Close-up view of student’s face as they listen during a First-Year Seminar.
First-Year Seminars are designed to intensify the intellectual experience of incoming students by allowing them to work closely with faculty members. They are also the ideal space to explore interests and engage with other First-Years. First-Year seminars are graded SAT/UNS and may not be audited. Only students in their first-year in the College may take a seminar in either or both of the terms. Each seminar is worth 4 units of credit. Enrollment is limited to 12-15 students.
Add or switch a Spring Term Seminar
Mon, January 13 – Mon, February 3, 2025.
Please check back!
The available seminars with open seats will change
as students alter their courses in the Crimson Carts.
Instructions are below.
Instructions for Applying for Open Seats
You may add or switch a seminar for another in Add/Drop Period, Jan 13th – Feb 3rd. Determine below in the catalog if there is an available seat in your preferred seminar and email the instructor. Be sure to include a reason why you with to take the First-Year Seminar. Instructors will look for this and it shows your enthusiasm.
More seminars with open seats will become available as students alter their courses in the Crimson Carts.
- After you have emailed the instructor, and if they accept you into their seminar:
- Forward the email to firstyearseminarprogram@fas.harvard.edu.
- Add the seminar to your Crimson Cart in My.Harvard.
- Send a petition through My.Harvard to the faculty instructor to get official acceptance to enroll through the system.
Seminar Catalog
Use the “Filter by Semester” drop-down to show Spring Term 2025 seminars with open seats.
More seminars with open seats will become available as students alter their courses in the Crimson Carts.
112 results found.
#Adulting: Social Science Perspectives on the Transition to Adulthood
Nancy Hill (Harvard Graduate School of Education)First-Year Seminar 72U | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
Debates about when adolescence ends and adulthood begins often lead to judgements about how long youth today are taking to reach adulthood and uncertainties about what it means to become. . . READ MORE
A Brief History of Surgery
Frederick Millham (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 24G | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 06:00 PM–08:00 PM
Was Surgery practiced in the Stone Age? Twenty six hundred years ago at the dawn of recorded history, Egyptian surgeons operated on patients by the shores of the Nile. What diagnoses. . . READ MORE
American Slavery, American Freedom
John Harpham (Social Studies)First-Year Seminar 73M | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
This seminar will explore the complex relationship between slavery and freedom–the two most powerful ideas in the American political tradition. We will consider the extent to which slavery and freedom. . . READ MORE
Americans at Work in the Age of Robots and Artificial Intelligence
Benjamin Friedman (Department of Economics)First-Year Seminar 71G | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
Where will the coming generation of Americans (say, today’s 18-year-olds) find jobs? And will the jobs be worth having? People have worried about losing their jobs to technology at least. . . READ MORE
Anton Chekhov: Stories, Plays, Productions, Films
Julie A. Buckler (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)First-Year Seminar 65P | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
Anton Chekhov was the last of the major writers from the classic period of Russian literature, producing his distinctive short stories and plays during the twilight years of the Russian empire. . . READ MORE
Asteroids and Comets
Charles R. Alcock (Astronomy)First-Year Seminar 23R | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 6-8:45 PM
Asteroids and comets are much smaller than the planets in the solar system, but they are much more numerous, and occupy vastly more space than the familiar planetary region that we all are familiar with…
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Myths, Media and Meaning
Anne Arnett (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 52Z | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
This first-year seminar will dive into the science and fiction of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) through engagement with multiple sources, including research articles and reports, social media, news media. . . READ MORE
Autobiography and Black Freedom Struggles
Tommie Shelby (Department of Philosophy)First-Year Seminar 32R | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM – 2:45 PM
This seminar introduces the main traditions of African American political thought and the history of the black fight for justice through the genre of autobiography. Students will read some classic. . . READ MORE
Big Data, Tall Tales
Andrea Foulkes (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)First-Year Seminar 53F | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
Students in this seminar will get their hands dirty playing with data as we explore how to be judicious consumers of it. The huge swaths of data now available allow us to tell stories. . . READ MORE
Black Holes, String Theory and the Fundamental Laws of Nature
Andrew Strominger (Department of Physics)First-Year Seminar 21V | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 5:30 PM–8:00 PM
The quest to understand the fundamental laws of nature has been ongoing for centuries. This seminar will assess the current status of this quest. In the first five weeks we. . . READ MORE
Borges, García Márquez, Bolaño and Other Classics of Modern Latin American Fiction and Poetry
Mariano Siskind (Department of Romance Languages & Literatures)First-Year Seminar 33C | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Friday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
This course introduces students to some of the most important Latin American literary works produced during the twentieth century. We will explore the ways in which these novels, short-stories, essays. . . READ MORE
Buddhist Enlightenment: Visions, Words, and Practice
Ryuichi Abe (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations)First-Year Seminar 62Z | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
How do you get enlightened? Is the Buddha a god or human? How many Buddhas are there in the world? How many celebrated enlightened women do we find in Buddhism. . . READ MORE
Burnout: Quiet Quitting, Slacking Off, and Our Addiction to Achievement
William Stewart (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures)First-Year Seminar 53H | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 9:45 AM – 11:45 AM
Who hasn’t felt burnout? Who hasn’t felt it more acutely in the years since the pandemic? And who hasn’t struggled to define just what exactly this feeling is or where it. . . READ MORE
California in the 60’s
Kate van Orden (Department of Music)First-Year Seminar 30M | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM–02:45 PM
This seminar examines American youth culture in the long 1960s through the lens of music in California. A range of popular and art music will be considered, from San Francisco . . . READ MORE
Catholic Thought for Contemporary Challenges
Karin Öberg (Department of Astronomy)First-Year Seminar 65S | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM – 02:45 PM
Does God exist? If yes, what or who is God? Where does the Universe come from? Are we alone in the Universe? What is a good life? Are there universal. . . READ MORE
Changing Our Mind: Evolving Thoughts on Brain Regeneration
Paola Arlotta (Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology)First-Year Seminar 26O | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
We will discuss current theories on brain regeneration in a dynamic setting that combines brainstorming of the literature with experiences in the laboratory. Students will learn experiments that have shaped. . . READ MORE
Changing Perspectives: the Science of Optics in the Visual Arts
Aravinthan Samuel (Department of Physics)First-Year Seminar 51X | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
Renaissance artists began to create stunningly realistic representations of their world. Paintings started to resemble photographs, suggesting that artists had solved technical problems that escaped their forebears. Our brains effortlessly. . . READ MORE
Climate Action: The Politics of Decarbonization
Jonathan Masin-Peters (Social Students)First-Year Seminar 73N | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
You are part of the so-called “pivotal generation” for preventing the worst effects of climate change. While global carbon emissions continue to rise yearly, there remains a small window of. . . READ MORE
Complexity in Works of Art: Ulysses and Hamlet
Philip Fisher (Department of English)First-Year Seminar 33X | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
Is the complexity, the imperfection, the difficulty of interpretation, the unresolved meaning found in certain great and lasting works of literary art a result of technical experimentation? Or is the. . . READ MORE
Corporate Power & Human Rights—Community Resistance and Social Movements
Tyler Giannini (Harvard Law School)First-Year Seminar 72P | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:00 AM–11:30 AM
How do the seemingly most marginalized take on the most powerful corporations in the world and win? In this seminar, we will delve into this question and what drives community resistance. . . READ MORE
Creature Feature: Fantastic Animals in Myth and History
Kimberley Patton (Harvard Divinity School)First-Year Seminar 66E | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
As a child, who did not live in a world of magical creatures? Flying horses, graceful unicorns, wise centaurs, and fire-breathing dragons lived alongside talking animals and family pets. . . READ MORE
Crime and Justice in a Changing America
Robert SampsonFirst-Year Seminar 73S | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
This seminar examines key changes in crime and the criminal justice system over the last half-century, including the dramatic rise in violence starting in the 1960s, mass incarceration starting in. . . READ MORE
Death and Immortality
Cheryl Chen (Department of Philosophy)First-Year Seminar 30Q | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
In this seminar, we will discuss philosophical questions about death and immortality. What is death? Is there a moral difference between brain death and the irreversible loss of consciousness? Is. . . READ MORE
Deciding What (and Who) to Believe
Zoë Johnson King (Department of Philosophy)First-Year Seminar 65G | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
Its hard to know what to believe these days. Information or perhaps misinformation bombards us at all times, but assessing the reliability and trustworthiness of our sources is notoriously difficult. . . READ MORE
Defense Against the Dark Arts (Cybersecurity Edition)
Michael Smith (Computer Science) and Simson GarfinkelFirst-Year Seminar 73T | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
“The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster…. Your defenses must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you. . . READ MORE
Detention, Deportation, and Due Process: A Look at the Innerworkings of the U.S. Immigration System
Philip Torrey (Harvard Law School) and Sabrineh Ardalan (Harvard Law School)First-Year Seminar 66D | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 9:30 AM – 11:30 PM
The public discourse on immigration is widespread and divisive. If you have ever wanted to know more about how our immigration system operates, its faults, and potential ways to fix. . . READ MORE
Earth Science Goes to the Movies: Math and Physics of Natural (?) Disasters
Miaki Ishii (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)First-Year Seminar 23I | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:45 PM
Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions can have devastating effects on society, but are often over-exaggerated for the silver screen. How can we tell. . . READ MORE
Einstein Changes Our World
Peter Galison (Department of the History of Science)First-Year Seminar 53E | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 03:00 PM–05:45 PM
Albert Einstein is the most famous figure in science, ever. Following his physics, cultural, philosophical, and political trajectory, this seminar aims to track the shifting role of science in the. . . READ MORE
Exploring the Infinite
W. Hugh Woodin (Department of Mathematics and Department of Philosophy)First-Year Seminar 23C | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:45 PM–05:45 PM
Infinity captivates the imagination. A child stands between two mirrors and sees herself reflected over and over again, smaller and smaller, trailing off to infinity. Does it go on forever?. . . READ MORE
Fat Talk and Thin Ideals: Culture, Social Norms and Weight
Anne Becker (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 71X | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
In 1995, the Fiji Islands were one of the last places on the planet to receive broadcast television. Within just three years, body weight ideals had transformed from large to thin. . . READ MORE
Finding Connections: Perspectives on Psychological Development and Mental Illness
Nancy Rappaport (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 25N | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
The seminars challenge will be to deepen our understanding of human development and how individuals cope with serious emotional or social difficulties (neglect, bipolar disorder, autism, depression, schizophrenia). We will. . . READ MORE
Fun With Writing… or, Writing for Weirdos
Phillip Howze (Department of Theater, Dance & Media)First-Year Seminar 64Q | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 03:45 PM–05:45 PM
Writing can be fun. Writing can be weird. By writing, we don’t only mean the act of putting pen to paper, or fingers to computer keys to type. Writing is. . . READ MORE
Getting to Know Charles Darwin
William Friedman (Organismic & Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 24P | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Do you think you know who Charles Darwin was? The legend and sober-looking bearded scholar behind the most important paradigm shift in human history? In this seminar, we will read. . . READ MORE
Global Capitalism: Past, Present, Future
Sophus Reinert (Harvard Business School)First-Year Seminar 71M | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Few forces have shaped the world over the past millennium more than capitalism has, yet few terms remain more elusive and more divisive. Today, less than half of young Americans . . . READ MORE
Global Health: Comparative Analysis of Healthcare Delivery Systems
Sanjay Saini (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 27I | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM–02:45 PM
This interactive seminar will allow students to obtain greater understanding of challenges faced by US healthcare system through critical comparative analysis of healthcare systems of selected countries from the developed. . . READ MORE
Holding Politicians Accountable
Julie Weaver (Department of Government)First-Year Seminar 72X | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
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. . . READ MORE
How 10 Pandemics Shaped Human History
Caroline Buckee (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) and Yonatan Grad (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)First-Year Seminar 53I | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Human history can be described as a series of demographic shifts from our emergence in Sub Saharan Africa to settled populations reliant on agriculture to the rise of cities, with. . . READ MORE
How Did I Get Here?”—Appreciating “Normal” Child Development
Laura M. Prager (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 24U | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Understanding “normal” growth and development may seem like a relatively easy task at first. We take the nuances of developmental differences for granted because we’re so accustomed to experiencing them. . . READ MORE
How Wars End: The Role of Negotiation
Robert Mnookin (Harvard Law School)First-Year Seminar 73Q | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
This seminar will explore the role of negotiation in terminating wars. It is commonly thought that wars end after a decisive military battle produces a conclusive victory – one side surrenders. . . READ MORE
Human Rights, Law and Advocacy
Susan Farbstein (Harvard Law School)First-Year Seminar 41K | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:30 PM
Human rights practitioners confront numerous ethical, strategic, and legal dilemmas in their struggles for social justice. This freshman seminar explores the underlying legal frameworks in which human rights advocates operate. . . READ MORE
Insights from Narratives of Illness
Jerome Groopman (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 23K | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
A physician occupies a unique perch, regularly witnessing life’s great mysteries: the miracle of birth, the perplexing moment of death, and the struggle to find meaning in suffering. It is no wonder that narratives of illness have been of interest to both physician and non-physician writers. . .READ MORE
Knowing Cicero
Jared Hudson (Classics)First-Year Seminar 62L | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
More than any other person from Greco-Roman antiquity, the Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) appears to be someone we can “get to know.” Over eight. . . READ MORE
Language: The Origins of Meaning
Gennaro Chierchia (Department of Linguistics)First-Year Seminar 61Q | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
How do languages work? Why are they so distinctly human in the natural world? Is language a creation of our intelligence, i.e. we speak, because we are smart, or. . . READ MORE
Law and Social Change: How Reform Movements Leverage the Law
Tomiko Brown-Nagin (Harvard Law School)First-Year Seminar 71C | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Legal realists and critical theorists have long argued that the law is a byproduct of society. The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience, Justice. . . READ MORE
Learning How to Think Like a Scientist: An Introduction to Scientific Research
Sien Verschave (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology) and Dan Kahne (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology)First-Year Seminar 52T | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM–5:45 PM
Science courses are typically structured to teach core concepts about the physical world and the living systems in it. The concepts taught result from decades of scientific research. Research is. . . READ MORE
Literature of Spiritual Crisis
Brian FitzGerald (Medieval Studies)First-Year Seminar 53G | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM – 2:45 PM
Some of the most important questions of human existence have emerged out of moments of spiritual crisis: What purpose does suffering have? How does one find meaning in life? What. . . READ MORE
Looking for Clues. Ancient and Medieval Art @ Harvard
Evridiki Georganteli (Department of History of Art & Architecture)First-Year Seminar 64I | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:45 PM
Objects are essential primary sources for the study of the past. They are imbued with tales of their makers, of societies in which they took shape, of customs and beliefs. . . READ MORE
Making the Self: Poetics of Authenticity
Bohdan TokarskyiFirst-Year Seminar 65Z | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
How does one become oneself? What does it mean to be authentic? How does poetry express the very making of the (authentic) self? To address such salient questions, we will. . . READ MORE
Measurements of the Mind: The Creation and Critique of the Psychological Test
Marla Eby (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 49N | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 09:00 AM–11:00 AM
For well over a century, psychologists have worked with schools, corporations, immigration officers, the military, and psychiatrists to sort the American population into groups in order to make a number. . . READ MORE
Medicine in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust—Anatomy as Example for Changes in Medical Science
Sabine Hildebrandt (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 23H | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
This seminar introduces students to the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust as an extreme example of antisemitism and racism, and of crimes against humanity and genocide. These included. . . READ MORE
Memory Wars: Cultural Trauma and the Power of Literature
Nicole Suetterlin (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures)First-Year Seminar 63L | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
How do we respond to a traumatic event? Denial, acceptance, blame, reconciliation; there are many stances we can take toward a harmful act we have experienced or committed in . . . READ MORE
Michelangelo: Terrible Genius
Shawon Kinew (History of Art and Architecture)First-Year Seminar 65W | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Friday, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is a dominant figure in the history of art and in the history of the discipline. A sculptor, architect, painter and poet, Michelangelo was the quintessential Renaissance. . . READ MORE
Microbial Symbioses: From the Deep-Sea to the Human Microbiome
Colleen Cavanaugh (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 24Q | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:30 PM
This seminar examines the remarkable diversity of microbial symbioses, ranging from giant tubeworms and lichens to the human microbiome, exploring their ecology, evolution, and roles in human health and disease. . . READ MORE
Morality, Leadership, and Gray-Area Decisions
Joseph Badaracco (Harvard Business School)First-Year Seminar 70K | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:45 PM–05:45 PM
Everyone with serious responsibilities, at work and throughout their lives, faces gray area decisions. In organizations, these highly uncertain, high-stakes decisions are delegated upward, to men and women in leadership . . . READ MORE
Muslim Voices in Contemporary World Literatures
Ali Asani (Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations)First-Year Seminar 37Y | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
What do Muslims think of acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam, the mixing of religion with politics, the rights of women, the “West”? This seminar investigates the. . . READ MORE
My Genes and Cancer
Giovanni Parmigiani (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)First-Year Seminar 22H | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 03:45 PM–05:45 PM
The effect of a persons genetic background on whether they will develop cancer, and when, is at the center of scientific and societal dilemmas which will be explored in this seminar. . . READ MORE
Narrative Negotiations: How do Readers and Writers Decide on What are the Most Important Voices and Values Represented in a Narrative?
Homi Bhabha(English and Comparative Literature),br> First-Year Seminar 63N | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITEWednesday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Narrative Negotiations explores narrative “voice” in a wide range of literary and cultural texts. Narrative voice is a lively dialogue between the author and the reader as they engage in the experience of determining the value and veracity of the narrative… READ MORE
Natural History Museums and the Anthropocene
Charles Davis (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 51S | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:45 PM
Natural history museums have inspired us for centuries and represent our best resources for understanding nature. They have been central to the development of countless scientific principles, including the theory. . . READ MORE
Nuclear Dilemmas
Benjamin Wilson (Department of the History of Science)First-Year Seminar 52G | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
This first-year seminar explores major issues in nuclear weapons history and policy. Did the use of atomic bombs by the United States against Japan end the Second World War? Have. . . READ MORE
Oil and Empire
Rosie Bsheer (Department of History)First-Year Seminar 72Z | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
What is the relationship between oil and empire? How has control over oilthe single most important commodity in the worldshaped the nature of power, politics, and environmental and social life. . . READ MORE
Physics of Measurements: Experimental Science
Philip Kim (Department of Physics)First-Year Seminar 51V | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
Measurement, a procedure to acquire a quantitative description of our surroundings, has been an essential part of scientific and engineering research. Often, new scientific breakthroughs rely on the development . . . READ MORE
Physics, Math and Puzzles
Cumrun Vafa (Department of Physics)First-Year Seminar 23P | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 06:00 PM–08:00 PM
This seminar is recommended for students with a strong background in both math and physics and with keen interest in the relation between the two subjects.
Physics is a highly developed branch of science with a broad range of applications. Despite the complexity of the universe the fundamental laws of physics are rather simple, if viewed. . . READ MORE
Political Legitimacy and Resistance: What Happened in Montaigne’s Library on the Night of October 23, 1587, and Why Should Political Philosophers Care?
Arthur Applbaum (Harvard Kennedy School)First-Year Seminar 48K | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 12:00 PM – 2:30 PM
After Henri of Navarre’s brilliant defeat of a Catholic army at the Battle of Coutras, the presumptive but contested Protestant heir to the French throne spent the night at the chateau. . . READ MORE
Preserving Latin America: Archives and the Politics of Memory
Alejandra Vela Martinez (Department of Romance Languages & Literatures)First-Year Seminar 65T | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
In the wake of the global reopening post-pandemic around 2021, a video emerged online capturing an incident at the Weltmuseum Wien. A visitor had placed a post-it note on the. . . READ MORE
Quaternions and Finite Projective Planes
Paul Bamberg (Department of Mathematics)First-Year Seminar 53C | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
Projective planes were discovered by Renaissance artists who needed to depict tiled floors on canvas. Quaternions, discovered in the nineteenth century, were used by physicists to represent rotations in three. . . READ MORE
Race Science: A History
Alejandro de la Fuente (Department of African and African American Studies)First-Year Seminar 73C | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
Race, most social scientists and well-informed people agree, is a social construction with no basis in biology. It is an invention, a political instrument of power and subordination, deployed to. . . READ MORE
Radical Actors: The Role of Public Education in American Social Movements
Nicole Simon (Social Studies)First-Year Seminar 72Y | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:00 PM–02:45 PM
In this class, we will explore the role of public schools and educators as catalysts for change in American social movements. How have schools including teachers and students been central to social. . . READ MORE
Reading Indigenous Literatures
Christopher Pexa (Department of English) First-Year Seminar 65O | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITEMonday, 9:45 AM – 11:45 AM
What are Native American and Indigenous literatures, and how might we best understand their/our relationship to U.S. and Canadian national literatures? How may we read Native American and Indigenous literatures . . . READ MORE
Reading the History of Boston
Jason Ur (Anthropology)First-Year Seminar 73U | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM – 5:45 PM
Why do Boston, Cambridge, and the towns in the Greater Boston region look the way they do? How did this urban landscape evolve, from the seasonal home of mobile Indigenous. . . READ MORE
Reading the Novella: Form and Suspense in Short Fiction
Jonathan Bolton (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures)First-Year Seminar 61U | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
Short enough to read in a single sitting, but more complex and absorbing than short stories, novellas give us some of our most intense reading experiences. Indeed, many of the . . . READ MORE
Regulating Online Conduct: Speech, Privacy, and the Use and Sharing of Content
Christopher Bavitz (Harvard Law School)First-Year Seminar 70Z | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:00 AM–11:00 AM
In the course of a few short decades, the Internet has become integral to significant swaths of human experience. It has radically altered modes of interpersonal engagement, democratized access to. . . READ MORE
Religion, Neuroscience, and the Human Mind
David Lamberth (Harvard Divinity School)First-Year Seminar 63E | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 03:00 PM–05:30 PM
More than 150 years after Darwins epochal account of evolution, over 85% of the worlds 7 billion people are still religious, and the percentage is growing. What does religion do for. . . READ MORE
Research at the Harvard Forest—Global Change Ecology: Forests, Ecosystem Function, the Future
David Orwig (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 21W | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 9:30 AM – 11:30 AM
The seminar will consist of three weekend field trips (Friday evening through Sunday afternoon) to Harvard Forest and a final mini symposium (Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon) at the Harvard Forest. . . . READ MORE
Rituals and Living the Good Life
Michael Norton (Harvard Business School)First-Year Seminar 71Y | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 9:45 AM–11:45 AM
Why do we knock on wood for good luck? Why do we put birthday candles on cakes? Why do some cultures use black at funerals while others use only white? Why do. . . READ MORE
Rock the Boat: A World without Airplanes
Joyce Chaplin (Department of History)First-Year Seminar 72C | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
Could we curtail fossil fuel emissions by reviving sailing technologies? What would that be like? Would reviving the old technology give new life to the old problems. . . READ MORE
Roots & Routes: The Biogeochemistry of Food, From Soil to Plate
Ann Pearson (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)First-Year Seminar 52Q | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 09:00 AM–11:45 AM
How do we acquire food? As consumers, we depend on the Earth and its biological and chemical networks to generate our food, which in turn influences our cultures and societies. . . READ MORE
Science and Technology Primer for Future Leaders
Hongkun Park (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology)First-Year Seminar 52E | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
We live in a world that is shaped by science and technology. As modern citizens who will lead the U.S. and the world in the coming generation, we should be aware. . .READ MORE
Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Brendan Meade (Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences)First-Year Seminar 51C | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 03:00 PM–05:45 PM
Science is focused on discovering and explaining the world around and within us. This has been its goal for hundreds of years and has produced astonishing breakthroughs from population genetics. . . READ MORE
Sea Monsters
Peter Girguis (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 50V | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
There have always been tales of sea monsters. For as long as we humans have ventured into the ocean, our imaginations have conjured images of serpents, krakens, leviathans, and other. . . READ MORE
Silk Road Stories
Mark Elliott (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations)First-Year Seminar 61M | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Friday, 12:00 PM – 2:45 PM
The words Silk Road conjure up images of camel caravans crossing vast deserts and traversing lofty mountains with precious cargoes of textiles and porcelain. From ancient Chinese travelers and intrepid. . . READ MORE
Skepticism and Knowledge
Catherine Elgin (Harvard Graduate School of Education)First-Year Seminar 31J | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
Descartes wrote his Meditations because he realized that, although he had received the best education in the world, much of what he had learned was false or unfounded. This led. . . READ MORE
Skin, Our Largest, Hottest, and Coolest Organ: From Cancer to Cosmetics
David Fisher (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 51M | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 03:00 PM–05:45 PM
Skin provides a protective barrier that is vital to survival of all multicellular organisms. Its physical properties have been exploited for centuries, from clothing to footballs, and yet skin is. . . READ MORE
Socialism
Stephen Marglin (Department of Economics)First-Year Seminar 73F | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 12:00 PM–02:15 PM
Does socialism have a future?After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the embrace of the market by China, and the definitive turn of the Western European Left towards accommodation with. . . READ MORE
Surviving Shipwrecks on Page, Stage, and Screen
Jennifer OliverFirst-Year Seminar 65Y | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
From anime to Shakespeare, from Homer to Hollywood, the threat—or reality—of shipwreck has inspired artistic responses across time and cultures. Representing anxieties ranging from identity to political and. . . READ MORE
Taste and Place in U.S. Culture
Rachel Kirby (History & Literature)First-Year Seminar 65U | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
We often associate specific tastes and foods with particular places, memories, and experiences. What would it mean, then, to center taste in our study of place and culture? How can. . . READ MORE
Tea in Japan/America
Melissa M. McCormick (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations)First-Year Seminar 65R | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00–5:30 PM
This first-year seminar examines the history, culture, and practice of the Japanese tea ceremony (chanoyu) and its reception in the United States and beyond. What began as a ritualized preparation. . . READ MORE
The Art and Craft of Acting
Remo Airaldi (Department of Theater, Dance, and Media)First-Year Seminar 35N | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 03:00 PM–05:30 PM
We’ve all watched a great performance and wondered, How did that actor do that? Acting is undoubtedly the most popular, most widely experienced of the performing arts, and yet, in. . . READ MORE
The Built Environment in the 21st Century
Arthur Segel (Harvard Business School)First-Year Seminar 70P | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 9:45 AM–11:45 AM
The built environment has profound effects on both our daily lives as well as the human condition at large. It determines where and how we live, work, play, and dream. . . READ MORE
The Cure Within: Fighting Cancer with Your Immune System
Ruth Franklin (Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology)First-Year Seminar 53D | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:45 PM
Cancer touches countless lives. The search for a cure has driven the development of innovative therapeutic approaches focused on a once unconventional target: the immune system. In this seminar, we. . . READ MORE
The Future of the International Monetary System
Kenneth Rogoff (Department of Economics)First-Year Seminar 40X | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:45 PM–02:45 PM
This seminar explores contemporary debates on the future of the international monetary and financial system drawing on both historical and recent experiences. The course will cover the Great Depression of. . . READ MORE
The Individual and the Social
Quyen Pham (Department of Philosophy)First-Year Seminar 66F | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 3:00-5:00 PM
How are we related to the groups that we are part of? How do we keep our individuality while sharing a common identity? What opportunities and challenges arise as people come together to form something greater. . . READ MORE
The Physics of Floating: A Collaborative Boat Building Experience
Nathan Melenbrink (Physics)First-Year Seminar 53J | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 9:00 AM – 11:45 AM
Have you ever wanted to learn how to transform a concept into a functional product using both traditional craftsmanship and advanced digital fabrication techniques? This seminar is designed as an. . . READ MORE
The Quantum Revolution: from Computing to Time Crystals
Norman Yao (Department of Physics)First-Year Seminar 52R | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
Quantum mechanics is one of the most precisely tested theories in the history of science. Advances in the laboratory are ushering in a so-called second quantum revolution, making it possible. . . READ MORE
The Role of Government
Oliver Hart (Department of Economics)First-Year Seminar 42C | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
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. . . READ MORE
The Science of Sailing
Jeremy Bloxham (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)First-Year Seminar 22I | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 06:00 PM–08:00 PM
Explores the application of simple physics to various natural phenomena associated with sailing. Topics addressed range from hydrostatics (e.g. why do boats float?) to meteorology (e.g. why do sea breezes. . . READ MORE
The Scientific Study of Wants and Well-Being
Matthew Rabin (Economics)First-Year Seminar 73R | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 9:45 AM – 11:45 AM
This seminar explores what existing research tells us about the determinants of well-being, how they relate to the choices that people make, and how researchers (especially economists) go about quantifying. . . READ MORE
The Secrets of Stradivarius or What Makes the Violin Sound Beautiful?
Philippe Cluzel (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology)First-Year Seminar 51N | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 12:45 PM – 2:45 PM
This is an exploratory seminar that draws concepts from many different fields ranging from music to evolution, machine learning, physics, biology, wood carving, and neuro-aesthetics. The goal of the seminar. . . READ MORE
The Transformation of Marketing
Elie Ofek (Harvard Business School)First-Year Seminar 40D | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 3:45 PM–5:45 PM
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. . . READ MORE
The United States and China
William Kirby (Harvard Business School)First-Year Seminar 73K | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Tuesday, 9:45 AM – 11:45 AM
The United States and China are heirs to a rich history of mutual friendship, alliance, antagonism, and rivalry. Both countries have been shaped and re-shaped by the nature of their. . . READ MORE
The Universe’s Hidden Dimensions
Lisa Randall (Department of Physics)First-Year Seminar 26J | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
This seminar will give an overview and introduction to modern physics and cosmology. As with the books, Warped Passages, Knocking on Heavens Door, Higgs Discovery, and Dark Matter and . . . READ MORE
This Is Epic! The World’s Oldest Literature, Then and Now
Céline Debourse (Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations)First-Year Seminar 65Q | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 03:00 PM–05:45 PM
Stories shape the way we make sense of the world. They also offer windows onto worlds unknown, bringing us closer to people and experiences that are far removed from us. In this. . . READ MORE
U.S. Climate Change Policy and the Energy Transition
James H. Stock (Department of Economics)First-Year Seminar 42H | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 06:00 PM–08:00 PM
Burning fossil fuels powered 150 years of unprecedented economic growth but left a legacy of ever-increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Those gases are changing our climate and. . . READ MORE
Understanding the Seemingly Impossible: A Revolution in Biology
Craig Hunter (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology)First-Year Seminar 51F | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Occasionally a scientific discovery is so unexpected that it is seemingly unexplainable.This seminar will revisit one such event, the discovery of RNA interference and how modern experimental molecular genetics cracked. . . READ MORE
Unequal Origins: Pregnancy, Poverty and Child Health
Margaret McConnell (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)First-Year Seminar 73L | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
The US has worse pregnancy and child outcomes than any other high-income country in the world. Is this because we spend less providing direct income support to families than other high-income. . . READ MORE
Unlocking the Power of Immunology – From Fundamental Principles to Innovative Research Routes
Kazuki Nagashima (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology) First-Year Seminar 57Z | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITEMondays, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
Immunology stands at the forefront of cutting-edge science, offering game-changing solutions like mRNA vaccines for COVID-19. In today’s world, where global challenges demand innovative responses, researchers are eager to delve. . . READ MORE
What is a Species, and How Do Species Evolve?
James Mallet (Organismic & Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 51P | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM
One hundred and fifty years after Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species…, you would think that scientists already have a good definition of species. In fact, a major debate . . . READ MORE
What Is Avant-Garde?
Nariman Skakov (Slavic Languages & Literatures)First-Year Seminar 63T | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Avant-garde art sometimes seems to make a complete break from the art that precedes it. The very name, ‘avant-garde’ (from French, literally ‘advance guard’) carries military connotations that suggest a . . . READ MORE
What Is Beauty?
Francesco Erspamer (Department of Romance Languages & Literatures)First-Year Seminar 35E | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but neither is it a property of things; it is a device for realizing that there are not just individuality and. . . READ MORE
When Bad things Happen Early in Life: The Effects of Early Adversity on Brain and Behavioral
Charles Nelson (Harvard Medical School)First-Year Seminar 43F | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM–02:45 PM
Decades of research tell us that the foundations of healthy development are built early in life. Genes provide the basic blueprint for brain architecture, but experiences shape the activity of the genome and thus determine how the circuitry is wired. Significant adversity can derail developmental processes and distort brain maturation, leading to limited economic and social mobility. . . . READ MORE
Where are you from? Ancestry in the Age of Genomics
David Haig (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 50D | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 03:00 PM–05:00 PM
A human interest in ancestry and kinship is found in most cultures. This interest is not a construct of the modern age, but recent advances in genetics can now provide. . . READ MORE
Why We Animals Sing
Brian Farrell (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)First-Year Seminar 22T | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 09:45 AM–11:45 AM
We do not sing alone. On land, four kinds of animals produce songs or calls: birds, frogs, mammals, and insects. Some of these (and fish) also do so underwater. The . . . READ MORE
Wisdom
Shigehisa Kuriyama (East Asian Languages and Civilizations)First-Year Seminar 65X | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:45 PM – 2:45 PM
This seminar explores what existing research tells us about the determinants of well-being, how they relate to the choices that people make, and how researchers (especially economists) go about quantifying. . . READ MORE
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