This January, the Graduate Student Council at GSAS is sponsoring an exciting roster of mini-courses taught by GSAS students. These courses, part of January@GSAS, provide a chance for GSAS students to step back from their own line of scholarly inquiry, enrich their learning by exploring other perspectives, or simply follow their curiosity. See the course list below; click here for dates, times, and full descriptions.
Click here to register via the GSC's online form, or contact the instructors directly.
Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food
We'll explore the sociohistorical legacy of chocolate, especially in relation to culture and the politics of food. The class will bring together scholarly understanding and investigation with interactive tasting and appreciation.
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The Art of Survival
What better way to outlast the dark, desolate days of Cambridge in January than with a lively course exploring the relation between survival and art — through film screenings and clips (including reality television, cartoons and recordings of theatrical performances) and readings from short stories, philosophical essays, scholarly articles, graphic novels, outdoor survival guides, and children’s literature.
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Microscopy to the People: Magnifying Your Vision in a Fun, Informal Setting
Express your inner scientist by learning about the tool that enables us to visualize things that we can't see with our naked eye, the light microscope. If you haven't touched a microscope since high school (or ever), this course is for you. The course will culminate in a gallery exhibition of everyone's images on January 20th.
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Everything You Need to Know About Going Crazy at Harvard
We're routinely told about mental health services available at Harvard, but what does ‘mental’ even mean here? What kind of ‘mental’ research goes on at Harvard? What is the history of being mental? An interdisciplinary perspective of all things mental at Harvard.
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Magic and Scientific Thinking: How Insights from Magicians Can Broaden Our Thinking About Problems/Questions in the Sciences
Exploring the unexpected similarities between the modern magician and the modern scientist — and between magical illusions and natural phenomena.
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Capitalism and Freedom
An introduction to how markets and the economy work, followed by an exploration of the ways in which capitalism sets us free, yet also creates new constraints and interdependencies. A chance to look at the relationship between capitalism and democracy, opportunity, and scientific innovation.
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The Human Face and Its Role in Our Everyday Judgments and Decisions
A broad introduction to the human face, covering the evolutionary importance of the face, facial attractiveness and beauty, facial processing and recognition, facial emotion, and our use of the face when forming social judgments and making economic and legal decisions.
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Photoshop Essentials
In four sessions, you will learn the necessary drawing skills, skills for enhancing and retouching photos, and the basics of creating photo-montages and posters.
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Obesity: Where Is It Taking Us? What Are We Doing About It?
A comprehensive overview focusing on the physiological and molecular basis of obesity and relevant current, upcoming, and past treatment approaches.
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Analyze Data and Create Figures with Mathematica
Do you still manually copy data into Excel for analysis? You need to learn a scientific computing package – and it’s much easier than you might think! Despite its status as one of the world’s most powerful computing packages, Mathematica has a gentle learning curve suitable for people with little to no programming experience, and you can write programs without memorizing a bunch of incomprehensible syntax.
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Strangers in the Middle Kingdom: Non-Chinese People in Chinese History
“Chinese history” is usually taught as a history by and about the “Chinese”: a Mandarin-speaking, hieroglyph-writing and, mostly, Confucius-loving people. By focusing on the “foreign” elements in Chinese history, this revisionist look introduces the Sanskrit-chanting, polo-playing, and God-(be It Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Manichean or Zoroastrian) worshiping side of the story, revealing that pre-modern China was a land of great cultural diversity.
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Big Ideas for the New Year: Introduction to Plato
An introduction to Plato that will cover a manageable amount of material and engage with the texts both as literature and as philosophy.
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Myths, Facts, and a Taste of Food and Fitness in the 21st Century
With food and fitness having become two of the most complicated topics today, this course will explore some key principles of nutrition and exercise science to help you make informed decisions, understand your own intake/output balance, and serve as a forum for questions and lively discussion.
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The Fight to Save the World: Global Health & Human Security
Exploring how global health actors fight to save lives that are threatened by armed conflict, natural disasters, poverty, and disease. We'll look at intersections of health and violence, zones of poverty and abandonment, and war as a health issue.
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‘Poetry makes nothing happen’: What is Poetry good for?
An introduction for nonspecialists to a wide range of poetry in English, from Shakespeare to Sherman Pearl, and to some of the most persistent questions in aesthetic theory. Participants will engage with poetry on both a critical and creative (playful) level.
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Instant Spanish
Practical Spanish, for beginners and travelers, offered in Cambridge and at Longwood.
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