Department of English

Welcome to the Harvard English Department

Take a look at this year's course offerings.

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Undergraduates

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Graduate Students

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Creative Writing

The English Department is proud to be a home for creative writing at Harvard. The vital presence of creative writing in the department is reflected by our many distinguished authors who offer small, intensive workshops each term in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, and television writing. Concentrators may also apply to work on a year-long creative senior thesis with our faculty.

Latest News

Nadine Knight, PhD '07, Receives Tenure at Holy Cross

May 15, 2026

We are delighted to share that Nadine Knight, PhD '07, was recently promoted from Associate Professor of Literature to Tenured Professor at the College of the Holy Cross. Congratulations, Nadine!

Namwali Serpell Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship, Launches Podcast

May 15, 2026

Professor of English Namwali Serpell, who recently received a Guggenheim fellowship, has a podcast launching Thursday, May 21st based on her On Morrison book tour. Details about the podcast can be found here .

Washington Post Journalist Hannah Natanson, '19, Wins Pulitzer Prize

May 08, 2026

The New York Times covered a story on former English concentrator Hannah Natanson, whose reporting on the Trump administration's efforts to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce earned her a Pulitzer Prize. An excerpt of the article is...

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Featured Faculty

Glenda Carpio

carpio@fas.harvard.edu

Chair of the Department of English

Harvard College Professor

Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature

*Currently accepting graduate student advisees

Education: B.A., Vassar (1991) Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley (2002) Interests: The Literature, History and Culture of New World Slavery; African-American Literature and Visual Art; Anglophone Caribbean Literature; Native American and Latino...

Josh Bell

joshuabell@fas.harvard.edu

Senior Lecturer on Poetry

Education: B.A., Indiana State University (1994) M.A., Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (1997) M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1999) Ph.D., University of Cincinnati (2013) Interests: Poetry, creative writing Selected Works: No...

Homi Bhabha

hbhabha@fas.harvard.edu

Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities

(On leave Fall 2025)

*Currently accepting graduate student advisees

Education: B.A., University of Bombay (1970) MPhil., M.A., D.Phil, Christ Church, Oxford (1990) Interests: Cosmopolitanism; human rights in the context of aesthetics and culture; the works of Joseph Conrad, Walter Benjamin, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, V...

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Arts and Humanities Division

The Division seeks to optimize both the ability of its faculty to pursue knowledge through the study of the arts and humanities and the opportunity of its students to share in that pursuit.

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