Courses

• KHC AN 101: Humans Among Animals
  This course examines some of the ways humans understand (other) animals, and how we use animals to understand ourselves. Considering wild, herded, and domestic species, we ask what is known and unknown about animal thought, feeling, and communication; (2) what humans assume, believe, and imagine about these knowns and unknowns; and (3) what roles language and culture play in these understandings in contemporary societies variously engaged in hunting, herding, farming, and pet keeping. We will see how the lines people draw between humans and animals, or culture and nature, get redrawn - for psychological, political, and other reasons -- and explore where they blur in the light of new discoveries, and in the twists and turns of story and humor. Case material on selected species, human languages and societies will come from various settings in Africa, Europe, and North America. Our approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on anthropology, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and zoology. Findings will have practical, legal, and ethical implications, bearing on some of the most pressing issues of our time.
• KHC AS 101: The Pluto Saga: How Do You Become a Planet and Stay a Planet?
  This course will use the controversy over Pluto's status as a planet to explore the astronomical, cultural, political and religious aspects that become linked to science and societal issues. The central theme of the seminar is how to gather and evaluate evidence through writing and quantitative methods. We will examine the broad scope of how science proceeds in quantitative ways using methods of sampling and observations. Both telescopes and museum visits will help us better understand the role that visualization plays in describing how Nature works.
• KHC BI 101: Climate Change in Massachusetts
  Henry David Thoreau spent decades observing and recording the natural history of Concord and other sites in Massachusetts. This course will place his work within the context of modern climate change research. Readings will include both Thoreau's works as well as research papers comparing the observations of Thoreau and other historical data sets with modern observations. In order to gain an appreciation of the process whereby science is communicated to the public, attention will also be given to the way in which these scientific papers have been presented in the magazines and newspapers. During weekend field trips, we will visit sites where Thoreau's research was carried out; including Walden Pond, the Minute Man National Historical Site, the Great Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary, and the Estabrook Woods. Other possible field sites include the Blue Hills Observatory (origin of the oldest continuous weather records in the U.S.), the Concord Free Library and the Thoreau Institute (where Thoreau documents are held), the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain (where old photographs and plant specimens are housed), Manomet Bird Observatory (on a day when birds are being banded), Mt. Auburn Cemetery (where large numbers of bird watchers track bird movements), and the Massachusetts State Laboratory (where mosquito numbers are tracked).
• KHC EK 101: Engineering Light
  Students in this course will gain an appreciation for light and its use in three optical instruments: the eye, the microscope, and the telescope. They will study landmark discoveries concerning light, the development of various light sources, the scientific advances that led to our current understanding about the properties and characteristics of light waves and photons. The course includes weekly lectures and in-class laboratory exercises, several field trips, and a semester-long project. Students will engage in more than twenty hands-on experiments throughout the semester, to untwinkle the stars with adaptive telescopes, to measure the speed of light using parts hacked from a laser pointer, to make a light bulb like Thomas Edison's, to discover how engineers ruined -- and then fixed -- the world's first astronomical space telescope, and to use a high-resolution ophthalmoscope to see image photoreceptors and capillary blood flow in their own retinas.
• KHC FT 101: The Camera as an Agent for Social Change
  We start with the presumption that students enrolling in this course believe in promoting a just and fair society, and wish to learn to use filmmaking skills to expose and address injustices in our Global Village. We explore the historical and theological foundations that compel people to promote social justice. Individually, students will explore and select a social issue of importance to him or her. Students will then each create a video "Mash-Up" using clips from sources like YouTube and other websites. For the final project each student will research, write and produce a short video about a social issue. The goal of the final project is to change the way people perceive the selected issue and highlight ways in which positive changes can occur. No previous filmmaking skills are necessary; students will be given training as part of the course.
• KHC HC 301: The Disciplined Mind
  How do different disciplines help us understand society, art, and nature? This course attempts to bridge the gap between the arts, sciences, and professions, and between "pure" and "applied" knowledge by examining the differences and commonalities of different forms of knowledge. Consisting of six major units drawn from diverse fields, we focus on how practitioners approach specific problems in their areas of study. This exploration provides a basis for confronting the general questions: What do we know? How do we know it? What does knowledge mean? -- Thereby deepening our grasp of various forms of inquiry.
• KHC HC 302: The Disciplined Mind
  How do different disciplines help us understand society, art, and nature? This course attempts to bridge the gap between the arts, sciences, and professions, and between "pure" and "applied" knowledge by examining the differences and commonalities of different forms of knowledge. Consisting of six major units drawn from diverse fields, we focus on how practitioners approach specific problems in their areas of study. This exploration provides a basis for confronting the general questions: What do we know? How do we know it? What does knowledge mean? -- Thereby deepening our grasp of various forms of inquiry.
• KHC HC 401: The Process of Discovery
  This one-semester course explores the structure of the discovery process, focusing on how researchers embed imaginative questions in viable research projects and balance creative ambition with intellectual modesty. The course is designed to guide students through the challenge of designing their senior research projects through common readings of field-changing research across disciplines, individual and group project analysis, and intensive writing exercises. Together with KHC faculty and a faculty adviser of their own choosing, students will learn how to capture the explanatory power of an imaginative leap in clear language accessible to anyone outside their chosen discipline.
• KHC HI 101: War for the Greater Middle East
  This seminar will explore an alternative to the conventional grand narrative of twentieth-century political history. Rather than focusing on Great Power competition for dominance in Eurasia, it will assess the interaction between the West and the peoples of the Islamic world. The course will recount events since 1914 and will focus on three specific zones of conflict: the Persian Gulf, Palestine, and Afghanistan.
• KHC HI 102: The Culture of World War I
  The Culture of World War I approaches this watershed moment in European history through works of literature, music, and art. The course's three chronological divisions: the lead-up to war, the experience of war, and its aftermath will include representative works from prominent composers, artists, novelists, and poets. Principal historical themes of the course are: the widespread conviction that war would cleanse and regenerate Europe; the brutally inglorious reality of trench conditions, chemical weapons, and the destruction of cultural patrimony; the ideals combatants held and the effects of events upon them; and the cultural landscape after the war. A textbook will ground discussions in events. Additional readings will include excerpts from memoirs, essays, interviews, and analyses.
• KHC NE 101: The Neurobiology of Memory
  Students in this course will be immersed in the process of the scientific endeavor by conducting an experiment in the field of behavioral neuroscience -- from conception to publication. To this end, all students will have an opportunity to conduct behavioral testing, neurosurgery, and histological analysis of brains. Students are expected lead and participate in weekly journal discussions, and to prepare a scientific manuscript. Generally, the course will focus on a systems-level approach to the neurobiology of memory, and in particular on the role of the hippocampal memory system. Because of the emphasis on scientific process, the course will focus on topics most germane to our experiment. The course will include instructor-led lecture/discussions, laboratory preparation and discussion, and student-led discussions.
• KHC PH 101: American Bioethics
  American healthcare reflects four deeply-ingrained American characteristics: it is individualistic, technology-driven, death-denying, and wasteful. These characteristics make "reforming" American healthcare extremely contentious. No medical technology is as emblematic of American healthcare and culture as the artificial heart. An exploration of its 40 year history (including its alternatives: death, organ transplantation, and tissue regeneration) as reflected in American medicine, public health, law, bioethics, human rights, bioengineering, and economics helps explain both how the American "NONsystem" of healthcare works and why it is so difficult to change.
• KHC PS 101: Revolutions in the Conceptualization of Mind: 1950s to the Present
  The 1950s was the origin of the Cognitive Revolution, when the mind was first viewed as a computational, symbol-processing machine. Techniques for building and programming computers flourished while information-processing models of mental abilities led to an explosion of research in diverse fields, from linguistics to cognitive behavioral therapy. By the 1990s, computers were omnipresent in daily life and no longer appeared the ideal model of mind; the rise of new technology for studying the brain's mental activity allowed the brain itself to be the model for understanding the mind. This seminar examines the recent intellectual history of new conceptualizations in understanding the mind, beginning with the first computer metaphor in the 1950s, which was followed by a second computer metaphor in the 1980s (artificial neural networks). We consider the emotion revolution of the 1990s, and the field of cognitive neuroscience which is the dominant paradigm in the current day. Along the way we examine changing perspectives on enduring questions during the 2nd half of the 20th century: How do adult information processing abilities emerge during infancy, childhood and the teen years? Is there an innate basis for language acquisition (and if so, what is it)? Are cognition and emotion separate mental abilities? Students will be able to choose their own question of interest for focused exploration while the class broadly studies this explosive half-century of intellectual evolution.
• KHC PY 101: Energy
  Ours is an energy intensive society. American energy consumption per capita is now over ten times what it was when our nation was founded, and the rest of the world is rapidly following our example. This is leading to increasingly severe worldwide problems such as the growing competition for scarce resources including fossil fuels (today's principal sources of energy by far) but also fresh water, agricultural land and mineral resources. Many countries face ever more severe problems of pollution, congestion, drought, and the growing effects of global climate change. The goals of this seminar are to examine the physical principles underlying the production, distribution and consumption of energy and to use this knowledge to explore and discuss such issues as energy conservation, public transport, the so-called hydrogen economy, electric and hybrid vehicles, nuclear power and carbon sequestration, as well as to evaluate the feasibility of various alternative sources of energy sources. During the Seminar, we anticipate freewheeling conversations relating to various energy-related issues, such as: Are we running out of oil? What is the evidence for anthropically caused Global Warming? What can be done to prevent (or prepare for) it? Can part or all of the problem be solved by alternative power sources? Is it feasible to capture and sequester the CO2 produced by fossil power plants? How important is it to conserve energy?
• KHC RH 101: Serious Comics
  
• KHC RN 101: Moses
  This course traces the remarkable career of the great figure of the biblical Exodus and Sinai traditions from prophet to impostor to figment of literary imagination. Readings include Philo of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, the Qur'an, and Sigmund Freud, and we will ask ourselves why an epistemologically and historically discredited biblical narrative still engenders creative, though contradictory, readings and retellings, ranging from Cecile B. Demilles' moralistic Ten Commandments to Zora Neal Hurston's "hoodoo man."
• KHC RN 102: Sacred Spaces
  Central to the religious experience of people around the globe have been sacred places -- to visit, to pray towards, to imagine, and even to reproduce in miniature. How do we make sense of sacred space as a basic feature of religions? Why do people "need" such places to focus their religious practices, and in how many different forms do we find them? This course will introduce a comparative approach to sacred space, pilgrimage, and the various forms these have taken across cultures and through time, from the Muslim Hajj to Catholic pilgrimages to Padre Pio, to ancient visits to holy men. News accounts, ethnographies, and films illustrating both international pilgrimages and local shrines will complement various readings in the anthropology of pilgrimage and the interpretation of sacred space. We will also address such topics as miraculous apparitions, tourism as pilgrimage, and "Jerusalem syndrome." The course will culminate in an independent research paper.
• KHC RS 101: Invention Truth
  
• KHC SM 101: The Secret Lives of Corporations
  The purpose of this course is to explore the role that corporations play in the economic, environmental and societal issues of our time. In particular, we focus on Citizen's United and the impact that corporate financial resources have on the democratic process. We begin by learning about corporate structure, history, and laws. We will investigate the impact that these laws have on a variety of public concerns, such as health, welfare, and environmental stability. We will also investigate potential solutions to these problems, and work to understand their viability and implementation issues. The informational content of the first half of the course does not bear good news. By actively participating in the development of own solutions we will turn this potentially depressing content into the exciting possibility of engendering future change. The final deliverable for this course is a research paper and corresponding presentation that reflects each student's passion for a solution to a problem identified in the reading.
• KHC ST 111: Studio I
  The studios foster writing, research, and quantitative skills by exploring fundamental ethical, aesthetic, and social issues. They focus on the themes and problems raised by provocative modernist texts drawn from literature, film, psychology, philosophy, and the arts.