issues of our time. The debate over free speech today has taken on a particularly global dimension - people everywhere are now forced not only to consider the customs and laws that their own societies have established regarding the regulation of speech, but also those adopted by other societies that may come into violent conflict with their own. Now more than ever the question of harm – what counts as harm, who should be allowed to determine the severity of a given harm, what the proper response to a harm should be – exposes the tensions already at work in principles of democracy and tolerance and further compounded by confrontations with opposing principles. This seminar aims to explore the limits of free speech as established by law, as well as to reflect upon what they should be.

Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous statement that the right to free speech does not mean we have the right to shout fire in a crowded theater highlights the idea that free speech is not without limits. This seminar investigates the problem of free speech from legal, ethical, and social perspectives, focusing particularly on the question of harm. What exactly counts as harm? Should free speech rights be absolute? Are free speech and free expression the same thing? This seminar will examine the legal concepts of fighting words, defamation, and obscenity that are thought to stand outside of the realm of protected speech, as well as debates over issues as diverse as headscarf bans, campaign finance reform, hate crimes legislation, and neo-Nazi rallies. We will examine landmark First Amendment cases, university speech codes, as well as classic and contemporary writings on free speech, including texts by J.S. Mill, Ronald Dworkin, Alan Dershowitz, and Catharine MacKinnon. Assignments include one oral presentation, two short response papers, and a longer (10-15) final paper.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 44j. The Aztecs and Maya
Catalog Number: 7826 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Davíd L. Carrasco (FAS, Harvard Divinity School)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 1:30-4:30.
The seminar will explore the religion, social relations, settlements, and history of the Aztecs of the Valley of Mexico and the Maya of southern Mexico and Central America. These two best-known and most widely influential civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica serve as the point of departure for examining the ways in which modern scholars and students can explore the world-view, social relations, and history of other cultures. Through critical examinations of historical texts dating to the time of the Great Encounter between the peoples of the Americas and those of Western Europe, the seminar will explore how the biases of the observer play a role in describing and explaining “the other.” The participants will analyze the ways in which religion fueled the genesis and expansion of the Aztec empire as well as the Conquistadors’ obsession with what they called New Spain. The focus then shifts to the Maya and the reasons why the Spanish never fully “conquered” them. The seminar will use the historical accounts of the sixteenth-century Maya, and their own extensive hieroglyphic texts from the Classic and Postclassic periods of their civilization, to work back through time to the genesis of Maya civilization. The historical materials serve as one basis for the critical examination of the approaches used to piece back together the puzzle of how this magnificent cultural tradition took root and thrived in a tropical forest setting. Members of the seminar lastly will explore the ways in which the living Maya are reviving their traditional culture and are aspiring to political autonomy and how the Aztecs are integral to the national identity of Mexico.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 45f. American Splendor: Alternative American Comics
Catalog Number: 5597 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Katherine Stanton (Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 2-4.
In the late 1960s, the underground comix movement radicalized American comics, liberating the form, in critic Charles Hatfield’s words, from the clichéd, juvenile practices of the mainstream comic book. In this seminar, we will examine the alternative comics inspired by this movement, focusing on their formal qualities and political possibilities. We will begin by asking, how does comics form emphasize or create meaning? Through readings of comics by Harvey Pekar, Jaime Hernandez, and Alison Bechdel, among others, we will consider how alternative comics represent and revise gender norms and expectations, the notion of racial and ethnic origins, and the narrative of upward mobility. We will ask, what do these comics reveal about what it means to be properly female or male, authentically working class, or truly American? We will also consider these graphic narratives in their artistic and literary context, considering, for instance, how Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan participates in the history of American literary representations of race relations and miscegenation. Noting Ware’s critical success, we will ask, how does social value get attached to form? Why comics, now?

In this seminar, students will learn to develop interpretations and construct arguments that grapple with graphic narrative’s complexity and heterogeneity. They will complete several kinds of literary analysis, including a close reading assignment and a comparative essay. For their final assignment, students will have the option of putting their study of form into practice by writing and illustrating an original graphic story.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 45m. The Concept of Race in Science and Medicine in the United States
(CANCELLED)
Catalog Number: 7675 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Evelynn M. Hammonds (Department of History of Science and Department of African and African American Studies)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Where and how did the idea of race emerge in the West among natural philosophers and later scientists? Why did they evoke such a concept to address questions of human differences? How did scientific and medical concepts of race change over time? How did race concepts in these fields butt up against religious and socio-political concepts of race? In the U.S. context -- where do the concepts of race we use come from? Are racial categories “natural” categories? How did biological notions of race enter into debates about slavery? How did biologists, anthropologists, and physicians take up the question of racial classifications, race differences, and race mixing? How did these ideas change as scientists, physicians, and anthropologists developed new tools for measuring human variation such as genetics and evolutionary theory? What is the relationship between scientific debates about race and other debates about identity and citizenship in the larger US context? How do new ideas about genetic variation among and among and between human groups enlist or resist concepts of race today?
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 47k. Fixing or Faking Nature?: Environmental Restoration and the Future of Venice, Vegas, Iraq, and New Orleans
Catalog Number: 6260 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Robert France (Graduate School of Design)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 1:30-4:30.
Noted American environmentalist Aldo Leopold once remarked that we live in a damaged "world of wounds." Today, one of the most rapidly expanding environmental fields is that of restoration. By replacing moaning with action, and therefore fatalism with hope, environmental restoration may be the best means of saving environmentalism from itself. Such restoration is as much about process as product, sociology as ecology, and artful design as empirical science. Critics, however, warn that restoration is a slippery and dangerous slope, only providing bandage fixes while creating new natures that are mere fakes of the real things lost. The first part of the seminar will review the theoretical debates concerning environmental restoration and consider why it is the most intellectually challenging of all forms of contemporary environmental management. The second part of the seminar will visit practical examples of local restoration projects (such as Walden Pond) and then examine the ongoing restoration efforts in famous locations around the world such as the lagoon of Venice, the marshlands of southern Iraq, the bayous of Louisiana, and the wetlands of Las Vegas.
Click on this link for more information about Robert France: Harvard Magazine article, Jan-Feb 2007
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 48o. The History and Practice of Ancient Greek Astronomy
Catalog Number: 8926 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Mark Schiefsky (Department of the Classics)
Half course (spring term). Wednesday, 3-5.
In the eight centuries between 600 BC and 200 AD, Greek astronomers devised stunningly accurate methods for predicting a wide range of celestial phenomena, including eclipses and the positions of the planets. They mapped the fixed stars, discovered the precession of the equinoxes, and discussed the heliocentric theory almost two milennia before Copernicus. Their knowledge developed in a close relationship with near Eastern (especially Babylonian) traditions and with the peculiarly Greek tradition of cosmological speculation. The mathematical methods of the Greek astronomers, together with their cosmological theories, provided an integrated framework for understanding humanity’s place in the universe that held sway until the time of Copernicus and Kepler.

The first goal of the seminar is to gain an understanding of the historical process by which these developments took place. This will involve a close look at both the theories devised and the concrete details of ancient astronomical practice. We will address questions such as the following: What kinds of observations were the ancient theories based on? How were they built, and how were they actually used? What determined whether a theory should be accepted? In particular, were there tensions between the cosmological goals of the ancient astronomers and their mathematical models? To get a feel for these questions we will actually carry out ancient astronomical procedures, both computational and observational.

In addition, the seminar will also address general questions about the nature of science that are raised by the development of Greek astronomy, including: (1) What is the significance of model-building in the development of scientific theories? (2) What is the relationship between observation and theory? (3) Do scientific theories have any claim to give us the truth or reality behind the phenomena, or can they only describe and order them?
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 48q. Historical Dialogues from the Near East: Case Studies in Early Science
Catalog Number: 1934 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Elaheh Kheirandish (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 1-3.
A course on early science focused on the Near-East during the thousand and one years that mark a formative period in the intellectual history of the lands of “thousand and one nights” (ca. 500-1500). Premodern case studies are introduced through “historical dialogues” between such counterparts as cities (Baghdad, Isfahan), cultures (Arab, Persian), faiths (Muslim, Zoroastrian), cosmologies (Heaven, Earth), and worldviews (Chess, Backgammon). The course includes selective primary and secondary sources and creative exercises and events.

A range of textual and visual sources are included in the seminar’s website along with interactive maps and historical blogs, and a selection of manuscript sources are to be showcased in a final exhibit at Houghton Library involving members of the seminar for the presentation of their original scripts next to captions and summaries of assigned items.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 49e. Globalization: Critical Perspectives
Catalog Number: 5230 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Adam Webb (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)
Half course (spring term). Tuesday, 4-6.
The 1990s made “globalization” a catchword for everyone from journalists to politicians to academics. But what does it really mean, and should we welcome it? Is globalization an intoxicating process that widens people’s horizons, finally setting them free from narrow and backward ways of life? Or does it erode community and authenticity, in favour of a consumerism as shallow as it is broad? What are the rival visions of what a “global” society and polity should be? Why have some of those visions proved more compelling than others? This seminar will explore all these questions. It will pay special attention to the clashing world views of globalization’s supporters and critics. Topics to be investigated by the seminar will include: economic optimism, globalization as human emancipation, critiques of economic inequality, globalization and the media, national identity in the global community, sovereignty and power, civic membership, religious responses, globalization and democracy, and transnational political institutions.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 49o. Environmental Security: Environmental Degradation as a National Security issue
Catalog Number: 2520 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
R. Craig Crouch (Department of Environmental Science and Public Policy)
Half course (spring term). Friday, 2-4.
Current conceptions of security, largely statist and military in nature, are essentially relics of the cold war. They often fail to take account of environmental threats to security, as well as environmental paths to peacemaking. Armed conflict over scare resources, for example, is as old as civilization itself. In a world of resource scarcity and population growth, the militarization of commodities other than oil is all but certain. As such, scholars in both security studies and environmental studies are beginning to frame environmental degradation, and its myriad secondary and tertiary effects, in national security terms. The CIA and Pentagon, for example, are beginning to think about the national security implications of global climate change. This course will address some of the conceptual and theoretical issues in the field of environmental security, as well as look as several regional (South Asia, Caspian, Middle East) and media-specific (water, desertification, deforestation) issues through a security lens. Finally, we will explore the concept of security, its meaning in a world of increasing environmental degradation, and potential paths toward “environmental peacemaking.”
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

Fall 2007 SEMINARS

(Spring 2008 Seminars listed above)

*Freshman Seminar 21o. The Neurophysiology of Visual Perception
Catalog Number: 7584 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
David H. Hubel (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (fall term). Tuesday, 2-5.
How do the eyes and brain of higher mammals (including humans) deal with visual information originating in the outside world? The seminar will start with a brief survey of mammalian brain neuroanatomy and cell-level neurophysiology (nerve conduction, synapses). Sessions will then cover the neurophysiology of the visual path from retina to cortex, with emphasis on transformations in information that occur at each successive level. Members of the seminar will study some of the main components of visual perception: form, color, movement, and depth, and they will consider the bearing of these on art. All sessions will be held at Harvard Medical School, where participants will witness and assist in research in progress involving singe-cell recordings from the visual cortex of monkeys. In the process they will gain some familiarity with some of the procedures and techniques used in neurophysiology.
Note: Open to Freshmen only. Meets at the Harvard Medical School.

*Freshman Seminar 21s. Germs
Catalog Number: 2067 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Ralph Mitchell
Half course (fall term). Wednesday, 1:30–4:30.
Germs are the most abundant and widespread organisms on Earth. They are responsible for the disruption of whole civilizations and for the maintenance of the ecological balance on our planet. The fourteenth-century Black Death killed more than one third of Europe’s population. In the nineteenth century, Ireland’s Great Famine, caused by a fungal disease of potatoes, resulted in the widespread emigration of the Irish to other countries including the United States. Germs have an extraordinary capacity for survival in spite of the use of vaccination and the development of antibiotics. The emergence of antibiotic–resistant microorganisms and of previously unknown diseases provides a new threat to both humans and the biosphere. This seminar will explore the importance of germs as causative agents of disease in humans, animals, and plants and will investigate why epidemics occur. We will discuss the relationship between urbanization and human disease. We will study the causes of the emergence of new infectious diseases. We will also explore the role of germs in the control of the ecological balance on Earth. We will ask how microbes affect the cycling of elements essential for climate control and agricultural productivity. The development of novel technologies and strategies to control both human and plant diseases and for the alleviation of environmental deterioration will be studied. We will discuss the hazards to human health and biological diversity when microbial genes are inserted into crops to prevent plant diseases and to increase agricultural productivity. The seminar will involve students in the exploration of the many destructive and constructive roles that germs play both in our own lives and in the life of planet Earth.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 21x. Galaxies and the Universe
Catalog Number: 4075 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
John P. Huchra
Half course (fall term). Tuesday, 2-5:30.
The seminar will discuss the interplay between observation and theory and between the evolution of astronomers’ views of the universe and their ability to view it. Topics covered will include the internal structure and dynamics of galaxies, cosmological models, the determination of the cosmic distance scale, observations of large-scale structure in the universe, quasars, galaxy formation, and the age, size, and fate of the universe. We will explore the basic observations that lend support to the current cosmological model, the inflationary hot Big Bang, and we shall discuss the recent observations that indicate that the Universe might even be speeding up. Readings will be taken from the introductory text An Introduction to Galaxies and Cosmology edited by Jones and Lambourne, and also from current popular articles. Students will participate in a small research project using electronic images of galaxies or catalogs of galaxy properties to measure simple properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. We’ll also try to do some observing with Harvard’s local telescopes. Attendees of this seminar should have some mathematical background. Prospective students can find more information at the instructor’s web site: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~huchra/seminar.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 22i. The Science of Sailing
Catalog Number: 7269 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Jeremy Bloxham
Half course (fall term). Wednesday, 6-8.
Making use of the science of sailing, this seminar will explore the use of basic physical principles to understand natural systems. We will use experiments, observations, and theory as needed to build our understanding, and will analyze critically common explanations of the phenomena that we study. Sailboats are driven by the flow of the wind across their sails. We will investigate how this interaction generates a driving force, how that force is balanced, and how it scales with the size of the sailboat. Additionally, we will examine the environment in which a sailboat operates, including the origin of the wind and its variability, and the interaction of the wind with the water. We will apply our understanding to questions of strategy and tactics faced by the sailor on the race course. Participants in this seminar should have a good high school physics background and have some knowledge of sailing.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 23s. The Seven Sins of Memory
Catalog Number: 8910 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Daniel L. Schacter
Half course (fall term). Monday, 1-3.
This seminar will focus on the fallibility of memory, examining the issue from both cognitive and neuropsychological perspectives. The framework for the seminar is provided by the idea that the misdeeds of memory can be classified into seven basic “sins”: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The first three sins reflect different types of forgetting. Transience involves decreasing accessibility of information over time; absent-mindedness entails inattentive or shallow processing that contributes to weak memories of ongoing events or forgetting to do things in the future; and blocking refers to the temporary inaccessibility of information that is stored in memory. The next three sins all involve distortion or inaccuracy. Misattribution involves attributing a recollection or idea to the wrong source; suggestibility refers to memories that are implanted at the time of retrieval; and bias involves retrospective distortions and unconscious influences that are related to current knowledge and beliefs. Finally, persistence refers to pathological remembrances: information or events that people cannot forget, even though they wish that they could. The seminar will examine cognitive, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging data that bear on the seven sins, and consider the possibility that they can be conceptualized as by-products of adaptive features of memory, rather than as flaws in the system or blunders made by Mother Nature during evolution. There will be a medium length and a longer paper.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 23z. A Short History of DNA
Catalog Number: 6423 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Roberto G. Kolter (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (fall term). Wednesday, 2-4.
Discoveries surrounding the structure and function of DNA have revolutionized the life sciences in the twentieth century. This seminar will read and discuss key writings that present and analyze the developments that led from the first indications that DNA was the genetic material, to the elucidation of the structure of DNA, to the sequencing of complete genomes. Participants will discuss not only the scientific advances but also the personalities involved and how they influenced the development of this new knowledge. The readings will be selected from the primary literature and from narrative textbooks covering the subject. Members of the seminar will be given the opportunity to meet with local scientists who have been associated personally with some of these major advances.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 24e. The Physics and Applied Physics Freshman Research Laboratory
Catalog Number: 3573 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Jene A. Golovchenko
Half course (fall term). Monday & Wednesday, 3-5.
The aim of the seminar is to expose students who are considering careers in science or engineering to the environment of a modern research laboratory. Small, faculty-guided research teams will construct, perform, analyze, and report on cutting-edge experiments in the physical, engineering, and biological sciences. Students will participate in choosing the experiments based on class interests and available resources. They will be active collaborators in scientific projects that will require both team and individual effort. Projects will provide insight into the mathematical, mechanical, electronic, chemical, computational, and organizational tools and skills that characterize modern experimental science. Past projects have addressed topics in atomic, nuclear, and solid state physics, materials science, dynamical systems, and biophysical science; and students have gained experiences with lasers, accelerators, particle and photon detectors, vacuum systems, electronic circuits and instruments, machine shops, computer interfacing, data logging and analysis, and scientific presentations.
Note: Open to Freshmen only. The seminar will meet twice a week.

Freshman Seminar 24j. Planets Around Other Stars (MOVED TO SPRING)
Catalog Number: 2697 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Myron Lecar
Half course (fall term). Tuesday, 4:30–6:30.
Our solar system contains four rocky planets, two gas giants and two ice giants. Jupiter, the largest gas giant, is about 300 times more massive than the earth. To date, we have found about 200 planets, mostly gas giants, in orbit around other stars. Recently a 5 earth mass planet has been detected by the slight diminution of star light as the planet passed in front of a red dwarf star. The planet orbits at a distance where water would be liquid (the "habitable zone"). In this decade we expect to detect a number of earth-like planets. Has life developed on extra-solar earth-like planets? We will explore the physics of planet formation, the methods of detecting extra-solar planets, and speculations on the origin of life. Prerequisites are AP Calculus and Physics. Students will perform computer simulations of planet detection and formation and will read, discuss, and write about the chemistry and biology of life.
Prerequisites: AP high-school Physics and Calculus.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 24n. Child Health in America
Catalog Number: 6367 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Judith Palfrey (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (fall term). Monday, 4–6.
How can American health care be improved for children? How a nation cares for its children’s health is often considered a measure of its commitment to the general citizenry and to its future. The members of the seminar will review together the history of children’s health and health care in the United States, exploring the impact of geography, environment, nutrition, clean water, as well as of the scientific discoveries of the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century and the emergence of the high technology care of the middle and late twentieth century. Then they will pose the question, “Does America provide children and youth the best possible health care available in the twenty-first century?” To approach this question, students will analyze the current causes of illness, disability and death among U.S. children and youth and compare United States epidemiology with that of other developed and developing nations. Students will also explore how child health delivery is financed.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 25g. The Impact of Infectious Diseases on History and Society
Catalog Number: 8075 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Donald A. Goldmann (Harvard Medical School, Public Health)
Half course (fall term). Tuesday, 7–9 pm.
Mankind’s journey from pre-historic to modern times has been marked by frequent devastating encounters with infectious diseases. The transition from hunter-gatherer societies to farming communities and animal husbandry, the concentration of people in cities, and trade, exploration, and globalization all have been accompanied by epidemics of infectious diseases. These infections have had profound effects on the course of history and the nature of society. They have affected the outcome of wars, political dynasties, global balance of power, social structure, and economics. They have led to stigmatization, prejudice, quarantine, and restricted freedom. They have left their mark on religion and the arts. On the other hand, epidemics have initiated reform (for example, in sanitation and living conditions of the poor). They have spurred discovery of the responsible microorganisms, elucidation of their epidemiology and virulence properties, development of vaccines and antimicrobial agents, and advancements in public health methods and infrastructure. Unfortunately, contemporary improvements in the understanding, treatment and control of infectious diseases seem to have done little to relieve public anxiety. Society’s reaction to new microbial threats still tends to be governed by panic and passion—emotional responses that are distressingly similar to the days when infections were attributed to divine retribution, imbalance in the body’s humors, miasmas, and foreigners. This seminar will consider these themes by studying specific, selected infectious diseases, including plague, syphilis, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, yellow fever, and influenza. The seminar will investigate how the epidemiology of these diseases, and society’s response to them, inform recent experience with epidemic infection, as well as the assessment of the potential impact of future threats.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 25k. You Are What You Eat
Catalog Number: 3913 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Karin B. Michels (Public Health, Harvard Medical School)
Half course (fall term). Monday, 4–6.
What does food do to our bodies? How do we know what a healthy diet should entail? What is known about the role of nutrition in preventing or curing disease? This seminar will explore and critically evaluate diet recommendations, current knowledge about the role of diet in maintaining health, and the use of nutrition to treat disease. It will discuss how studies are conducted to understand the impact of nutrition on health, their potential problems and pitfalls, and how dietary intake is assessed in populations. International trends in diet and nutrition and in disease incidence will be examined to learn about the possible influence of diet and dietary changes. Observations on the effects of nutrition made half a century ago but long forgotten can teach us much about the importance of foods and nutrients. We will explore the use of nutrition for healing in other cultures across the globe. We will discuss the obesity epidemic, its causes and its implications for the next decades.
Note: Open to Freshmen only.

*Freshman Seminar 25n. Understanding Psychological Development, Disorder and Treatment: Learning through Literature and Research
Catalog Number: 9589 Enrollment: Limited to 12.
Nancy Rappaport (Harvard Medical School)
Half course (fall term). Thursday, 3–5.
The seminar's challenge will be to deepen our understanding of human development and how individuals cope with serious emotional or social difficulties (neglect, bipolar disorder, autism, depression). We will use multiple perspectives: medical observations and texts that provide practical knowledge (e.g. The New England Journal of Medicine review articles), narrative readings to understand how patients experience the meaning of illness from the inside out (e.g. An Unquiet Mind), and how development-related mental illness is portrayed in the press (e.g. The New Yorker articles or Internet sites). We will start with the mental life of babies and how scientists interpret infants’ nonverbal ways of finding