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)

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

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)

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?

Tomiko Yoda

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)

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)

How do groups express themselves creatively in everyday life, and how do these group expressions reflect our individual experiences of the world?

Sarah Craycraft

What does a jar of homemade pickles have in common with the boisterous chants of the Harvard-Yale game? Both are artful expressions of communal, traditional culture in everyday life! Beyond the walls of museum galleries, creative expression exists all around us in surprising forms, shaped through individual and communal creation.... Read more about The Artfulness of Everyday Life (Gen Ed 1196)

How can one small, remote country change the way we think about the culture of the world?

Christina Maranci

Being wedged between superpowers might seem like a recipe for ethnic assimilation and cultural conformity. Yet what if it made you stronger? In the case of Armenia, being “in-between” led to a vibrant, diverse, and resilient culture, a distinctive religious and national identity, and a dynamic diaspora. Travelling from antiquity to modernity, we will explore how Armenia and Armenians survived and thrived despite invasion, oppression, statelessness, and planned annihilation.... Read more about The Power and Beauty of Being In-Between: The Story of Armenia (Gen Ed 1185)