What is left out of view and why? Many landmark works about the intersection of race, culture, and equity have been censored, excised, or unseen\u2014viewed and then disregarded\u2014or even erased from official narratives. This course will focus on key works from monuments to photographs, paintings to maps to consider the impact of these strategies for the direction and field of the future of visual culture in America.
\nGraduate students register for this course when they permanently join a lab. Students should register under the supervising PI.
\nThis seminar is a study of monsters and \u201cdeviants\u201d in Western culture from Biblical times to the present day. Students will endeavor to answer, collectively and individually, some basic questions: How does the idea of the monster both shun and affirm difference? How is the monster a product of systems of belief and cultural values? In what ways do monsters represent sexuality, politics, religion, and power? An array of exotic and marginal figures will form the focus of our study, including\u2026\n
Students in this seminar will learn about research in the health sciences through a quantitative lens. With an emphasis on how we evaluate who is at risk for disease, what are the underlying causes, and what treatments are most effective, we will take a deep dive into thinking about how data are generated and what we can (and cannot) discern from it. Concepts will be introduced in the context of case studies focused on infectious, neuro-degenerative, and cardio-metabolic diseases as well as\u2026\n
What is space?\u202f\u202fWhat is\u202ftime?\u202f\u202fHow have humans viewed these over the years?\u202f\u202fHow are the views of these shaped by our environments and cultures?\u202f\u202fWe often employ spatial metaphors for social situations, e.g.\u202f\u201cthey\u2019re very close,\u201d or \u201cthey split apart.\u201d It seems that as concepts of space change, and our horizons are broadened, these changes are reflected in a shift in cultural awareness. Although we\u202fdon\u2019t\u202fthink about it now, the question of how the sun gets back to the east after setting in\u2026\n
At Harvard you will be freer to do what you want than perhaps at any other time of your life. To what, then, will you be most committed? Your extracurriculars or your coursework? Your friends or your GPA? Your job prospects or your political convictions? It is the purpose of the liberal arts to equip you to direct the course of your own life. This first-year seminar addresses your new freedom and offers the opportunity to re-examine your commitments, through an inquiry into the life and\u2026\n
Why do some governments work - and others don't?Why can some countries collect taxes, run schools and hospitals, and respond to crises, while others struggle to deliver even basic services? And why are people in places like the United States increasingly worried about whether their own government can still do these things well?This seminar is an invitation to explore those questions. We\u2019ll focus on one big idea: state capacity (the ability of governments to turn decisions into real-world\u2026\n
The Harvard of today was shaped by events from the past century, among them, the creation of the House system; the protests over the war in Viet Nam; and the efforts to diversify admissions. This seminar will explore those events by considering how they were reflected in historical documents\u2014and refracted through novels and film. Texts will include William Faulkner\u2019s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Erich Segal\u2019s Love Story (1970), Zadie Smith\u2019s On Beauty (2005), and Harvard Beats Yale 29-29\u2026\n
This course explores how and why \u201cgig work\u201d \u2014 featuring flexible, short-term agreements and few of the benefits or protections associated with formal employment \u2014 has become so pervasive, with harmful consequences for workers and societies alike. We will examine how unions and federal labor law sought to redress precarity in the early twentieth century; the emergence of early gig-like arrangements like direct selling, multi-level marketing, and franchising; the role of digital technologies in\u2026\n
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.Percy Bysshe ShelleyCan a poem change the world? And can you write that poem? And can you write twelve poems? And should you take this class? To write a poem is to be human. To write twelve is to be divine. Can you be divine? Let\u2019s find out, this semester, by writing twelve poems. In this seminar we will write one original poem per week. There are about twelve weeks in a semester. Therefore, we will write twelve poems.In this seminar we\u2026\n
How can individuals and communities promote peace when conflict seems intractable and the right path forward is genuinely unclear?What does it actually take to build peace in a divided world, and why is it so much harder than it sounds? This course invites students to grapple with one of the most pressing and enduring questions of civic life: how do individuals, communities, and institutions promote peace, sustaindialogue, and navigate conflict in ways that are both principled and\u2026\n
The universe is full of \u201cbumps in the night\u201d: cosmic explosions and mysterious signals that appear without warning. When scientists find unexpected results, how do we determine its origin, especially something never seen before? In this seminar, we will explore how raw observations of our universe turn into scientific discoveries using \u201ctransient phenomena\u201d (like the explosive death of stars) as a case study.The seminar emphasizes science as a human and interdisciplinary endeavor. Students\u2026\n
What is sacrifice and does it still matter? The contemporary world seems to demand that human beings become increasingly self-focused as we compete for scarcer resources, security, or social status. Can the idea of surrendering something precious for the sake of something greater still hold power? We will study the history of sacrifice, a ritual that has played a central role in the world\u2019s religions and is still practiced in some today. In many cultures, animals, humans, or plants were\u2026\n
This seminar will explore the question: What does it mean to say that something is \"feasible\"? We will start by laying out the metamathematical prerequisites. This will involve (a) the connection between very weak systems of arithmetic and the theory of computational complexity, and (b) even more concrete matters (like the celebrated Meyer-Stockmeyer result) involving circuit complexity. We will then turn to such questions as: How can one best articulate the standpoint of the strict finitist?\u2026\n
How can we accelerate the path toward realizing useful quantum computers? What will be the first scientific and industrial applications of such machines? Should the development and deployment of quantum technologies be regulated\u2014and if so, how? For more than four decades, scientists have explored how the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics\u2014particularly superposition and entanglement\u2014can be harnessed to build new kinds of information processors capable of solving problems that are\u2026\n