Gen Ed Approves Two New Classes

The General Education committee approved two Core courses for Societies of the World credit last Thursday, bringing the total number of Gen Ed courses to 56.

Though the two courses—classics professor Richard J. Tarrant’s Literature and Arts C-61: “The Rome of Augustus” and Maya Jasanoff’s Historical Study A-88: “The British Empire”—hail from different Core Curriculum categories, they will share the same home under the new Gen Ed program.

Although Societies of the World is expansive enough to house courses in both literature and history, Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris said the category will likely place more emphasis on the social sciences.

“We don’t see this [category] as predominantly culture, religion, philosophy, but mostly the world of social science, although these are not mutually exclusive, of course,” said Harris, who also chairs the Gen Ed committee.

Harris added that he would like the category to address international development and multinational institutions, with courses on topics like global health, the European Union, and NGOs in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Although Societies of the World may sound like Foreign Cultures, none of the seven classes approved so far hail from the Foreign Cultures category.

“Some people just assume Societies of the World is just another name for Foreign Cultures, and that’s not our approach at all,” Harris said.

While courses in Foreign Cultures focus on a single region, the Societies of the World category will include a number of courses that span borders, according to Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Stephanie H. Kenen.

Course development in the Societies of the World category has been slow: of the seven classes approved so far, only one is not a refitted course for the new curriculum.

But Harris said that because the Societies of the World category is new, it makes it harder for professors to design courses for the category right away.

Kenen said that David M. Cutler, an economist and a former divisional dean of the social sciences, organized several lunches with faculty last year in order to urge them to create new Gen Ed classes that fit in the Societies of the World and the United States in the World categories. Despite Cutler’s efforts, though, Kenen said that the lunches have not yet yielded many new course proposals.

She added that the Gen Ed committee is hoping to receive many more proposals in January and February when professors start to think more about classes they will offer next year.

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.