New Classes Set to Debut

While lecture halls continue to fill for Life Sciences 1a and Social Analysis 10, Dean for the Humanities Maria Tatar envisions students flocking to a different type of course: “‘Strange Mutations’: Classical and Renaissance Representations of The Human Condition.”

Because no “Humanities 10” exists at Harvard, Tatar has jump-started an initiative to create a collection of new interdisciplinary courses that will act as broad gateways into the humanities.

But instead of creating a single foundational course like Life Sciences, Tatar said she wants to create “multiple pathways” into the humanities. A total of 15 to 20 new gateway courses—most beginning in the 2007-2008 school year—will be offered through the initiative, including Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Christopher D. Johnson’s “Strange Mutations.”

“They are really magnet courses designed to bring people into the rich and extraordinary world of the humanities,” Tatar said. “We don’t have an Ec 10 so if you are here and your four roommates are taking Ec 10, you too will feel you should be taking that course.”

The courses are designed to be neither broad surveys nor narrowly-focused courses, according to Tatar. The courses, a “hybrid” of these two extremes, are meant to cross boundaries between disciplines, she said.

Rather than waiting for Curricular Review legislation to restructure general education requirements, Tatar said she wanted to develop widely accessible humanities courses geared toward underclassmen.

“These will be courses that bridge between the Core and whatever we have when we have it,” Tatar said.

Most of the courses are not fully developed yet, but a few will likely be launched next year.

Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand and Cogan University Professor of the Humanities Stephen J. Greenblatt are planning to co-teach a course next fall on odysseys, which will include texts ranging from Homer’s “Odyssey” to Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals.”

In developing the course, the professors “tried to think of what books were, in effect, life-changing things that [college students] absolutely should read...sooner rather than later,” Greenblatt said.

It has not been decided which department will house the course, Menand said. He and other professors hope that a new designation will be made in the course catalogue for interdisciplinary humanities courses.

The cost of this initiative is still unclear, but “innovation funds” are being provided to professors developing courses, Tatar said.

“The big issue that hasn’t been grappled with as far as I can make out are the costs...personnel costs,” said Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore Stephen A. Mitchell.

Mitchell said he expects to teach a gateway course on folklore and nation-building in the year after the next. And Chair of the English Department James Engell hopes to teach a gateway course that will cover themes such as war, slavery and race, love, crime, and existential belief in 2007-2008.

Under the system currently proposed by the Committee on General Education of the Harvard College Curricular Review, students would be required to take three courses in each of three subject areas—Arts and Humanities, the Study of Societies, and Science and Technology. General education requirements could be met by a combination of departmental courses and broad Courses in General Education which would reside outside of particular departments.

—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Emily J. Nelson can be reached at ejnelson@fas.harvard.edu.