Visualization (at SEAS)

This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations. 

Prerequisites: Students are required to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). Web programming experience (HTML, CSS, JS) is a plus.

This course follows the FAS academic schedule. Please reference FAS to see start of term information.

This course meets in Allston at 114 Western Ave, 2111.

 

Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036: Seminar

Fantasy opens portals to new life forms. It prepares us for supranatural humans, genetic adjustment, non-electronic novelty. It forms the core of natural-world reverence, maybe worship, the religion of the green future. It cherishes solitary, low-tech adventure in natural and neo-natural environments, typically northern forests and fashion-magazine imagery. It is a genre, a haphazard collection, a force as amorphous as blowing leaves, a western-European device born about 1900 and now global, but always quasi-imperialist, always of the north. It scares public-school teachers who loathe Hogwarts, the Old Religion, the never-ending ancient tradition so deeply rooted in the European cultural past that it shapes contemporary propriety. Holly and other evergreens bedeck churches at Christmas, but not mistletoe, the evergreen that killed the Norse sun god, Balder, the sky-tree Druids brought west from the Danube and grafted onto oaks, the Yule sovereign that permits kisses forbidden at all other seasons, part of the merry (not happy) in Christmas. Quality fantasy teaches that every tree species once had individual character (willows walk, sometimes assault: the Whomping Willow behaves naturally) and that the most powerful (mistletoe included) once named the letters of the alphabet, that the year had thirteen lunar months marking the earth-mother menstrual cycle, that the seasons proved weird to those in the know, witches especially. Out of the great northern arc from Finland to Ireland (stabbed by the westward-moving Celts and the Albion wraiths) originates quality contemporary fantasy, much of it written by British writers schooled in Latin from childhood.  It comprises a grimoire of irresistible power. As climate change melts Arctic ice and opens new sea lanes, as Canada hurriedly builds a large navy, the north becomes more important politically, economically, and militarily – but its emerging conceptual importance orders this course this term. Cold, discomfort, swimming in the winter ocean, trusting to quality attire, knives, and open boats, seeing sideways in the winter dark, finding what one must find in the arboreal forests, all fuses into the meaning of north. Already fantasy slides past materialist and leftist ideology.  It prepares children for authentic change.

Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AFVS 167.

 

Visualization (at SEAS)

This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations. 

Prerequisites: Students are required to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). Web programming experience (HTML, CSS, JS) is a plus.

This course follows the FAS academic schedule. Please reference FAS to see start of term information.

This course meets in Allston at 114 Western Ave, 2111.

 

North American Seacoasts and Landscapes: Discovery Period to the Present

Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of recreation, and as artistic subject; the shape of coastal landscape for conflicting uses over time; and the perception of the seashore as marginal zone in literature, photography, painting, film, television, and advertising.

Note: Offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as VES 166.
Prerequisites: GSD 4105 and GSD 4303, or permission of the instructor

Note that this course follows the FAS academic calendar. See the FAS calendar for information on the first day of classes. 

Writing and Urban Life (at FAS)

In this seminar we will study representations of urban experience, and how the evolution of cities has been shaped by writing. Each week will pair literary and planning texts from the 1860s onward. We will discuss shared aspirations and tense relations among various urban dwellers, focusing on literature, urban planning, and everyday life. Topics include the impact of technology on cities as lived and imagined spaces; interfaces between literacy, orality, and visual cultures; intersections between fiction, poetry, and social history; porous boundaries between built and natural environments; relationships between modernity, writing, and urban planning. Focus will be placed on major cities where Romance languages are spoken, such as Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Luanda.

Course Notes: Readings will be in translation, and discussions will be in English. There are no requirements for enrollment.

This course is offered by FAS as ROM-STD 135 and jointly listed with the GSD.

GSD students who wish to enroll in this limited enrollment course will need to obtain instructor consent. When attempting to enroll, students will be asked to submit a brief statement explaining their motivation for taking the course. If approved, students can then proceed with enrolling. Please contact the instructor with questions.

 

Computing Fantasy: Imagination, Invention, Radical Pedagogy (Munari / Rodari / Calvino) (at FAS)

Built around three seminal 20th century figures–the artist-designer Bruno Munari, the writer-educator Gianni Rodari, the novelist Italo Calvino–the course aims to explore structural, combinatory, and generative thinking about storytelling. It combines the study of literary theory and history, literary works such as folktales and children's stories, and computer-assisted creation employing both textual and visual generative AI tools. By the end of the semester, the class will result in the creation of a well crafted, curated, and edited volume of AI folktales.

This course is jointly offered with FAS as COMPLIT 200 and ROM-STD. Please see these listings for classroom information.

GSD students who wish to enroll in this limited enrollment course will need to obtain instructor consent. When attempting to enroll, students will be asked to submit a brief statement explaining their motivation for taking the course. If approved, students can then proceed with enrolling. Please contact the instructor with questions.

Adventure and Fantasy Simulation, 1871-2036: Seminar

Fantasy opens portals to new life forms. It prepares us for supranatural humans, genetic adjustment, non-electronic novelty. It forms the core of natural-world reverence, maybe worship, the religion of the green future. It cherishes solitary, low-tech adventure in natural and neo-natural environments, typically northern forests and fashion-magazine imagery. It is a genre, a haphazard collection, a force as amorphous as blowing leaves, a western-European device born about 1900 and now global, but always quasi-imperialist, always of the north. It scares public-school teachers who loathe Hogwarts, the Old Religion, the never-ending ancient tradition so deeply rooted in the European cultural past that it shapes contemporary propriety. Holly and other evergreens bedeck churches at Christmas, but not mistletoe, the evergreen that killed the Norse sun god, Balder, the sky-tree Druids brought west from the Danube and grafted onto oaks, the Yule sovereign that permits kisses forbidden at all other seasons, part of the merry (not happy) in Christmas. Quality fantasy teaches that every tree species once had individual character (willows walk, sometimes assault: the Whomping Willow behaves naturally) and that the most powerful (mistletoe included) once named the letters of the alphabet, that the year had thirteen lunar months marking the earth-mother menstrual cycle, that the seasons proved weird to those in the know, witches especially. Out of the great northern arc from Finland to Ireland (stabbed by the westward-moving Celts and the Albion wraiths) originates quality contemporary fantasy, much of it written by British writers schooled in Latin from childhood.  It comprises a grimoire of irresistible power. As climate change melts Arctic ice and opens new sea lanes, as Canada hurriedly builds a large navy, the north becomes more important politically, economically, and militarily – but its emerging conceptual importance orders this course this term. Cold, discomfort, swimming in the winter ocean, trusting to quality attire, knives, and open boats, seeing sideways in the winter dark, finding what one must find in the arboreal forests, all fuses into the meaning of north. Already fantasy slides past materialist and leftist ideology.  It prepares children for authentic change.

Note: This course is offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AFVS 167.

 

Atmospheric Projections: Media as Environments (at AFVS)

What is the ecology of the arts in our visual age of changing media? Can media be understood as environments? This seminar investigates a “material and environmental turn” in philosophy and visual culture, focusing on the atmosphere of visual arts, architecture and screen media. Topics include: new materialisms, agential realism, poetics of relationality, media ecologies, elemental philosophy, plant thinking, light and projection, and the energy of atmosphere.

Pre-requisite: A course in film and media theory, visual studies, art history, architecture studies, philosophy, literary theory, gender studies, or the equivalent course in cultural history or theory. Students will be selected on the basis of an application, as will be detailed on the Canvas course site. 

Jointly offered course: This course is jointly offered as AFVS 279. GSD students should enroll in the course via the GSD listing.

 

This course follows the FAS academic schedule. Please reference FAS to see start of term information..

Visualization (at SEAS)

This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for visualizing data. It covers design practices, data and image models, visual perception, interaction principles, visualization tools, and applications, and introduces programming of web-based interactive visualizations. 

Prerequisites: Students are required to have basic programming experience (e.g., Computer Science 50). Web programming experience (HTML, CSS, JS) is a plus.

This course follows the FAS academic schedule. Please reference FAS to see start of term information..

 

Knowledge Design: What should or could knowledge look like in the 21st century?

This seminar/studio hybrid explores the shapes and forms that knowledge production is assuming in an array of disciplines, from media studies to digital humanities to various domains of design practice to the natural sciences. Each week will be devoted to a separate domain of experimental practice with distinguished guests from both inside and outside of Harvard joining the seminar to talk about their own processes of research design, knowledge creation, presentation, and publication. The aims of the course are: a) to expose participating students to these emerging practices and to leading practitioners, b) to offer an opportunity for sustained critical reflection regarding the strengths and weaknesses of both novel and traditional models, c) to provide hands-on experience with some of the techniques and practices that are involved, and d) to serve as a catalyst for innovative thinking regarding participants’ future or ongoing work. The course is built around the redesign of a classic or authoritative work from the student's own field of specialization.

This course is jointly listed as FAS COMPLIT 279.