Oliver D. Hart (Department of Economics) Freshman Seminar 42C 4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Economists have a very positive view of the role of markets. The intellectual foundations of this are the first and second theorems of welfare economics. The purpose of the seminar is to introduce the students to these results but also to their limitations....
Scott Edwards (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology) Freshman Seminar 21R (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
The transition of dinosaurs to birds is quickly becoming one of the most complete records of evolutionary change in the vertebrate fossil record. Additionally, it is an excellent model of science building on incremental discoveries and undergoing paradigm shifts as new data are collected. In this seminar we will...
Gordon Teskey (Department of English) Freshman Seminar 64P4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
An introductory seminar on lyric poetry, with close reading of poems from four continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Poetry not in English will be translated but students with competence in foreign languages are welcome to work with the originals.
Alexander Riehle (Department of the Classics) Freshman Seminar 64W4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
One of the most controversial women of ancient and medieval history is Theodora, wife of Justinian I and empress of the Roman Empire in the 6th century CE. She has been variously portrayed as a hypersexual prostitute and power-hungry, vindictive manipulator, or as a saint,...
Julie Anne Weaver (Department of Government and Committee on Degrees in Social Studies) Freshman Seminar 71O4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Across the world, massive street protests and growing disdain for politics not only suggest high citizen dissatisfaction with politicians’ performance—from poor public services, high corruption, and increasing crime—but highlight the difficulty of holding politicians accountable to the voters who put them in office....
Peter J. Burgard (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures) Freshman Seminar 64R4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known simply as Caravaggio, is widely held to be one of the greatest painters of all time. He painted primarily religious subjects. And yet he was in his own time (turn of the 17th century) and remains one of the most controversial of all painters, many...
Carol Oja (Department of Music) Freshman Seminar 34V 4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Note:Student musicians and actors are welcome in the course, as are students who love to watch shows but not necessarily perform in them. Ability to read music is desirable but not required.
This seminar will explore a core group of Broadway musicals. Historical, musical, and...
Phillip Howze (Department of Theater, Dance, and Media) Freshman Seminar 64Q 4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Writing can be fun. By “writing”, we don’t only mean the act of putting pen to paper, or fingers to computer keys to type. Writing is the ancient, conscious act of choosing words or texts or images and composing them in such a way to create an intended effect. Yes, writing is an intentional process… but not one which has to be necessarily painstaking. What...
Elie Ofek (Harvard Business School) Freshman Seminar 40D4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 15
Marketing, as you will find in this seminar, refers to the set of activities needed to form and sustain a healthy business by fostering meaningful exchanges between the organization and...
Carrie Lambert-Beatty (Department of History of Art and Architecture and of Visual and Environmental Studies) Freshman Seminar 30X4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Daniel L. Schacter (Department of Psychology) Freshman Seminar 23S4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
How do we remember and why do we forget? Can we trust our memories? How is memory affected by misinformation such as “fake news”? Do smartphones and the Internet help our memories or hurt them? Are traumatic experiences especially well remembered or are they poorly remembered? What are the best ways to study for exams? This seminar will...Read more about The Seven Sins of Memory
David C. Lamberth (Harvard Divinity School)_ Freshman Seminar 63E4 credits(spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
More than a 150 years after Darwin’s epochal account of evolution, over 85% of the world’s 7 billion people are still religious, and the percentage is...
Giovanni Parmigiani (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) Freshman Seminar 52J 4 credits (spring term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
In 2021, a special committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) convened to “review and assess NASA's processes for long-term risk assessment and management for currently anticipated...
