| source Harvard (X) |
level |
department Freshman Seminar (X) |
What are the sources of morality, law and rights? This seminar explores these sources through a variety of readings: The Brothers Karamazov, excerpts from the Old and New Testaments and the Koran as well as from my book, The Genesis of Justice), psychology (Steven Pinker, Marc Hauser), philosophy (Robert Nozick, Socrates, Cicero), jurisprudence (my book, Rights From Wrongs, Ronald Dworkin) and positive law (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and foundational documents from other countries).
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Borges is one of the central figures in 20th-century literature. An international standard to which other authors can be compared in ways immediately understandable, he has given western consciousness new ways to read the world. He is, also, an intensely Argentine writer. This course explores this dual nature, local and global. The first half of the course covers Borges' work; the second half traces his presence in European, North American and Latin American authors.
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Explore concepts of taste developed within science, sociology, and philosophy over the past three centuries alongside poetry and fiction from the same timeframe. Considers the sources, uses, and ways aesthetic judgments are entangled in debates over nature/nurture, class, democracy, education, consumption, rebellion, and ethics. Authors to be read include Lehrer, Pope, Hume, Austen, Bourdieu, James, Calinescu, and Nabokov.
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HIV/AIDS has infected or killed more than sixty million people, and no vaccine is expected within five to ten years. About two-thirds of current infections are in ten percent of the world's population in sub-Saharan Africa, where few patients receive life-saving treatment. Explores dimensions of AIDS in Africa including the evolution and epidemiology of HIV, the pathobiology of AIDS, prevention of infection, and treatment of disease. Encourages multidisciplinary approaches, using country-specific illustrations of successful interventions.
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The seminar will explore selected African musical traditions and the manner in which musical expression is linked to other aspects of African life through a comparative reading of recent musical ethnographies (with accompanying audio and visual materials). Topics will include African music histories, performance styles, and systems of meaning. The class will attend an African music concert and have at least one 'hand's on' session exploring African musical instruments.
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The narrative of past events is not the exclusive province of historical literature. Novels and other literary genres have concerned themselves with the past as such and as signifier. Using both literary analysis and historical methods we will contrast novels and histories and explore the manner in which both literary works and historiography feed on each other, contribute to the construction of national myths, identities and to the richer understanding of the past as alternate experience.
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America has long been a land of dreams, on which generations of Europeans and Americans have projected their hopes and fears. As estimates of human potential and ideals of social and political organization have changed over time, new meanings of "America" have proliferated. This seminar (not primarily concerned with the immigrant experience) will examine visions of the new world and its possibilities from the eighteenth century to the present in works of fiction, autobiography, and social criticism.
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What can we learn from modern presidential campaigns and elections about our own political era? In this Seminar, we examine changes in campaigns and elections since 1960; demographic shifts of the last fifty years; nature and structure of American public opinion; ways American news media transmit information and people learn about matters in the public sphere - and use all these perspectives to understand the remarkable 2008 presidential campaign and our own times, issues and society.
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In this course, students will be invited to get lost, like Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and scores of others did (and do), in the pleasures and pains associated with travel, and led to explore and question the history, literature, economics, politics, and spectacle of Americans abroad through reading travel writing by Americans. Together we will consider the ways in which travel and tourism complicate ideas about Americans' cultural and social mobility.
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This seminar will explore some of the great stories of the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament), such as the creation story, the story of the "fall of man," and the flood. We will and look at how these stories have been interpreted and understood over time. Readings will be taken from the Hebrew Bible (in English), the Christian Bible (New Testament) which interprets the great stories, and from early Christian and Rabbinic traditions.
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Experimentation with a variety of animation techniques leads to new perspectives on time in this practice-based seminar. Practical assignments using drawing, pixillation, strata-cut and time-lapse will build into students making a short animated film, individually or in groups.
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This seminar investigates objects in an art museum setting. Drawing on the ancient, modern and contemporary collections of the Harvard Art Museum, it examines ritual and devotional objects, utilitarian and fetishized objects, as well as objects with dominant subjects and more abstract works. The seminar explores the methods and taxonomies used by art historians and conservators to order, study, analyze and preserve objects. Meetings take place in the galleries and at neighboring institutions.
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Although the number of people infected by avian flu is small, the high mortality rate suggests that millions may die if it becomes a global pandemic. Explores the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the swine flu scare of 1976 and 2009, and current developments and research on the H5N1 influenza virus, with emphasis on examining how avian influenza viruses gain the ability to infect different hosts. Source materials include original scientific literature, government documents, journalistic writings and films.
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Plants and animals imitate one another and their surroundings to escape notice and avoid predators. This seminar explores the evolution of mimicry and camouflage using case studies that reveal the range of visual, behavioral, acoustical, and chemical means by which this deception is accomplished.
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Humans have long understood that the blood flowing in their veins was imperative to their health and well-being. This course will examine the history, attitudes and beliefs surrounding blood. We will study human beliefs about blood and its uses in cultural beliefs and ceremonies. We will examine the science associated with blood: the production and the function of blood in the body, ideas of blood regarding medicine, healing, blood-related illnesses, biotechnology, nanotechnology and stem cell research.
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The seminar is an introduction to Buddhism and art history by focusing on a fifth-century Chinese cave. The images therein show episodes from the Buddha's past and present lives (his bodily sacrifices and demon-subjugation, etc.), which involve key concepts of Buddhism, including body, time, and cosmos. Poor visibility in the cave calls for inquiries into modes of cognition and religious functions. The interdisciplinary study explores issues of art, religion, anthropology, and cognitive psychology.
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Focuses on mathematical, computational, and historical aspects of calculating pi. Many great mathematicians, including Archimedes, Newton, Gauss, and Euler, worked on the problem. Explores a wide variety of methods for computing pi and their implementation in Mathematica on a personal computer. Geometry and calculus used to prove the correctness of these methods and assess their accuracy, and then methods used to calculate pi to a large number of decimal places.
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Reviews history of children's health care in the United States; explores the impact of geography, environment, nutrition, clean water, as well as scientific discoveries of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries and the emergence of high technology care in middle and late 20th century. Does America provide children the best possible health care available? Compares United States epidemiology with that of other developed and developing nations. Explores how child health delivery is financed.
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Science and technology are ubiquitous around us, so that at least in the developed world, we scarcely imagine our lives without them. Yet we are consuming energy at an unsustainable rate. This seminar will focus on the science behind the news, and delve into the hard facts (and the hot air!) that form the basis for policies that governments are beginning to implement, and that lead to the opportunities for creating a sustainable energy policy.
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This course provides students with information and insights about strategic communication: how messages are created and framed, why we respond to messages the way we do, and how to employ communications strategies to advance political and public policy goals. The aim is to give students practical experience in developing and executing an advocacy effort to create or change policy. Through guest lecturers, it will introduce students to the perspectives of different critical actors in the policymaking process.
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Investigates how modern democracies use their legal systems to address religion-based conflicts, and evaluates the effects of the legal process on the resolution of these conflicts. Examines different philosophical approaches to the role of religion in public life and discusses their legal manifestations drawing on legal cases from the US, Turkey, India, Israel, Spain, Canada, and England. Studies contemporary debates about the funding of religious institutions, the wearing of Islamic headscarves.
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The course surveys the national security threats and opportunities facing the primary countries of the Middle East, from their perspective. Issues discussed include the domestic sources of national security considerations, relations with regional and international players, military doctrine, foreign policy principles. The seminar is an interactive, "real world" exercise, in which students play the role of leaders in the countries of their choosing and write practical policy recommendations on current affairs.
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Do inherited forms found in literature permit only certain variations within experience to reach lucidity? Investigates literature's limits in giving account of mind, everyday experience, thought, memory, full character, and situation in time. Studies Shakespeare's Hamlet and Joyce's Ulysses, a modern work of unusual complexity and resistance to both interpretation and to simple comfortable reading. Reading these two works suggests potential meanings for terms like complexity, resistance, openness of meaning, and experimentation within form.
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How collisions of interests in online space play out in lawsuits or in proposals before legislatures -- controversies involving Google, YouTube, Apple, Microsoft, MySpace. Examines broad questions of social and technology policy through the lens of law and specific lawsuits. Topics: copyright and fair use, peer-to-peer file sharing, digital rights management, and the DMCA; online speech, anonymity, and privacy; citizen journalism and new media; competition and antitrust; pornography, child protection, and online gambling; security, phishing, and spyware.
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This course looks at approaches taken by different countries to dealing with the recent global financial crisis. What can we learn from historical experiences? How should the future of financial system be shaped? No formal background in economics is required, although a number of readings at the level of Economist and the Financial Times will be assigned. There will be regular short writing assignments and a longer term paper.
Score: 10.138968 Details | Listing | Web page