Life as a Planetary Phenomenon (Gen Ed 1070)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

Is there alien life beyond Earth?

 



Dimitar Sasselov

What is it about Earth that enables life to thrive? This question was reinvigorated with the 2016 ground-breaking discovery of a habitable planet around the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. A decade of exploration confirmed that such planets are common in our galaxy, and the commonality of habitable planets has raised anew some age-old questions: Where do we come from? What is it to be human? Where are we going? Are we alone in the universe?... Read more about Life as a Planetary Phenomenon (Gen Ed 1070)

Multisensory Religion: Rethinking Islam (Gen Ed 1087)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

What role do our senses play in shaping our understandings of “religion” and “religious experience”?

 



Ali S. Asani

One need only walk into a church, a mosque, a temple, a synagogue or any place of worship to experience the beauty and aesthetic power of religion. For millions of people around the world, understanding of religion is forged through personal experiences, often embedded in the sound, visual, and literary arts. What does it mean to call some art “religious”? How can interpreting an individual believer’s engagement with the arts help us see “religion” in a new light?... Read more about Multisensory Religion: Rethinking Islam (Gen Ed 1087)

What is a Book? From the Clay Tablet to the Kindle (Gen Ed 1090)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

What is the nature of the object that has been the focus of your education since you began to read--and at the core of Western culture since its inception-- and why is it important to understand and appreciate its presence before your eyes even if it's all but transparent?

 



David Stern



You have spent much of your life since kindergarten (and perhaps earlier) reading books; and you will spend much of your time at Harvard continuing to read them. But do you even know what a “book” is? Is it merely a conveyor, a platform, for presenting a text? Can a book have a use other than being read? Does the nature of the material artifact inscribed with words shape or influence the way you understand their meaning? Do people read a scroll differently than they do a book with pages? Or a digital text on a screen? Why does the physical book persist in the digital age?... Read more about What is a Book? From the Clay Tablet to the Kindle (Gen Ed 1090)

Pyramid Schemes: What Can Ancient Egyptian Civilization Teach Us? (Gen Ed 1099)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How does ancient Egypt enlighten our times about what defines a civilization, and were those ancient humans, with their pyramids, hieroglyphs, and pharaohs, exactly like or nothing like us?

 



Peter Der Manuelian

How much of your impression of the ancient world was put there by Hollywood, music videos, or orientalist musings out of the West? How accurate are these depictions? Does it matter? This course examines the quintessential example of the “exotic, mysterious ancient world” – Ancient Egypt – to interrogate these questions.  Who has “used” ancient Egypt as a construct, and to what purpose? Did you know that pyramids, mummies, King Tut, and Cleopatra represent just the (overhyped) tip of a very rich civilization that holds plenty of life lessons for today?... Read more about Pyramid Schemes: What Can Ancient Egyptian Civilization Teach Us? (Gen Ed 1099)

Prediction: The Past and Present of the Future (Gen Ed 1112)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How and why do humans try to divine their own futures?

 



Alyssa Goodman



Human beings are the only creatures in the animal kingdom properly defined as worriers. We are the only ones who expend tremendous amounts of time, energy, and resources trying (sometimes obsessively) to understand our futures before they happen. While the innate ability of individual people to predict has not changed much in the past few millennia, developments in mathematical and conceptual models have inordinately improved predictive systems.... Read more about Prediction: The Past and Present of the Future (Gen Ed 1112)

Human Trafficking, Slavery and Abolition in the Modern World (Gen Ed 1115)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

Why do slavery, human trafficking and other forms of servitude thrive today globally, including the USA, and what can we do about it?

 



Orlando Patterson

We often think of slavery as being a dark chapter in our past, but this is a tragic oversimplification. What defines slavery in the modern world, and what are the moral, political and social implications of its continued existence? As we explore its underpinnings, we discover that all of us may be in some way complicit in its survival.... Read more about Human Trafficking, Slavery and Abolition in the Modern World (Gen Ed 1115)

Power to the People: Black Power, Radical Feminism, and Gay Liberation (Gen Ed 1130)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How does understanding political activists and movements in the past help us radically change the world today?

 



Michael Bronski

This course is an introduction to the radical American social change movements of the 1960s and 70s. We will examine the specific historical conditions that allowed each of these movements to develop, the interconnections and contradictions among them, and why their political power faded, only to reemerge in new manifestations today.... Read more about Power to the People: Black Power, Radical Feminism, and Gay Liberation (Gen Ed 1130)

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?

 



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)

Is the U.S. Civil War Still Being Fought? (Gen Ed 1133)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How and why does the U.S. Civil War continue to shape national politics, laws, literature, and culture---especially in relation to our understanding of race, freedom, and equality?

 



John Stauffer

Most of us were taught that the Civil War between the Confederacy and the Union was fought on battlefields chiefly in the American South between the years of 1861-1865. In this narrative, the North won and the South lost. But what if the issues that resulted in such devastating bloodshed were never resolved? What if the war never ended? This course demonstrates the ways in which the United States is still fighting the Civil War, arguably THE defining event in U.S. history.... Read more about Is the U.S. Civil War Still Being Fought? (Gen Ed 1133)

The Challenge of Human Induced Climate Change: Transitioning to a Post Fossil Fuel Future (Gen Ed 1137)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

What can we do now to avoid the most serious consequences of climate change, which poses an immediate problem for global society?

 



Michael B. McElroy

Human induced climate change has the potential to alter the function of natural ecosystems and the lives of people on a global scale. The prospect lies not in the distant future but is imminent. Our choice is either to act immediately to change the nature of our global energy system (abandon our dependence on fossil fuels) or accept the consequences (included among which are increased incidence of violent storms, fires, floods and droughts, changes in the spatial distribution and properties of critical ecosystems, and rising sea level).... Read more about The Challenge of Human Induced Climate Change: Transitioning to a Post Fossil Fuel Future (Gen Ed 1137)

Borders (Gen Ed 1140)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How have borders been formed historically, and what are the ethics of border construction, defense, expansion or transgression?

 



Mary Lewis



As a society, we pay particular attention to borders when incidents such as children separated from their asylum-seeking parents or tear-gas being used to deter entry throw the legal divide between two nation states into sharp relief. But seldom do we stop to think about what a border is, or when and why some borders are defended more aggressively than others. 

... Read more about Borders (Gen Ed 1140)

Water and the Environment (Gen Ed 1158)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How does the water cycle change us, and how do we change it?

 



Kaighin McColl

What do landslides in Brazil, droughts in California, mass migration in Syria and the collapse of Mayan civilization all have in common? Water. This course introduces students to the terrestrial water cycle: how it works, how humans manipulate it, and how it manipulates us.... Read more about Water and the Environment (Gen Ed 1158)

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?

 



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)

Mexico and the Making of Global Cuisine (Gen Ed 1178)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

What does the food we eat tell us about ourselves—as individuals, communities, and countries—and how has humanity’s relationship with food changed over time?

 



Jennifer Carballo

We all need to eat and drink each day to nourish our bodies. Yet how often do you pause to think deeply about why you eat what you eat? Your food habits are likely influenced by family traditions, but also by a range of other factors like income, age, ethnicity, religion, politics, and the environment. What does the food we eat tell us about ourselves—as individuals, communities and countries—and how has humanity’s relationship with food changed over time?... Read more about Mexico and the Making of Global Cuisine (Gen Ed 1178)

The English Language Today, Yesterday, and Tomorrow (Gen Ed 1183)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How does the English language shape our world, and how does the world shape English?

 



Daniel Donoghue

How does the English language shape our world? And how does the world shape English? Our “world” includes our most intimate thoughts and feelings, but it also can expand into an ever-widening social network; either way, whether personal or global, the English language has a profound and reciprocal relation with its speakers.... Read more about The English Language Today, Yesterday, and Tomorrow (Gen Ed 1183)

Worlds Beyond: The Past, Present and Future of Solar System Exploration (Gen Ed 1184)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How and why are space missions conducted, and what should the future of human activity in space look like?

 



Robin Wordsworth

Earth, our home, is unique and precious, but it is almost inconceivably tiny compared to the vast expanses that lie beyond it. Through robotic and human missions over the last few decades, we have enriched our understanding of our own changing planet and discovered much about our nearby celestial neighbors, although many mysteries remain.... Read more about Worlds Beyond: The Past, Present and Future of Solar System Exploration (Gen Ed 1184)

The Age of Anxiety: Histories, Theories, Remedies (Gen Ed 1186)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How have authors throughout history channeled anxiety into meaningful and imaginative works of art?

 



Beth Blum

The poet WH Auden described the 1940s as “the age of anxiety,” but he could have been describing our own stress-ridden times: anxiety is today the most common class of contemporary mental health condition. This course pursues two guiding questions: how has anxiety changed throughout history and how has it stayed the same? And how have authors throughout history productively channeled anxiety into creating beautiful and meaningful works of art?... Read more about The Age of Anxiety: Histories, Theories, Remedies (Gen Ed 1186)

Rise of the Machines? Understanding and Using Generative AI (Gen Ed 1188)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

If we’re living through the emergence of a highly disruptive technology, namely Chat-GPT and similar generative AI tools, what should we do about it?

 



Christopher Stubbs & Logan S. McCarty

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) systems such as Chat-GPT have caught the entire world off-guard. They are evolving at a pace that is overwhelming the ability of individuals, organizations, and societies to understand, adjust to, and regulate them. Current-generation GAI tools can write narrative and music, can generate original art, and can write computer programs, all from natural language requests.... Read more about Rise of the Machines? Understanding and Using Generative AI (Gen Ed 1188)

U.S. K-12 Schools: Assumptions, Binaries, and Controversies (Gen Ed 1189)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

What if schools were for learning instead of education?

 



Elizabeth City

You will be involved in education your whole life. As a taxpayer, voter, or parent, you will be connected with formal schooling. You will almost certainly be in the role of teacher at various points in your life, whether in a classroom, in another professional setting, or guiding someone in something you love to do.... Read more about U.S. K-12 Schools: Assumptions, Binaries, and Controversies (Gen Ed 1189)

Philanthropy, Nonprofits, and the Social Good (Gen Ed 1192)

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2025

How can we most effectively harness the power of philanthropic giving and nonprofit work to create positive social change and address society's most pressing challenges?

 



Shai M. Dromi

How can charitable giving and nonprofit work be used to foster positive social impact? This course investigates this question by introducing students to the nature of philanthropy and nonprofit organizations, and their influence on civil society.... Read more about Philanthropy, Nonprofits, and the Social Good (Gen Ed 1192)

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