Imagine having a long, insightful conversation with friends about a film, only to discover some of you watched it in reverse. That’s what happened in Professor D. Graham Burnett ’93’s undergraduate course, Historical Consciousness: An Introduction, though it was no accident.

Burnett’s class, which is new this fall, centers around how the past has been conveyed and conceived in different times and places, how the past remains present, and the implications of humans as historical creatures.

“We are time-bound beings,” said Burnett, a professor of history. “We’re creatures that live in time, and the kinds of things we think and the way we work are inextricable from the when.”