Students create and perform melodic contours.
Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way.
This course enhances cross-cultural understanding through the discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. It includes a research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. The course is open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.
This course is an intermediate subject designed to help students gradually build an in-depth understanding of France. The course focuses on French attitudes and values regarding education, work, family and institutions, and deals with the differing notions that underlie interpersonal interactions and communication styles, such as politeness, friendship and formality. Using a Web comparative, cross-cultural approach, students explore a variety of French and American materials, then analyze and compare them using questionnaires, opinion polls, news reports (in different media), as well as a variety of historical, anthropological and literary texts. Throughout the course, attention is given to the development of relevant linguistics skills. This course is recommended for students planning to study and work in France and is taught in French.
This collection uses primary sources to explore Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
The subject of this course is the historical process by which the meaning of "technology" has been constructed. Although the word itself is traceable to the ancient Greek root teckhne (meaning art), it did not enter the English language until the 17th century, and did not acquire its current meaning until after World War I. The aim of the course, then, is to explore various sectors of industrializing 19th and 20th century Western society and culture with a view to explaining and assessing the emergence of technology as a pivotal word (and concept) in contemporary (especially Anglo-American) thought and expression.
This course examines cultural performances of Asia, including both traditional and contemporary forms, in a variety of genres. Students will explore the communicative power of performances with attention to the ways performers, media, cultural settings, and audiences interact. The representation of cultural difference is considered and how it is altered through processes of globalization. Performances are viewed live when possible, but the course also relies on video, audio, and online materials as necessary.
The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Cymbeline" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.
This art history video discussion examines Salvador Dali's "Metamorphosis of Narcissus", 1937, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 78.1 cm (Tate Modern, London).
In this art history video discussion Sal Khan and Steven Zucker consider Salvador Dalí's "The Persistence of Memory" 1931, oil on canvas. (The Museum of Modern Art).
Explores aesthetic and technical underpinnings of contemporary dance composition. Basic compositional techniques discussed and practiced with an emphasis on principles such as weight, space, time, effort, and shape. Principles of musicality considered and developed by each student. Working together, students create short compositions to help them understand the range of possibilities available when working with the medium of the human body. Selected viewing and reading exercises augment classroom work. Class attends at least two professional dance events in the Boston area.
Humans are social animals; social demands, both cooperative and competitive, structure our development, our brain and our mind. This course covers social development, social behaviour, social cognition and social neuroscience, in both human and non-human social animals. Topics include altruism, empathy, communication, theory of mind, aggression, power, groups, mating, and morality. Methods include evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology and anthropology.
This art history video discussion examines Jacques-Louis David's "Oath of the Horatii", oil on canvas, 1784 (Musee du Louvre).
This art history video discussion examines Jacques-Louis David's "The Intervention of the Sabine Women", 1799, Oil on canvas, 12 feet, 8 inches x 17 feet and 3/4 of an inch or 3.85 x 5.22 m (Musee du Louvre, Paris).
This art history video discussion examines Jacques-Louis David's "The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons", 1789, oil on canvas (Musee du Louvre, Paris).
This art history video discussion examines Gerard David's "The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor", c. 1510, oil on oak, 105.80 x 144.40 cm (The National Gallery, London).
This art history video dicussion examines Willem de Kooning's "Woman I", oil on canvas, 1950-52 (MoMA).
This art history video discussion examines Piet Mondrian's "Composition No. II, with Red and Blue", oil on canvas, 1929 (original date partly obliterated; mistakenly repainted 1925 by Mondrian). Oil on canvas, 15 7/8 x 12 5/8" (40.3 x 32.1 cm) (The Museum of Modern Art).
Foundations and philosophical applications of Bayesian decision theory, game theory and theory of collective choice. Why should degrees of belief be probabilities? Is it always rational to maximize expected utility? If so, why and what is its utility? What is a solution to a game? What does a game-theoretic solution concept such as Nash equilibrium say about how rational players will, or should, act in a game? How are the values and the actions of groups, institutions and societies related to the values and actions of the individuals that constitute them?
This art history video discussion examines Edgar Degas' "The Bellelli Family", 1858-67, oil on canvas (Musee d'Orsay, Paris). Degas was in his mid-twenties when he painted this canvas. It depicts from left to right, the ten-year-old Giovanna, her mother, the artist's paternal aunt Laura, her younger daughter, Giula age 7, and the Baron Gennaro Bellelli. Preperatory sketches for the painting may have been made in Florence where the family was living, the Baron had been exiled from Naples. The picture may have been completed in Paris.