Undergraduate Courses

Please consult the online course catalog for complete course information.

The courses listed below are provided by the JHU Public Course Search. This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found on the Student Information Services (SIS) website.

Course # (Section)	Title	Day/Times	Instructor	Location	Term	Additional Details
AS.030.201 (01)	Theory and Practice of Alchemy: From Hermes to Isaac Newton	TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM	Bassen, Gregory Neil	Maryland 114	Spring 2026	Description: This course will serve as an introduction to alchemy and its development into modern chemistry beginning with its Greco-Egyptian origins. A strong emphasis of the course will be placed on understanding the philosophy and practice of notable alchemists, such as through their synthesis and pursuit of the mythical ‘philosopher’s stone.’ We will analyze how alchemists of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, like Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and Isaac Newton, sought to understand the natural world through alchemical theories, experimental methods, symbolic representation, and metaphysical reflections. We will explore the philosophical underpinnings of these alchemical theories, with a focus on the Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic influences. Through writing assignments, students will engage critically with texts and alchemical iconography. Finally, the course includes a laboratory component in which we will reproduce alchemical procedures and analyze the products using modern solid-state characterization techniques. This course is intended for students of all majors and backgrounds. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/15 Tags: n/a
AS.140.106 (01)	History of Modern Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Cummiskey, Julia Ross	Gilman 132; Gilman 219	Spring 2026	Description: The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 9/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.106 (02)	History of Modern Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Cummiskey, Julia Ross	Gilman 132; Gilman 75	Spring 2026	Description: The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 9/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.106 (03)	History of Modern Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Cummiskey, Julia Ross	Gilman 132; Shriver Hall 104	Spring 2026	Description: The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 10/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.233 (01)	Science and Religion: A Complicated History?	MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM	Allen, Meagan Selby	Hodson 203	Spring 2026	Description: Religion is often portrayed as being at odds with science. From Galileo’s treatment by the Roman Inquisition to contemporary Creationism museums, we are told that religious institutions do not support science. Likewise, religious people don’t make good scientists – or do they? Is religion really the thorn in the side of science that so many claim it is? In this class, we will discover the interwoven history between scientific practice and religion, beginning with the atomism and humoral theories of the Ancient Greeks and culminating in 21st century debates about stem cells and cloning. Many of the great scientific minds were also deeply religious – how did their beliefs shape their practice of science and approach to the natural world? Is religion truly antithetical to scientific practice? And if not, why do we so readily assume that it is? Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/25 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.302 (01)	Rise of Modern Science	MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM	Jiang, Lijing	Bloomberg 168; Gilman 300	Spring 2026	Description: This course surveys major scientific developments from the mid-18th century to the present, with a focus on the physical and the life sciences. Topics include the chemical "revolution", evolution by natural selection, genetics, and the recombinant DNA technology. Throughout, the course highlights the institutional context of scientific work. It also situates scientific developments within their broader techno-social context, paying special attention to the political, economic, and/or technological factors that enabled these developments in the first place, and to the social, political, and environmental impacts that accompanied the rise of modern science. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/16 Tags: MSCH-HUM, ENGY-SCIPOL
AS.140.302 (02)	Rise of Modern Science	MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM	Jiang, Lijing	Bloomberg 168; Hodson 316	Spring 2026	Description: This course surveys major scientific developments from the mid-18th century to the present, with a focus on the physical and the life sciences. Topics include the chemical "revolution", evolution by natural selection, genetics, and the recombinant DNA technology. Throughout, the course highlights the institutional context of scientific work. It also situates scientific developments within their broader techno-social context, paying special attention to the political, economic, and/or technological factors that enabled these developments in the first place, and to the social, political, and environmental impacts that accompanied the rise of modern science. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 2/16 Tags: MSCH-HUM, ENGY-SCIPOL
AS.140.303 (01)	Medieval Science: The History of the Experiment in the Middle Ages	MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM	Allen, Meagan Selby	Gilman 300	Spring 2026	Description: What is “Science”? How do we do “science”? How have the boundaries of these definitions – what we consider to be science and the proper methods of gathering scientific information – changed over the centuries? Have scientists always held the same beliefs about what kinds of knowledge and evidence constitute “science”? In this class, we will examine how science was done in the period before the “Scientific Revolution”. We will learn about the ways in which Medieval scientists classified types of knowledge and what they considered to be acceptable means of determining truths about the world around them. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 3/15 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.312 (01)	The Politics of Science in America	M 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Ginsberg, Benjamin; Kargon, Robert H	Gilman 75	Spring 2026	Description: This course examines the relations of the scientific and technical enterprise and government in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics will include the funding of research and development, public health, national defense, etc. Case studies will include the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic, the Depression-era Science Advisory Board, the founding of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the institution of the President’s Science Advisor, the failure of the Superconducting Supercollider, the Hubble Space Telescope, the covid pandemic, etc. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/15 Tags: INST-AP
AS.140.316 (01)	Minds and Machines	TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM	Honenberger, Phillip	Gilman 413	Spring 2026	Description: Is the mind identical to the brain? Is the mind (or brain) a computer? Could a computer reason, have emotions, or be morally responsible? This course examines such questions philosophically and historically. Topics include the history of AI research from 1940s to present; debates in cognitive science related to AI (computationalism, connectionism, and 4E cognition); and AI ethics. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 5/15 Tags: n/a
AS.140.319 (01)	Tales of Medical Horror	TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM	White, Alexandre Ilani Rein	Gilman 300	Spring 2026	Description: What can the medium of horror tell us about popular understandings of medicine? What sorts of anxieties and concerns about the fields of health, bodily autonomy and the relationships between medicine and society can be drawn from the horror genre? Connecting film and some literature in the genres of horror to historical sources and readings in the field of the history of medicine, this class will use popular media as a window into key themes in the history of medicine. Some key topics of this class include reproductive rights and autonomy, the relationship(s) between medicine and religion, racism, xenophobia and disease and surgical horror. This class will meet twice a week with an additional film screening every other week in the evening. This class with its focus upon horror and especially horror films will deal with disturbing and violent material including graphic violence. Please be advised. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/15 Tags: n/a
AS.140.347 (01)	History Of Genetics	T 4:00PM - 6:30PM	Comfort, Nathaniel	Gilman 300	Spring 2026	Description: The science, social thought, and cultures of heredity since the 19th century. We cover pre-Mendelian heredity, Mendelism, classical genetics and cytogenetics, molecular biology and genomics, including the Human Genome Project. We discuss eugenics, social Darwinism, scientific racism. We consider DNA in medicine, popular culture, art, commerce. Big questions include: Why are we so obsessed with heredity? Is Mendelism wrong? Is intelligence genetic? Is it possible to do meaningful science on race and intelligence? To what extent is your genome “you”? Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 11/20 Tags: BEHB-SOCSCI
AS.140.411 (01)	Senior Research Seminar		Jiang, Lijing		Spring 2026	Description: For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 14/15 Tags: n/a
AS.140.502 (01)	Independent Study		Comfort, Nathaniel		Spring 2026	Description: This course is designed for students who will be conducting independent research in the history of science, medicine, or technology under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Prior discussion and approval of the intended work is required. Credits: 1.00 - 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 2/2 Tags: n/a
AS.213.384 (01)	Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Mind: Thinking in the 21st Century	WF 12:00PM - 1:15PM	Tobias, Rochelle	Gilman 413	Spring 2026	Description: The advent of artificial intelligence has brought to the fore how much we have taken the idea of thinking for granted in the past fifty years. This course will trace the development of the notion of mind in ancient Greece through the exploration of consciousness in eighteenth-century German thought and physiological explanations of thought beginning with Nietzsche in the nineteenth century. We will compare these historical accounts to the statistical models and neural network theories that dominate today. We will also read a selection of short(er) literary works in which the question of who, or what, is speaking brings the traditional aesthetic concept of mimesis into contact with mimetic theory in machine learning. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 3/15 Tags: n/a
AS.214.417 (01)	Galileo in Dialogue: Science, Literature, and Gender in Early Modern Italy	T 3:00PM - 5:30PM	Ray, Meredith	Maryland 202	Spring 2026	Description: This seminar investigates the contours of scientific dialogue in early modern Italy through the figure of Galileo Galilei and his intellectual milieu. We will examine how literary culture shaped the circulation of new ideas, and how women—whether as poets, patrons, or correspondents—participated in the exploration and communication of scientific knowledge. Readings include selections from Galileo’s scientific writings and extensive correspondence, alongside literary and artistic texts that illuminate the cultural contexts in which his ideas were produced, debated, and disseminated. By situating Galileo within academic, courtly, and cultural networks, the seminar considers the reciprocal relationship between scientific inquiry and literary production, with particular attention to how gender shaped access to, and participation in, intellectual life. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 4/12 Tags: n/a
AS.360.305 (01)	Introduction to Computational Methods for the Humanities	TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM	Lippincott, Tom; Sirin Ryan, Hale	Bloomberg 168	Spring 2026	Description: This course introduces basic computational techniques in the context of empirical humanistic scholarship. Topics covered include the command-line, basic Python programming, and experimental design. While illustrative examples are drawn from humanistic domains, the primary focus is on methods: those with specific domains in mind should be aware that such applied research is welcome and exciting, but will largely be their responsibility beyond the confines of the course. Students will come away with tangible understanding of how to cast simple humanistic questions as empirical hypotheses, ground and test these hypotheses computationally, and justify the choices made while doing so. No previous programming experience is required. Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 12/12 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.360.306 (01)	Computational Intelligence for the Humanities	TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM	Messner, Craig A	Bloomberg 168	Spring 2026	Description: This course introduces substantial machine learning methods of particular relevance to humanistic scholarship. Areas covered include standard models for classification, regression, and topic modeling, before turning to the array of open-source pretrained deep neural models, and the common mechanisms for employing them. Students are expected to have a level of programming experience equivalent to that gained from AS.360.304, Gateway Computing, AS.250.205, or Harvard’s CS50 for Python. Students will come away with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different machine learning models, the ability to discuss them in relation to human intelligence and to make informed decisions of when and how to employ them, and an array of related technical knowledge. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/10 Tags: COGS-COMPCG, MSCH-HUM
AS.389.445 (01)	The Political Lives of Dead Bodies	M 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Hester, Jessica Leigh; Lans, Aja Marie	Gilman 55	Spring 2026	Description: Taking its name from the work of scholar Katherine Verdery, who investigates why and how certain corpses took on a political life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, this course examines ways that human bodies have been collected, displayed, concealed and disappeared across cemeteries, museums, universities and other sites. We will trace various valuations (and devaluations) imposed on bodies across the life course and examine how some bodies are made to matter more than others in both life and death. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives across anthropology, Black studies, history of medicine and more, we will engage with case studies from across the globe, from the 18th century to the present day. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 0/12 Tags: HIST-US, HIST-EUROPE, CDS-SSMC, ARCH-ARCH, MSCH-HUM
AS.140.214 (82)	Science and Civilization: The Islamic World and Europe	TTh 1:00PM - 2:30PM	Kuleli, Zeynep	Online	Summer 2026	Description: This introductory course examines how scientific ideas, technologies, and ways of knowing circulated between the Islamic world and Europe from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Rather than presenting science as the achievement of a single civilization, the course highlights cross-cultural exchange through translation, travel, trade, and institutions such as hospitals, observatories, courts, and schools. Students will explore developments in astronomy, medicine, mathematics, engineering, and natural philosophy, focusing on how scholars in the Islamic world engaged with Greek, Persian, Indian, and local traditions and how these ideas later shaped European scientific thought. Topics include early medical education and hospitals, astronomical instruments and navigation, scientific texts in translation, and debates over science, religion, and political authority. Designed for non-majors, the course emphasizes big questions, visual and material sources, and historical case studies rather than technical detail. It offers valuable perspectives for STEM students interested in the history of scientific methods, law and policy students concerned with knowledge and authority, and area studies students seeking a global understanding of the Islamic world’s intellectual and cultural connections. Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 25/25 Tags: n/a
AS.140.316 (21)	Minds and Machines	TTh 1:00PM - 4:30PM	Honenberger, Phillip	Gilman 400	Summer 2026	Description: Is the mind identical to the brain? Is the mind (or brain) a computer? Could a computer reason, have emotions, or be morally responsible? This course examines such questions philosophically and historically. Topics include the history of AI research from 1940s to present; debates in cognitive science related to AI (computationalism, connectionism, and 4E cognition); and AI ethics. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 6/19 Tags: COGS-PHLMND, COGS-COMPCG
AS.140.501 (01)	Independent Study		Jiang, Lijing		Summer 2026	Description: This course is designed for students who will be conducting independent research in the history of science, medicine, or technology under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Prior discussion and approval of the intended work is required. Credits: 3.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.140.598 (01)	HoST Internship		Jiang, Lijing		Summer 2026	Description: Students completing an internship in the history of science, medicine, and technology may be eligible to earn academic credit by enrolling in this course. Please contact the instructor to determine whether your internship qualifies. Credits: 1.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.001.102 (01)	FYS: Experimental Fish	MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM	Jiang, Lijing	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: How have fish and other aquatic animals contributed to the understanding of nature, the environment, and life itself? What features of aquatic organisms and the medium of water facilitated these investigations and why did certain research take place at certain times and places? This First-Year Seminar guides students to address these questions through the perspectives of the history of science and technology. Readings are composed of primary literature in biological studies of aquatic animals and related secondary literature in history of the life sciences. Through readings, lectures, discussions, field trips to local laboratories and aquarium, and an original research project, students will gain experience for future research in the life sciences or in historical studies of science. Topics include “fish” in natural history, taxonomy, physiology, embryology, genetics, neuroscience, fisheries /aquaculture, environmental testing, and molecular biology. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 12/12 Tags: n/a
AS.001.103 (01)	FYS: America in the Rear View Mirror: How Car Culture Shaped a Country	MW 10:30AM - 11:45AM	Leslie, Bill W	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: Join us for a road trip through American history, from the horseless carriage to the latest EVs. In this First-Year Seminar, we'll explore the evolving automotive industry, car culture in film, novels, and music, auto racing, the great American highway, labor relations, environmental issues, and more. You'll be writing an 'autobiography' of a car driven by someone in your family, visit a classic car museum in Hershey, PA, and build a Visible V-8 engine, just like the one in my own 1964 Buick Riviera. We'll screen some classic car films--'Grand Prix', 'Bullit', 'Gone in 60 Seconds', 'American Graffiti''--and unpack some class car tunes like 'Little Deuce Coupe', 'Route 66' and 'Hot Rod Lincoln'. Should be a fun ride! Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 12/12 Tags: CES-CC, CES-LC, CES-LE
AS.001.106 (01)	FYS: Virtual Companions: History and Ethics	TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM	Frumer, Yulia	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: As interactions with virtual companions, chatbots, and emotionally responsive AI become increasingly common, this First-Year Seminar asks a set of urgent questions: What does it mean for a machine to simulate empathy? Who defines “care,” agency, and trust in human–machine relationships? Why do these technologies feel so persuasive? What new forms of bias, manipulation, dependency, or surveillance might these technologies enable?To address these questions, our course emphasizes not only ethical critique but also historical and technical understanding. We will examine how the concept and practice of emulated empathy was imagined, built, and justified, tracing key moments in the history of artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction. Core sources include Alan Turing’s writings on machine intelligence; ELIZA (1966), the first computer therapist; contemporary AI ethics frameworks such as the IEEE standard on emulated empathy in autonomous systems; popular media, including the film Her; and global case studies such as Japanese advertising for avatar girlfriends. The seminar discussion will be based on hands-on encounters with AI systems and sustained scrutiny of historical sources. Screenings and in-class demonstrations will anchor the discussion, while comparative analysis of archival materials and contemporary standards will enable students to learn how the history of technology informs ethical debates. Throughout the course, students will actively evaluate the promises and limitations of emulated empathy by contrasting what these technologies were designed to do with our expectations for human empathy, understanding, and companionship. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 12/12 Tags: n/a
AS.001.172 (01)	FYS: Earth On Drugs - Medicine, Bodies, Environment	TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM	Labruto, Nicole	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: Sixty-eight percent of Americans report taking at least one prescription medication daily, and twenty-six percent say they’re taking at least four prescriptions per day. What are the ecological effects of the production and consumption of pharmaceuticals? Where do drugs go when they leave the body–and how are organisms and ecosystems affected? How are nonhumans implicated in drug testing and other exposures? What knowledge regimes undergird understandings of the human body as (1) treatable by medications and (2) dissociated from the natural world? What ecological knowledge has contributed to the biomedical pharmacopeia? In this seminar, we will learn about dolphins on LSD, the botanical links between the mafia and scurvy, cocaine-addicted animals, yams and the contraceptive pill, plants and the war on drugs, and more. Students will engage with historical, anthropological, cultural studies, and environmental health texts and media to examine these questions. Students will visit a clinical herbalist’s medicinal plant cultivation site, an open source insulin production lab, and a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioner. We will also conduct water quality testing in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to determine the presence of pharmaceuticals. Using planetary health and cross-cultural lenses, we will ask after the relationship between drugs, bodies, and the environment, and consider nonbiomedical healing regimes that posit different relationships between them. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 12/12 Tags: n/a
AS.001.190 (01)	FYS: Poisons! A History	Th 3:00PM - 5:30PM	Li, Lan	Shriver Hall 001	Fall 2026	Description: Poisons aren't what they seem. Sometimes they look like food. Sometimes they look like drugs. From cinnabar to cinnamon, from dragon blood to goat bezoars, poisons result from careful human construction, collection, and creation. They are objects of early chemistry. Far from killing us, poisons have been central to the history of medicine. Physicians in the past and present monitor dosage, drug combination, and drug preparation to mitigate poison toxicity while still maintaining drugs' therapeutic potencies. Knowledge about poisons, in other words, quietly undergirds most of human civilization. Poisons are what keep us alive. Or not. This First-Year Seminar comes to understand poisons in three ways. First, it takes on individual poisons (mercury, opium, among others) to introduce major themes in the history of science and science studies. Second, it engages with global perspectives in the history of medicine to understand how poisons were deployed, refined, and neutralized around the world. Third, it introduces frameworks in the philosophy of chemistry to analyze the social, conceptual, and practical demands on empiricism. Together, these three perspectives will shift students’ perspectives on poisons from objects that kill to critiquing them as objects that are intimately tied to ideas of cure. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 12/12 Tags: n/a
AS.040.372 (01)	Plato’s Mathematical Cosmos	Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Staff	Gilman 108	Fall 2026	Description: The Timaeus is often seen today as one of Plato’s more mysterious and puzzling dialogues. But it was also historically one of his most influential. Its account of creation, the cosmos, and its numerical ordering formed the foundation for considerable work at the junctures of science, mathematics, and philosophy, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This course will explore the complex and fascinating story told in the Timaeus together with its long-reaching legacy. We will read the dialogue in translation in its entirety as well as select later thinkers who build on its picture of the cosmos and its important mathematical, philosophical, and theological themes. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 8/16 Tags: n/a
AS.100.333 (01)	Knowledge and Faith in U.S. History	Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Jewett, Andrew John	Shriver Hall Board Room	Fall 2026	Description: How do we know the truth? Which beliefs are valid? What sources of intellectual authority should we follow? US history has been shaped by fierce disagreements over these questions. This course will explore many of the proposed answers, focusing on scientific and religious frameworks. As citizens, it is crucial to understand conflicts over truth, belief, and authority. Yet very few people have a sense of the history of these disputes or a language for discussing them constructively. This class provides both. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 7/18 Tags: HIST-US
AS.130.119 (01)	Medicine in Ancient Egypt	TTh 1:30PM - 3:00PM	Jasnow, Richard	Gilman 130G	Fall 2026	Description: A survey of medicine and medical practice in Egypt and, to a much lesser extent, the ancient Near East in general. The abundant sources range from magical spells to surprisingly "scientific" treatises and handbooks. Readings are mainly selected from translations of primary sources in the writings of ancient Egypt. Topics will include the sources of our knowledge; the nature and position of medical practitioners, medical treatment, and surgery; beliefs about disease and the etiology of illness; concepts of contagion and ritual purity. Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 1/25 Tags: n/a
AS.140.105 (01)	History of Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Ragab, Ahmed	Gilman 50; Hodson 216	Fall 2026	Description: Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners. Credits: 3.00 Status: Reserved Open Seats Available: 5/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.105 (02)	History of Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Ragab, Ahmed	Gilman 50; Ames 218	Fall 2026	Description: Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners. Credits: 3.00 Status: Reserved Open Seats Available: 5/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.105 (03)	History of Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Ragab, Ahmed	Gilman 50; Hodson 315	Fall 2026	Description: Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners. Credits: 3.00 Status: Reserved Open Seats Available: 5/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.105 (04)	History of Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Ragab, Ahmed	Gilman 50; Shaffer 302	Fall 2026	Description: Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners. Credits: 3.00 Status: Reserved Open Seats Available: 5/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.105 (05)	History of Medicine	MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM	Ragab, Ahmed	Gilman 50; Shaffer 305	Fall 2026	Description: Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners. Credits: 3.00 Status: Reserved Open Seats Available: 5/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.310 (01)	Normal and Pathological	T 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Greene, Jeremy		Fall 2026	Description: This seminar explores the shifting lines of the normal and the pathological and the constitution of disease in the complex of medicine, public health, and the social. Readings include the works of Canguilhem and Foucault, historical monographs and ethnographies. Students will have the opportunity to develop substantial research or review papers throughout the course of the seminar. Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 15/15 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.313 (01)	Science and Fascism	TTh 10:30AM - 11:50AM	McManus, Alison L	Mergenthaler 266	Fall 2026	Description: This course takes a historical approach to the relationship between modern science and fascism. During the 20th century, fascist movements often exploited scientific traditions for economic, military, and rhetorical power. At the same time, scientists relied on fascist regimes to confer legitimacy on their research programs. In this seminar-style course, students will examine these difficult linkages through several case studies on science under fascism, which are drawn from Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, and their empires. The course will address several overarching questions. Is it possible to define fascist science? How have research programs supported fascist regimes, and vice versa? How have scientists reckoned with, remembered, and forgotten these difficult histories? Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/15 Tags: MSCH-HUM, INST-GLOBAL, CES-TI
AS.140.321 (01)	Scientific Revolution	MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM	Allen, Meagan Selby	Hodson 316; Gilman 17	Fall 2026	Description: How did the Western understanding of nature change between 1500 and 1720? We'll study the period through the works of astronomers and astrologers, naturalists and magi, natural philosophers and experimentalists, doctors and alchemists & many others. Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/20 Tags: n/a
AS.140.321 (02)	Scientific Revolution	MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM	Allen, Meagan Selby	Hodson 316; Shaffer 305	Fall 2026	Description: How did the Western understanding of nature change between 1500 and 1720? We'll study the period through the works of astronomers and astrologers, naturalists and magi, natural philosophers and experimentalists, doctors and alchemists & many others. Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/20 Tags: n/a
AS.140.330 (01)	Scientists or Swindlers: Alchemy from Antiquity to the Scientific Revolution	MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM	Allen, Meagan Selby	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: This class will cover the history alchemy from its Greco-Egyptian and Arabic roots, through its popularization in the European Middle Ages, to its zenith in the Early Modern period. Using both primary and secondary sources, students will see how alchemy, rather than being a mystical quest or nothing more than the desire to turn lead into gold, was in fact a complex system of belief about the natural world and the generation of materials, both organic and inorganic. Reading works by historical alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Paul of Taranto, Paracelsus, and others, students will understand how alchemy was incorporated into numerous intellectual and practical disciplines, including metallurgy, medical theory, pharmacology, natural philosophy, and even theology. At the conclusion of the course, students should be able to answer: what role did the translation movements and cross-cultural exchanges play in the development of European alchemy? In what ways were (al)chemical theories different than modern chemistry? And in what ways are they the same? How do technology and culture drive changes in scientific theories? All majors are welcome, although students may find that a high-school level understanding of general chemistry will be helpful. Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/15 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.343 (01)	Medicalization of Identity	F 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Alon, Leigh	Gilman 186	Fall 2026	Description: This course will cover questions about how we came to think about various aspects of our identity in medical terms, and what the ramifications of this process have been. While the field of genetics is especially well positioned to define who we are, we will look well beyond it as we tackle topics such as the construction of mental illness and how “traditional” medicine has shaped national character. We will discuss what role medicine should play in aspects of our identity which seem more proximal to and readily identifiable with the medical field, and those that at first glance may seem quite removed from medicine. We will also seek to define what we mean by “identity,” a ubiquitous, personal, and at times charged term. Medicalization has the allure of providing seemingly unassailable evidence in service of answering long held, fundamental questions, but at what cost? Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 20/20 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.405 (01)	Modern Life Sciences in East Asia	M 1:30PM - 4:00PM	Jiang, Lijing	Gilman 77	Fall 2026	Description: A reading and research seminar where students read and discuss about history of modern life sciences in East Asia. The final paper can be an original research paper or an historiographical essay Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/12 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.406 (01)	The Human Body is Nothing but a Hydrolic Machine: Theories of Body, Self, & Wellness in PreMod Europe	MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM	Mertz, Elliot A	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: Here is a common claim: All of what we know and want is filtered through the states of the body. If we know something, it is by means of our experiences; if we experience something, it is by means of our senses; if we want something, it is something about the body. The relationship between the body and the self has been one of the most contested questions in the history of knowledge. In the early-modern period, the question of the relationship between the “self” and the “body” was deeply tied up with medicine, with explanations of the workings of organic bodies, and with answers to basic questions about the nature of the world and humans in that world. For all of our work in medicine, natural science, and philosophy, the question still remains: what do we mean when we talk about selves? What is their relationship with the thing we call bodies? How does the moral principle of “wellness” apply to that relationship? By the end of this class, I hope you will have thought about your ingrained assumptions about your body and your relationship to it (and other people and their relationships with their bodies!) This course is grounded on weekly close reading of early-modern argument-bearing texts, ranging from Plato’s “Phaedo” to Newton’s “On Gravity” to Stahl’s “Idle work.” Each of these texts represents an attempt to understand and express the nature of the body, the relationship of that body to the “self” and what constitutes wellness in that relationship. I have chosen these text not because reading didactic accounts of wellness comprises a complete understanding of the way that people thought about the body – people interact with their bodies as patients, partners, owners, pleasure-seekers, prisoners, and other roles – but because these ideas question deeply understood dogma about what it means to have a body. I hope you can bring these ideas to bear on your experiences and ideas so you can deploy an arsenal of thoughts when you inspect your bodily experiences. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 1/18 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.140.411 (01)	Senior Research Seminar		Jiang, Lijing		Fall 2026	Description: For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 14/15 Tags: n/a
AS.140.411 (02)	Senior Research Seminar		Portuondo, Maria M		Fall 2026	Description: For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 20/20 Tags: n/a
AS.140.426 (01)	Chemical Warfare, 1915–Present	T 1:30PM - 4:00PM	McManus, Alison L	Gilman 300	Fall 2026	Description: This course surveys the history of chemical weapons from the battlefields of World War I to the metropolitan streets of the 21st century. Emphasis is given to questions of research, development, and regulation. How have scientists participated in the invention and production of novel chemical weapons agents at different times in the past? What challenges have confronted organizations tasked with preventing the development, stockpiling, and use of these weapons? The course will explore these questions through case studies from both world wars, the Italo-Ethiopian War, the Vietnam War, and recent histories of domestic policing. Please note that this is a reading and writing-intensive seminar course. Students should be prepared to read 80-100 pages per week and write an original research paper by the end of the term. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 1/18 Tags: MSCH-HUM, INST-GLOBAL
AS.140.502 (01)	Independent Study		Jiang, Lijing		Fall 2026	Description: This course is designed for students who will be conducting independent research in the history of science, medicine, or technology under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Prior discussion and approval of the intended work is required. Credits: 1.00 - 3.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 1/1 Tags: n/a
AS.145.323 (01)	Music as Laboratory	W 4:30PM - 7:00PM	Ludwig, Loren	Shaffer 202	Fall 2026	Description: What is the relationship between the histories of music and scientific development? How is making music a kind of laboratory research? Musical instruments and aesthetics have always emerged in dialogue with developments in science, technology, and medicine. The first stethoscope borrowed from the design of flutes and challenged physicians to grapple with new concepts like "sound," "signal," and "noise." The automation of industrial machinery was influenced by earlier musical automata--technology that sought to mechanically synchronize, sequence and loop musical phrases. Concepts like logarithms, combinatorics, resonance and sympathetic vibration, melancholy and mania, etc., relied on the contributions of musicians, music theorists, and instrument-makers. This seminar looks at points of contact between music and histories of science, technology, and medicine through both scholarly and creative lenses. The course integrates creative and experimental music making with reading and short writing assignments. Familiarity with music notation and some basic musical skills will be helpful but are not strictly necessary. Limit 15 students. Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/15 Tags: MSCH-HUM
AS.145.333 (01)	Money for Research: History, Policy, and Politics of Federal Funding	W 4:30PM - 7:00PM	Jewett, Andrew John	Gilman 400	Fall 2026	Description: American dominance in the STEM fields since 1945 has rested on federal support. Both military and civilian agencies have poured money into academic research, remaking the economy and society as well as the armed forces. However, the political developments of 2026 pushed that system to the brink and promised to alter the relationships between researchers and government. This course begins by exploring the development, justification, and operation of federal research funding as it took shape in the late 1940s and 1950s. We will then trace shifts over time, including new federal spending patterns reflecting a quest for global economic competitiveness. Finally, we will examine the nature and possible outcomes of the current reconfiguration. Credits: 3.00 Status: Waitlist Only Seats Available: 0/18 Tags: MSCH-HUM, CES-PD, CES-RI
AS.197.215 (01)	The Uses and Abuses of Economics in Modern America	TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM	Anand, Ibanca	SNF Agora 109	Fall 2026	Description: This course takes a historical view on the American economics profession since the early 20th century. Rather than focusing on the theoretical content of economic ideas and models, students will pay attention to their applications and audiences. Students will reflect on what it meant for economists to serve as policymakers, journalists, foreign ambassadors, and business consultants, securing influence in spaces far beyond academia. How did the growing power of economists in these various spheres shape the world we live in today? These are some of the questions we will explore together through readings, lectures, and group discussions. Students need not have an economics or social science background to excel in this course. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 10/18 Tags: CES-ELECT