Aesthetics & Culture

Aesthetics & Culture courses foster critical engagement with diverse artistic and creative endeavors and traditions across history and geographical locations, helping students situate themselves and others as participants in and products of art and culture. 

In A&C courses, students do one or more of the following:

  • Explore how aesthetic objects and practices affect our senses, emotions, and thoughts, and invite our interpretations.
  • Engage directly with aesthetic objects, practices, and texts, broadly conceived, to develop students’ skills of close reading, listening, and observation and to support analysis of the production and reception of these objects in their cultural contexts.
  • Engage in critical analysis of artistic and cultural production from a variety of approaches, including art-making, hands-on, or participatory/experiential assignments.
  • Examine the roles that artistic and creative endeavors play in shaping and reshaping societies.

The following courses fulfill the Aesthetics & Culture requirement

Act Natural (Gen Ed 1050)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How do we draw the line between being yourself and performing yourself, between acting and authenticity?

 

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David Levine

 

“To thine own self be true,” runs the famous line in Hamlet. But which self? And why? And who’s judging? Does this injunction to be authentic even make sense today, when profiles proliferate online and surveillance is ubiquitous? Acting—the art of creating and reproducing selves—can help us navigate these questions. Just as every century’s approach to acting tells us something about their idea of personhood, so too can our own era’s quandaries around empathy, personae, identity, work, art-making and politics be explored through our approach to acting. This course will examine the construction of private and public selves across eras and disciplines, through a combination of lectures, screenings, readings, and talks. Sections and examinations will be practice-based, focused on a single basic task: students will be asked to turn into each other over the course of the term.

... Read more about Act Natural (Gen Ed 1050)

American Dreams Made in Hollywood and Beyond (Gen Ed 1043)

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2023

If we talk about American dreams and the many different ways they take shape in the mass-produced film fantasies made in Hollywood and beyond, what language are we to use and how are we to speak as we confront the diversity of experience portrayed in these designs for living; for whom is the American dream, one wonders, is it for everyone?

 

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Eric Rentschler

The American dream once essentialized the grand promise of a better, fuller, and richer life. At the present moment, however, it seems in many minds to have lost its evocative power as a collective myth. Does this notion still represent a principle of hope or has it become a form of cruel optimism? In a time of prolonged political crisis, this General Education course has a pressing mission. It aims to further a dynamic understanding of American dreams (for there are many and not just one), to apprehend their complexities and contradictions, to appreciate their diverse manifestations and historical shapes, and above all to take measure of their presence and meaning in the world we now inhabit.

... Read more about American Dreams Made in Hollywood and Beyond (Gen Ed 1043)

Anime as Global Popular Culture (Gen Ed 1042)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

What can anime’s development in Japan and its global dissemination teach us about the messy world of contemporary media culture where art and commerce, aesthetic and technology, and producers and consumers are inextricably entangled with each other?

 

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Tomiko Yoda

Banner of anime images

In this course, students will learn to engage Japanese or Japanese-style animation (sometimes known as anime) through two-pronged approaches. First, the students will learn to evaluate the aesthetic and socio-cultural relevance of anime in relation to the criteria and perspectives developed through the study of more established artistic forms such literature, cinema and visual arts. We will cover topics including, anime’s generic conventions, formal aesthetic, and narrative motifs.... Read more about Anime as Global Popular Culture (Gen Ed 1042)

Classical Mythology: Myth in Antiquity and Today (Gen Ed 1110)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2024

Why do some stories get told over and over for thousands of years, and how do those ancient tales still shape (and get shaped by) us today?

 

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Rachel Love

The myths of ancient Greece and Rome embody both our worst nightmares and our most fabulous fantasies. Heroism, happy endings, and everlasting love blend with disturbing themes of parricide, cannibalism, incest, misogyny, and unthinkable violence.  The resulting stories have fascinated generations of artists, writers, and thinkers, and this course will serve as an introduction to this distant but strangely familiar world. We will move from the very first works of Greek literature through the classic Greek tragedies and the Roman tales in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.... Read more about Classical Mythology: Myth in Antiquity and Today (Gen Ed 1110)

Creativity (Gen Ed 1067)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2023

Where does creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we deepen its role in our own lives?

 

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David Atherton

Geniuses are said to possess it. Self-help books offer to teach it. Both the arts and the sciences celebrate it. It sits at the heart of some of our oldest myths and is the subject of up-to-the-minute neuroscientific research. Some say it comes in momentary flashes; others call it a way of life. Some identify it as the key to deep fulfillment; others claim that it entails intense suffering. Many agree that it sets us apart as a species—but does it? What is creativity?... Read more about Creativity (Gen Ed 1067)

Disease, Illness, and Health through Literature (Gen Ed 1078)

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2023

As healthcare costs soar and considerable suffering from disease and illness continues despite regular advances in medicine, what should we advocate for in our communities, our societies, our nations, and beyond to ease the burden of disease and illness on health professionals, family caregivers, and care recipients alike?

 

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Karen Thornber

Inevitably, at some point in our lives, most of us will develop a health condition that requires medical treatment and care. We also, regardless of our career, are likely to be called on to provide care for individuals (loved ones and/or patients) whose health conditions make it impossible for them to care for themselves.... Read more about Disease, Illness, and Health through Literature (Gen Ed 1078)

East Asian Cinema (Gen Ed 1049)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2023

How can we critically analyze and creatively respond to films, meanwhile letting cinema open up a window to other cultures and histories while serving as a mirror for ourselves and our own times?

 

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Jie Li

This course introduces major works, genres, and waves of East Asian cinema from the silent era to the present, including films from Mainland China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. We will discuss issues ranging from formal aesthetics to historical representation, from local film industries to transnational audience reception.... Read more about East Asian Cinema (Gen Ed 1049)

Eating Culture: Past, Present, and Future (Gen Ed 1195)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How and why do we humans “play” with the food we eat, and on which we depend for our lives, in so many different ways—creatively, profoundly, and consequentially?

 

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Joseph Nagy

This interdisciplinary course is dedicated to exploring the proposition that the act of eating, in human civilizations from ancient to contemporary, and all the processes associated with eating—including finding, making, enjoying, and talking about food; feasting and fasting; digestion and its expected consequences and effects—that all these constitute a culture, a complex system of shared practices, beliefs, and worldview that both reflects and “feeds into” the cultures of particular communities.... Read more about Eating Culture: Past, Present, and Future (Gen Ed 1195)

Faith and Authenticity: Religion, Existentialism and the Human Condition (Gen Ed 1069)

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2024

How do the possibilities of faith and the demands of living authentically square with the developments of the modern west and its threats of nihilism?

 

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Courtney Bickel Lamberth and David Lamberth

This course engages some of the most fundamental questions of human existence through the philosophical, theological and literary works of 19th and 20th century authors many of whom are associated with the movement called “existentialism.” What is an authentic individual life?... Read more about Faith and Authenticity: Religion, Existentialism and the Human Condition (Gen Ed 1069)

Global Japanese Cinema (Gen Ed 1145)

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2024

What can film from Japan tell us about the strange pair of intensifying global interconnections and rising nationalism in the world today?

 

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Alexander Zahlten

Global Japanese Cinema introduces some of the masterworks from the rich history of Japanese cinema as a way of exploring the global language of film. Participants will learn how to analyze moving images and the ways they influence us – a basic media literacy that we all need for life in a media- saturated society.... Read more about Global Japanese Cinema (Gen Ed 1145)

Harvard Gets Medieval (Gen Ed 1160)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How did our world come to be suffused with medieval images and motifs, and what do we learn about the past and ourselves as we begin to explore the fascinating time on the other side of the stereotypes?

 

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Daniel Lord Smail

Starting in the late nineteenth century, Harvard got medieval. Through direct purchase and through the collecting activity of numerous alumnae/i, we began collecting all sorts of texts and artifacts generated by the medieval world of Arabic, Greek, and Latin civilizations. The things that arrived in Harvard’s collections came in many forms, ranging from great architectural monuments and motifs to little stuff such as belt buckles, pilgrims’ flasks, and fragments of pottery.... Read more about Harvard Gets Medieval (Gen Ed 1160)

Language in Culture and Society (Gen Ed 1177)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2023

How is verbal art -- from story-telling to poetry and from hip hop to church song -- created from linguistic and musical form, and how does its performance mediate social relations as well as construct cultural meanings that are central to our lives?

 

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Nicholas Harkness

Clearly, ideas about what language is and what it does shape scientific inquiry well beyond the discipline of linguistics. Language serves not only as a primary medium for formulating and communicating scientific ideas, but also, and very often, as a paradigm for generating these scientific ideas. Where do these ideas about language—whether they be intuitions, assumptions, popular beliefs, rumors, trends, or theoretical models—come from?... Read more about Language in Culture and Society (Gen Ed 1177)

LGBT Literature, Politics, and Identity (Gen Ed 1176)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2022

What is the relationship between LGBT literary representation and politics, activism, and culture?

 

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Linda Schlossberg

In this course, we’ll learn how sexual identity and desire are understood and represented in different social and historical circumstances, We’ll move beyond the binary of identifying images as “positive” or “negative,” paying attention to how depictions, definitions, and understandings of sexuality are shaped by specific historical moments, as well as the aesthetic traditions and personal experiences shaping these individual works.... Read more about LGBT Literature, Politics, and Identity (Gen Ed 1176)

Loss (Gen Ed 1131)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How are we to cope with the inevitability that some of what we most love in life we will lose?

 

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Kathleen Coleman

Loss is an inevitable fact of human existence. Small losses most of us learn to bear with equanimity. But enormous, wrenching, life-changing losses open voids in our lives for which we can never feel adequately prepared, even if we can see them coming. This course tries to understand the nature of loss on a physical and emotional level, to give us some framework for coping with it and to help us develop some empathy in those very difficult situations when someone else has faced a loss and we do not know how to react.... Read more about Loss (Gen Ed 1131)

Making Things (Breaking Things) (Gen Ed 1191)

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2024

How do we know ourselves through things and what does it mean to think with our hands, to innovate and to productively fail as a tool of self knowledge?

 

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Katarina Burin

 

How do we know ourselves through things?

 

This course fosters a hands-on, studio-art-based approach to thinking about our lives with objects—the things we make, the things we buy, the things we break.... Read more about Making Things (Breaking Things) (Gen Ed 1191)

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Gen Ed Categories

Aesthetics & Culture icon
 

Aesthetics & Culture

Aesthetics & Culture courses foster critical engagement with diverse artistic and creative endeavors and traditions across history and geographical locations, helping students situate themselves and others as participants in and products of art and culture. 

In A&C courses, students do one or more of the following:

  • Explore how aesthetic objects and practices affect our senses, emotions, and thoughts, and invite our interpretations.
  • Engage directly with aesthetic objects, practices, and texts, broadly conceived, to develop students’ skills of close reading, listening, and observation and to support analysis of the production and reception of these objects in their cultural contexts.
  • Engage in critical analysis of artistic and cultural production from a variety of approaches, including art-making, hands-on, or participatory/experiential assignments.
  • Examine the roles that artistic and creative endeavors play in shaping and reshaping societies.

 

Ethics & Civics icon
 

Ethics & Civics

Ethics & Civics courses examine the dilemmas that individuals, communities, and societies face as they explore questions of virtue, justice, equity, inclusion, and the greater good. 

In E&C courses, students do one or more of the following:

  • Analyze the foundations and ramifications of diverse modes of ethical inquiry and practice.
  • Situate ideas about ethics and civic engagement in their historical, cultural, and social contexts.
  • Explore real-world ethical questions, ranging from problems in individual lives to the challenges of meeting civic responsibility at local, national, and global levels.

 

Histories, Societies, Individuals icon
 

Histories, Societies, Individuals

Histories, Societies, Individuals courses explore the dynamic relationships between individuals and larger social, economic and political structures, both historically and in the present moment. 

In HSI courses, students do one or more of the following:

  • Examine change over time to understand the historical origins of the contemporary world.
  • Analyze the interplay between individuals, groups, and larger social, economic, and political structures in the making of the modern world.
  • Compare societies across time and space to broaden students’ understandings of the complexities of global experiences.
Science & Technology in Society icon
 

Science & Technology in Society

Science & Technology in Society courses explore scientific and technological ideas and practices in their social and historical contexts, providing a foundation to assess their promise and perils. STS courses engage students in the practice of science, not just the study of scientific findings.

In STS courses, students  do one or more of the following: 

  • Engage in scientific methods of inquiry, such as theoretical framing, structured observation or experimentation, and quantitative analysis.
  • Examine the influence of social, economic, cultural, and political factors on science and engineering.
  • Analyze the ethical, social, and political implications of scientific and technological ideas and practices, including their potential and risks.

 

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