Anthropology 105 meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 to 10:50 a.m. When the class was last offered two years ago, it received a 4.1 CUE guide overall rating, a 2.8 for workload and a 2.9 for difficulty.

Those Healing Hands

If you're pre-med, you probably don't look to the religion department for courses directly relevant to your future.

But Linda L. Barnes, visiting lecturer on the study of religions and medical anthropology, will tackle questions central to the medical profession in Religion 1021: "Religion, Medicine and the Healer's Art."

By examining the healing practices of Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Chinese and tribal traditions, the class will examine how people understand the meaning and end of human life, the experience of suffering and the role of the healer; the class will question whether medicine or religion is the social guardian or morality.

Readings in the substantially weighty sourcebook include articles on Taiwanese folk healers, Aztec religion, African divinity systems, the doctor-patient relationship, American medical ethics and the assumptions inherent to Western medicine.

Religion 1021 meets Tuesdays from 1 to 3 p.m.

The Beat of Harvard

What does American social history look like from the perspective of black music?

Quincy Jones Visiting Associate Professor of African-American Music Ronald M. Radano will take a look this semester in Afro-American Studies 154z: "Black Music and American Racial Encounter."

From the beat of the drum in colonial days to the beat of Public Enemy, Radano, visiting from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will take students on a wide-ranging tour through Afro-American history.

Instead of following survey form, the class will borrow some of the theoretical perspectives of cultural studies and examine, according to the catalog description, "how black music has evolved not merely as an extension of African-centered practices, but as a socially grounded idea that has profoundly contributed to modern comprehensions of racial difference."

But if you get sick of the theory jargon, at least you'll have the music to fall back on. Radano says he will incorporate music into his lectures, require listening to tapes and will even include some coverage of the current hip-hop scene. In what other class could you find a textbook with mention of Bobby McFerrin, Peabo Bryson, Boyz II Men and the Pointer Sisters?

The book, The Music of Black Americans, presents a complete narrative of black music from church music to swing, from ragtime to Broadway.

Also on the reading list: Black Culture and Black Consciousness, in which Lawrence Levine analyzes black culture by looking at songs, folk tales, oral poems, proverbs and games, and The Souls of Black Folk, the classic work by W.E.B. DuBois, class of 1892.