Noble and Greenough School Course Catalog

All Class IV students are required to take Global History I. This course seeks to develop in students an understanding of the complex roots (ancient, economic, political, social, religious, and cultural) of contemporary civilizations and global society. Students develop the skills of research, reading comprehension, note taking, public speaking, collaboration, problem solving, and analytical writing. Experiential learning serves as a cornerstone of GH I, as the curriculum includes multiple hands-on activities and simulations. World religions comprise the content of the first quarter. An examination of empire building, imperialism, nationalism in South Asia, the Middle East, and China round out the year's content.

All Class III students are required to take Global History II. This course builds on and expands the skill set introduced in GH I, and lays the foundation for more advanced skill development in United States History. GH II is organized around the following essential question: Why, in what ways, and with what results do the histories of Europeans, Africans and Americans interact/intersect from the 15th to 21st centuries, and to what extent do these intersections influence and shape the development of the modern world? Students also learn how to research, assess and write about the history of the Atlantic World from both the wide-ranging perspectives of those who experienced it first hand, and the different ways in which historians and scholars have explained it.

All Class II students are required to take U.S. History. This course integrates five major topical themes in American History: sectional conflict and the Civil War; social mobility and the Gilded Age; the growth of federal power and the New Deal; race relations and the Civil Rights Movement; the world wars and the rise of American globalism. The first semester stresses the essential skills of critical reading, note taking and analytical writing. Students write frequent short primary and secondary source-based essays. The second semester emphasizes independent inquiry and the skills of research, information literacy and oral presentation. Students complete research essays on topics of their own design, and conclude the year with group research and debate projects examining the historical roots of contemporary American economic, social, political and diplomatic affairs.

This course is designed to introduce students to the overriding economic issues that confront a nation: growth, inflation, and unemployment. No mathematical ability is needed beyond the rudimentary skills of mathematics. Students are first introduced to the basic economic concepts of scarcity, efficiency, production possibility frontiers, and the laws of supply and demand. Students next examine national income, the components of aggregate demand, the Keynesian multiplier model, money and banking, the stock market, fiscal and monetary policy, the Federal Reserve system, aggregate supply, and the different macroeconomic schools of thought. The course incorporates recently published news articles and opinion pieces culled from the nation's leading publications to bring to life the theory that we are studying.

This course is designed to introduce students to the fundamental principles of economics. No mathematical ability is needed beyond the rudimentary skills of mathematics. Students are first introduced to the basic economic concepts of scarcity, efficiency, production possibility frontiers, and the laws of supply and demand. Students then investigate more advanced economic theory: elasticity, production theory and business organization, cost analysis, perfect and imperfect competition, game theory, and selected topics in labor economics. The course incorporates recently published news articles and opinion pieces culled from the nation's leading publications to bring to life the theory that we are studying. The course concludes with student-designed projects that apply microeconomic theory to the analysis of public policy.

Political philosophers have debated questions about justice, power, freedom, and community throughout history. Modern thinkers have added a concern with individualism, rights and equality. Our goals in this class will be both to appreciate the complexity of various classic texts and to use them to illuminate enduring political problems and contemporary ethical issues. The current political landscape will serve as a fitting backdrop by which to test long-held and debated theories about the state of nature, the nature of the state, the relationship between means and ends, and the role of ethics in politics.

In this course, students will learn how to take entrepreneurial ideas or innovations from the idea stage into reality. Areas of focus will include customer and market research, writing, public speaking, working within a team, and gathering and using data to inform decision-making. In the first half of the course, students will engage in the process of learning how to use the Business Model Canvas and Lean Launchpad methodology to develop their ideas. They will learn techniques for innovation, analytical approaches to research, and evidence-based systems for decision-making. Students will learn skills such as observing, interviewing, discovering problems and forming solutions using rapid prototyping. This process will include a series of readings and discussions about entrepreneurship. Students will also work with local entrepreneurs to develop real solutions to existing problems. In the fourth quarter, students will work in teams to develop their own innovations and entrepreneurial ideas using the methodologies learned during the first half of the course.

Homer’s Odyssey sings of a famous journey home and inspired one of the most familiar tropes in literature. Herodotus’ Histories is one of the first forays into the crafting of history. Together, they represent monumental treatments of the Aegean world and continue to speak to us today as we endeavor to understand the world around us. As classicists, we aim to piece together plausible understandings of the ancient world from careful consideration and combinations of imperfect sources. In this course, we examine various sources that evoke the ancient world–literature, history, topography, and the treasures of the archaeological record, including pottery, statues, coins, and architecture. In addition to close readings of Homer and Herodotus, we also engage archaeological questions with hands-on activities. How do we appreciate the words of the authors within the world around them? What can we still learn about the natural world, human interactions, and a life well lived? And, as we use the technology of today to connect with the past, we also have to ask: are we growing closer to the world of the Ancient Greeks with every passing year?

O tempora, O mores! So opined Cicero in the First Catilinarian–a call of distress and moral decline as the Roman Republic teetered on the brink.

Rome had enjoyed a storied past, and for centuries after Cicero, Rome would continue to inspire the world with its military sophistication, engineering feats, and ability to govern vast swaths of territory. Forward progress was often tempered with a backward glance, as we will see in Vergil’s Aeneid, Livy’s Early History of Rome, and many other selections of history, literature, art and architecture. Rome was a city founded by Aeneas, a vanquished Trojan in exile; a city first ruled by Romulus, abandoned as an infant, raised by a wolf, who killed his brother, and set a dangerous precedent for fratricide and civil strife from the outset. Beautiful and bellicose, we will chart the course of Rome, from Troy to today. Along the way, we will come to understand the aims of our historians, who invite contemplation of our human condition thus: “in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.” In this course we will examine how we perceive vestiges of the Romans in our current society, as well as how the Romans themselves perceived vestiges of their own past. What were the customs that formed the “original” Roman mindset? What caused later Romans to stray from those ideals? Was the past truly more ideal, or was this simply a fanciful trope of Roman rhetoric?

This interdisciplinary course introduces students to (1) the causes, course and consequences of genocide in the twentieth century and (2) the reasons why the United States responded as it did to genocide during that time. We will start by defining the term, studying its history and discussing the questions and patterns scholars have proposed about it – i.e., What are the politics surrounding the term? Why do states commit genocide? How do they mobilize citizens to become perpetrators? How and why do other states respond? What happens to societies in the aftermath of genocide? We will then spend most of the course exploring four case studies: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, and Rwanda. Finally, we will learn how scholars from different disciplines study genocide, and we will compare their methods, motives and conclusions. As a final assessment, students will undertake a research project about a genocide from before or after the twentieth century.

This course has an interdisciplinary focus and makes extensive use of literature, art, and film as a means of exploring selected topics in the history of Boston from the colonial era to the present. Although a rough chronological sequence governs the order of topics, the readings and discussions are essentially topical and interpretive in character. Some key topics include Puritan foundations, The American Revolution, The Abolitionist Movement and Civil War, Immigration, Demographics and Neighborhoods, School Desegregation and Busing, and Contemporary Issues. The class will end with a culminating research project which will give students an opportunity to make use of local resources and gain an insightful understanding of the discipline of history.

The Vietnam War dramatically altered the place of the U.S. in the world, transformed American politics and culture and had direct impact on United States decisions to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. This course examines these conflicts from historical, political, international and domestic perspectives with a particular focus on the experiences of soldiers at war and civilians caught in the crossfire. Topics include brief histories of each nation and steps leading to war, the nature of insurgent warfare, the impact of war on American culture and race relations, and the legacies of war. The syllabus includes simulation activities, memoirs, and student interviews with and visits from a diverse group of participants in these conflicts.

Power, derived from the Latin "posse", or "be able," plays a role in all academic disciplines and in all aspects of both individual and communal life. While neither positive nor negative in a vacuum, power almost universally is exerted with value-laden goals and implications. This course will explore the psychological, sociological, philosophical, and practical meanings and functions of power in global politics, economics, and business. Our explorations will intersect with issues of gender, race, religion, wealth, human rights, and environmental resources. After learning from the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Weber, and others, students will craft a class definition of power to be used for the remainder of the course; combine it with an understanding of inequality (definition provided); and ultimately apply this framework through a challenging culminating project. Each Power and Inequality Analysis will rely heavily on solid data and statistics, demonstrate original analysis, and propose actionable steps toward redressing the inequality in question.

We The People: History of American Government is an intensive study of the formal and informal structures of the government and the processes of the American political system. This course includes the study of various institutions, e.g., political beliefs/parties, branches of government, and interest groups/media to become acquainted with the variety of theoretical perspectives and explanations for various behaviors and outcomes in government and politics. The course will also explore the intersection of race, specifically, in the context of these government structures. Additionally, students will then analyze and interpret “issues” in society to understand how government at different levels (local, domestic, global) identifies, examines and proposes solutions. Examples of topics covered include: counter-terrorism, opioids, sex and human trafficking, cybersecurity, education and poverty.

We tend to think of world regions as “existing” rather than as “being made”. The history of the Middle East from 1914 to 2025 makes a strong case for the latter logic when thinking about how a part of the world takes on its central political, religious, cultural, and economic characteristics. Following that idea, this course seeks to help students understand how the modern Middle East was “made,” who did that “making,” and the contemporary consequences of that complex and contested process. The course will focus on the century between 1914 and 2024, with some early classes providing students with the necessary context to engage deeply in that history. Topics covered by this course include: the intellectual, social, and political foundations of the Arab, Persian, Turkish and Islamic Worlds; The breakup of the Ottoman Empire into mandates and the limited local self-determination provided by such a system; the creation and evolution of nation-states including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey; the Arab-Israeli wars of ‘48, ‘67, and ‘73, and their intersections with the larger Cold War; the Iranian Revolution and its strategic, political, and ideological reverberations; the geopolitical impacts of Middle Eastern oil; Americans interventions after the Cold War, including the American wars in Iraq and the Global War on Terror; and the radicalization of religion and politics throughout the region.

**Note: This course is the first in a series of two courses on the history of the modern Middle East. This course will cover the history of the region from the end of WWI to the establishment of the state of Israel. Any eligible student is welcome to take either or both courses, one is not required to take the other.**