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 2008-2009

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.

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). Hours to be arranged.

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 75. Russian Women Writers of the Imperial Era
Catalog Number:4352 - Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Laura Schlosberg (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Half course (spring term). Monday, 3-5pm

While the traditional cannon of Russian literature features many well-known authors, the tradition of Russian women writers is less well known although their works increasingly are available in translation. This seminar will look at the fictional and autobiographical writings by Russian women from the Imperial era (usually defined as between the reign of Peter the Great through the Russian Revolution), focusing on these themes: defining Russian women’s writing; society tales; women’s education and the “Woman Question”; other forms of writing; and women imaging change in the Silver Age and revolutionary periods. In addition to memoirs, novels, short stories, and poems, the seminar will include other genres such as: cookbooks, religious texts, journalistic pieces, songs, political propaganda, legal documents, and medical writing. During the term the seminar will consider how women writers engaged with contemporary literary trends and with other Russian and European authors. All assigned readings will be in English. Students with reading fluency in Russian or French will have the opportunity for their final projects to read works by Russian women writers in the original language.

Mather 78. Four Alienated Literary Visionaries
Catalog Number: 6152 - Enrollment: Limited to 20.
James R. Russell (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)
Half course (fall term). Wednesday, 7-10pm EXAM GROUP: 9

Considers issues of literature, culture, and politics in the life and work of four 20th-century American writers living in Cambridge. Each interprets a remote culture and set of problems to contemporaries, in attempting to resolve personal and social alienation: T. S. Eliot, Delmore Schwartz, Vladimir Nabokov, and William S. Burroughs. They enrich an American literature that is still in formation; and the four writers, spanning the modernist and post-modern epochs, are now in its mainstream.

Winthrop House

Winthrop 75. The Laws of War
Catalog Number: (TBD) - Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Gregory Peeples (Department of Government)
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.

The United States is currently engaged in a “Global War on Terrorism.” How that war is prosecuted has been the subject of heated national and international debate. Do (or should) the “laws of war” regulate the conduct of the United States - its officers, soldiers, and agents? This seminar will explore the historical context for this debate. We will examine the development of the two central topics addressed by the Laws of War: jus ad bellum, which outlines a set of legitimate justifications and circumstances for the use of armed force; and jus in bello, known as the Law of Armed Conflict, which relates to the conduct and duties of belligerent states (and their soldiers) during times of war. We will investigate how governments, militaries, non-governmental organizations, lawyers and scholars have interpreted these laws, paying particular attention to examples of military interventions and intra-state conflicts (such as civil wars and insurgencies) that may be particularly relevant to the current conflict. The seminar will also look into relevant U.S. law and institutions. Drawing on this historical and legal background, seminar participants will engage in a series of informed discussion of how these laws, both international and domestic, have influenced the manner in which the U.S. has conducted military, intelligence, and anti-terrorism operations since 9/11. The seminar will conclude with an exploration of how the Laws of War are likely to shape, and be shaped by, Twenty-First-Century conflicts.