FALL 2020
EXPOS 20
The 2020 Election and American Democracy
It’s a cliché for pundits and politicians to declare that each election is the most important in our lifetimes, maybe all of American history – at least, that is, until the next one. Even so, it’s easier than usual to make the argument that the 2020 Election finds American democracy at a crossroads. President Trump’s bid for re-election was bound to be contentious, given the shocking upset that brought him to the White House in 2016 and the divisive character of his policies and rhetoric. Less expected was that the 2020 Election would be held amidst a deadly pandemic that has ground normal life to a halt and raised uncertainty about how to conduct the vote safely and fairly. Or that the preceding summer would see a national reckoning with systemic racism and police brutality. Consider that all of this occurs within a political climate of intense polarization, refracted in a media environment which frequently distorts reality to fit partisan narratives, and it is clear that the 2020 Election will test America’s democracy like none before.
SPRING 2020
CHEM 100R
Experimental Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Chem 100R is a project-based synthetic, physical organic, and chemical biology research course, where students conduct, present, and write about cutting-edge, faculty-derived research. Students also learn to communicate about the broader applications of their research to nonscientific audiences.
EXPOS 20
Green Spaces, Urban Place
From Boston Common to the Charles River Basin, Boston boasts many beautiful green spaces. This course will consider a series of related questions: What exactly are the benefits of resources like public parks and rivers? Should urban green space be considered a right of every citizen? Has access to green space in cities become a privilege of the elite? We will explore these questions, thinking about why access to green space matters in an increasingly urbanized world.
EXPOS 20
Ecological Crisis: Witnessing and Planning in the Age of Climate Change
The news just keeps getting worse. Over the past few months, swathes of Australia, California, Amazonia, and even the Arctic have burned. Jakarta flooded; so did parts of Pakistan, India, and Iowa. In Massachusetts, 2019 brought a respite from the past years’ disasters––Boston and its suburbs experienced two “hundred-year floods” in quick succession in winter 2018––but on the other hand, this winter has been a little too warm for comfort. Against this steady drumbeat of local calamities, our shared global crisis continues to unfold: international agreements are abrogated or ignored, global greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, and geophysical “tipping points” keep getting crossed. It’s hard not to despair. This course will ask you to move beyond despair. We will think seriously about the hard questions climate change poses: how should governments and peoples prepare for, and adapt to, a changing climate? How do we stave off the worst-case scenarios, and how should we mete out responsibility for the damage that’s already certain to occur? How might our society––our politics, our culture, our sense of justice and our narratives of ourselves––transform as climate change continues to unfold? And how can we mobilize people and governments to fight climate change?
SPANSH 59
Spanish and the Community
An advanced language course that examines the richness and complexity of the Latino experience in the US while promoting community engagement as a vehicle for greater linguistic fluency and cultural understanding. Students are placed with community organizations within the Boston area and volunteer for four hours a week. Class work focuses on expanding students' oral and written proficiency in Spanish through discussing and analyzing readings, arts, and films by and about Latinos in the US.
SPANSH 59H
Spanish for Latino Students II: Connecting with Communities
An advanced language course for Spanish heritage learners that aims to: strengthen students’ oral and written linguistic range, with emphasis on Spanish use for academic contexts; and to further develop students’ critical language and social awareness around important issues for Latinos in our globalized era: Spanish as global language, identity, language rights, global migration and labor, U.S.-Latino America relations, food and environment, the ’war on drugs’. Students explore these topics through various genres (newspapers and academic articles, debates, literary essays, short novels, poetry, visual art, film and music) and through 4 hours a week of community service.
PSY 1009
Psychology of Women
How does being a woman affect our behavior, our evaluations of ourselves, and our interactions with others? This course examines psychological science on women and girls in western industrialized societies, addressing such topics as gender stereotypes, girlhood, women and work, relationships, pregnancy and motherhood, mental health, violence against women, and women in later adulthood. We will consider these topics through an understanding of gender as a social construction, being mindful of the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, and race. Although focused on women’s lives and experiences, this course is highly relevant to people of all genders.
SOCIOL 1130
Student Leadership and Service in Higher Education
This Undergraduate Engaged Scholarship Course specifically targets students in service and leadership roles at Harvard (e.g. student leaders in student organizations, students serving on University committees or as interns in University offices or programs, PAFs, HOCOs, UC members, Crimson, etc.). To these students it offers an opportunity to engage with scholarship from sociology of higher education to better understand and explore student agency in college contexts.
External Course Sites
The Chinese Immigrant Experience
SOC-STD 68CT
Uses the history of Boston's Chinatown as a case study to examine the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. from the 1880s until the present. Employs historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives to examine major themes related to the social and economic development of U.S. Chinatowns and Chinese immigrant communities throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Urban Health and Community Change
SOC-STD 68UH
A project-based course on urban community health examining urban health topics from a macro level in the classroom, while exploring community health issues at the local level by engaging with community stakeholders on a health promotion project. This course explores the social conditions people need to be healthy, and strategies to advance health equity that put people in diverse communities on pathways to health as opposed to disparities.
The Other Russia
SLAVIC 189
Russia is in the news these days for its politics and espionage, but what about the daily lives of Russian people? Nothing gets at that reality in all its pettiness and grandeur better than Russian literature. The stories, poems, plays, movies, memoirs, and documentaries of the last twenty-five years are the subject of this course. We will trace the chaotic transitions of the 1990s, the disparities of wealth and polarized politics of the 2000s, the rise of religious thinking (Orthodox, Islam, Jewish), and the several conflicts at Russia's borders.
Higher Education Policy and Service: On Campus and Beyond
SOCIOL 1130
This Undergraduate Engaged Scholarship Course specifically targets students in service and leadership roles at Harvard (e.g. student leaders in student organizations, students serving on University committees or as interns in University offices or programs, PAFs, HOCOs, UC members, Crimson, etc.). To these students it offers an opportunity to engage with scholarship from sociology of higher education to better understand and explore student agency in college contexts.