This course had very engaging discussions and interesting lectures. All of the readings were very useful and intuitively reinforced the topics of each week. Kit also did an amazing job at facilitating discussions during class and being very responsive to questions. Her feedback on assignments definitely allowed me to grow as a writer and critical thinker.
The material covered by the first part of the class, a historical survey of important ways of thinking about non–human animals in the tradition from Aristotle to Foucault, was interesting, important, and unique among Harvard's animal–related offerings. The ideas of each week were covered in enough depth to explore what made them distinctive, while the survey progressed rapidly enough to allow clear comparisons to be drawn, for example between Aristotle's virtue–ethical and Bouffon's utility–focused anthropocentric evaluations of animals. Furthermore, these subjects were introduced using well–chosen texts, which illustrated distinctive features of each author's thought in an efficient, light reading load. The museum "field trip" and associated assignments were creative, out of the box, and thought–provoking. The range of animal–related artifacts shown at the museum were especially effective at conveying the amount of work historians have to put into understanding a culture before attempting to interpret particular pieces of evidence to advance an argument. Relatedly, the first few months of the course did an excellent job of introducing me to the basic principles of practicing history—the variety of types of sources, what kind of information can be gained from each, caveats such as preservation bias, and what makes a topic relatively easy to study (like Darwin) or harder (like paleoarcheological artifacts). This was accomplished piece by piece through examples we worked through in class, without being boring or didactic.
This course provided a lot of in person discussion and gave each student in the class the opportunity to contribute to class discussions. The structure of the course was also very flexible and catered to the needs of each student.
*Certificate of Teaching Excellence, Bok Center, Harvard University
*Digital Teaching Fellows Program, DSSG, Harvard University
I liked that we got to delve deeply into one particular topic. I feel like other seminars just touch on a variety of things. It was cool to "own" a particular topic and be the "expert" in the room on it. I also enjoyed learning from my classmates. The presentations were all interesting. Kit did a good job of tailoring her support. I liked that she sent us each a video/links to help us with technical issues. That was very thoughtful. I really enjoyed the feedback form we filled out at the end of each class.
If you have any interest at all in colonialism or imperialism, check out this course. The premise is that each student selects a particular commodity from a curated list. Then, each week, one student gives a presentation on their commodity using StoryMap. The final project is a polished version of your Story Map. So, the good thing is that you get to know A LOT about one particular commodity, and then for the other commodities, you get to see interesting presentations on them. The class discussions are thought–provoking. Kit raises a lot of questions around decolonizing language, the role of slavery in western imperialism, what it means for something to be scientific, what a commodity is, and different theories of science (i.e. why the diffusionist model ignores the important role of non–western cultures in creating science). This course was a refreshing break from HistSci's typical courses, which are pretty Eurocentric and don't really talk about how science has been used to harm marginalized people for centuries.
Dr. Heintzman is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about her work. This is apparent immediately, and transfers in the care and personal investment she has for each of her students and their academic work.