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Welcome to the course website for HistSci 1771! This website is still under construction and  will be updated with more details on readings and assignments prior to the start of class.

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Instructor: Anne Harrington

Thursday, 12-2:45pm

with up to four additional local field trips and course enrichment activities 

The Vision for this Course

Questions? Want to know more? feel free to email Professor Harrington at aharring@fas.harvard.edu

All concentrations and levels, including first-years, are welcome to join this course!

Also, this course is a tiny bit famous: see Crimson profile here

Consciousness, we all know, is both one of the most familiar and omnipresent realities of our lives, and also one of the most mysterious and elusive phenomena for science. But  how can and should its be studied? Who is an expert? What disciplines have something to say about it? In this course, we will seek to understand the history of consciousness research by "visiting" a diverse range of different places where it has been studied -- from brain science labs to coma wards to neonatal clinics to primate reserves to hospices. 

We will look at the historical emergence of these diverse projects in their own right, and we will also seek to understand how they interact.  What makes some seem more "mainstream" and others more "marginal?"  Who decides? How do ideas that started in one place end up influencing work in another?  Where are the most promising collaborations? The most serious points of friction? The most unsettling challenges? 

We will not all always agree in this course! Instead we will debate, reflect, rethink, maybe change our minds and tolerate uncertainty -- together! 

Assignments

  • A blog (with posts of about 500-600 words) that you will keep in order to regularly grapple with the course material (5 entries): 30%
  • Midterm in-class synthetic writing project -- nothing tricky! -- that aims to give you a first chance to reflect synthetically on course material : 20%
  • End of semester  oral history or critical book review project 20%
  • In person- engagement, including occasional experiential mini-assignments: 25%
  • Coming to office hours and giving us a chance to get to know you: 5%

 

Course Summary:

Course Summary
Date Details Due