The House Seminar Program

In the fall of 1973, President Derek Bok called for a renewed participation of the Houses in the teaching process. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences took up the problem in the course of the academic year at the end of which the House Seminar Program was created. The Program consisted of small, limited enrollment courses offered in the House under the auspices of each House's Committee on Instruction, and under the general supervision of the Committee on General Education (changed to the Committee on Non-Departmental Instruction in 1979-80 and then to the Committee on Freshman Seminars in 2002-03).

These seminars should, in method of instruction, range and depth of subject matter, integration of practice and theory, or peculiar responsiveness to students' needs, bring something fresh and vital to the existing curriculum. Teaching responsibility should be assumed by Faculty members; and every House Seminar must be approved by the House Committee on Instruction which would consist ordinarily of the Master and the Senior Tutor and at least three senior faculty in the major areas (Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities), appointed by the Dean of the Faculty.
Prior experiments in General Education with House-centered courses supported the hope that the new House Seminars would serve as intellectual centers in each House, uniting faculty members of the Senior Common Room, House tutors, and House undergraduates. It was felt that House Seminars should attempt to meet the curricular needs of the students in a given House and that a House Seminar, therefore, should draw a substantial part of its enrollment from the students in the House.

House Seminars should not compete with regularly offered departmental courses and they should not duplicate courses currently listed in the catalogue. All House Seminars are offered for degree credit. They normally are graded with letter grades. As with other courses, students may take House Seminars pass/fail with the instructor's consent. Instructors may propose to the Committee that a House Seminar be offered SAT/UNS, and this request will be reviewed by the Committee.

House Seminar Courses 2007-2008

Primarily for Undergraduates
All House Seminars are offered for degree credit. House Seminars are normally graded with letter grades; as with other letter-graded courses students may, with the instructor's permission, take House Seminars pass/fail. All House Seminars require the permission of the instructor (*). Information concerning enrollment in House Seminars should be sought from the appropriate House Office. House Seminars are frequently not repeated from year to year.

Currier House
Currier 79. Medicine, Law, and Ethics: An Introduction
Catalog Number: 9614 - Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Shahram Khoshbin (Medical School)
Half course (spring term). M., 7-9pm

Explores medical, legal, and ethical aspects of medical care, with particular attention to medical decision-making at the beginning and end of life, participants in research on human subjects, human reproductive technologies, mental illness, and experimentation on animals. Historical background of present-day medical practices and relevant law to be discussed.

Note: All students are welcome, but this seminar is particularly geared to pre-medical and pre-law students.

Eliot House
Eliot 79. Nutrition and Public Health
Catalog Number: 1497- Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Clifford Lo (Medical School and School of Public Health)
Half course (spring term). Tu., 5:30-7:30 pm.

Introduction to the critical reading of technical nutrition and medical literature; surveys current issues in public health and public policy relating to nutrition. Critical analysis of different types of medical literature: historical monographs, metabolic laboratory observations, clinical case reports, epidemiological surveys, prospective randomized controlled trials, metaanalyses, and literature reviews. Prepares science and non-science concentrators to examine critically current controversies for themselves; requires active participation and presentation by students.

Note: Clinical rounds with Nutrition Support Services at Children's Hospital are optional.

Leverett House
Leverett 74. Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis: Two Contrasting World Views
Catalog Number: 0773 - Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Armand M. Nicholi II (Medical School)
Half course (spring term). M., 2-4.

Focuses on "scientific" Weltanschauung (world view) of Freud as a key to his life and work. Examines the world view Freud attacks through readings from C. S. Lewis and letters between Freud and Oskar Pfister, Swiss psychoanalyst and theologian. Themes: source of morality and ethics, human sexuality, problem of pain and human suffering, definition of happiness and reason that unhappiness prevails, role of different categories of love in human relationships, and "the painful riddle of death." 

Mather House Mather 77. Nabokov
Catalog Number:1204 - Enrollment: Limited to 20.
James R. Russell (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)
Half course (spring term). W., 7-10pm

Explores life and work through close reading of autobiography, five major novels, several short stories, related Russian and English poems by Nabokov as well as other poets (especially émigrés), and scholarly writings. Themes explored include: life of the writer and literary invention, Russian influences, the role of the state, exile, sexual identity, the otherworld, and American celebrity status. How does Nabokov’s writing suggest a new intellectual type of free and creative man?.