People
Faculty
Glenda Carpio
carpio@fas.harvard.eduChair 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.eduSenior 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.eduAnne 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...
Beth Blum
bblum@fas.harvard.eduProfessor of English
*Currently accepting graduate student advisees
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania (2014) Interests: Modern and contemporary literature; self-help and therapeutic culture; the history of reading; sociology; medical humanities; the conduct of life; temporality. I am a scholar of modernist and...
Stephanie Burt
burt@fas.harvard.eduDonald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English
*Currently accepting graduate student advisees
Education: B.A., Harvard (1994) Ph.D., Yale (2000) Interests: Poetry, especially 20th and 21st centuries; science fiction; literature and geography; contemporary writing; comics and graphic novels; literature alongside other arts. Selected Works: We are...
Tina Chang
tchang@fas.harvard.eduVisiting Professor of English
Education: B.A., Binghamton University (1991); M.F.A., Columbia University (1997) Interests: Poetry, hybrid writing, Asian American poetry, cross disciplinary collaborations. Selected Works: LION (forthcoming, W.W. Norton, September 2026), Hybrida (W.W...
Amanda Claybaugh
claybaug@fas.harvard.eduSamuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of English
Dean of Undergraduate Education
*Currently not accepting graduate student advisees
Education: B.A., Yale (1993) Ph.D., Harvard (2001) Interests: Nineteenth-century American literature; Victorian literature; trans-Atlantic literary relations. Selected Works: The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World...
Teju Cole
Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing
(On leave Spring 2026)
Education: B.A. 1996 Kalamazoo College M.A. 2000 SOAS, University of London M. Phil. 2006 Columbia University Interests: Fiction writing. Literary Criticism. Photography Criticism. Selected Works: Blind Spot (2017), Known and Strange Things (2016), Every...
Melissa Cundieff
melissacundieff@fas.harvard.eduLecturer on English
Education: B.A. 2009 Arizona State University M.F.A. 2012 Vanderbilt University Interests: Poetry and Creative Nonfiction writing; visual art and illustration; dream logic; memory and memory loss; grief and haunting Selected Works: Darling Nova, 2018
Maggie Doherty
doherty4@fas.harvard.eduVisiting Lecturer on English
Education: BA Yale (2007) PhD Harvard (2015) Interests: Narrative nonfiction, magazine journalism, literary criticism Maggie Doherty is the author of The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (2020), which won the...
Daniel Donoghue
dgd@wjh.harvard.eduJohn P. Marquand Professor of English
(On leave Fall 2025)
*Currently accepting graduate student advisees
Education: B.A., University of Dallas (1978) M.Phil., University College Dublin (1981) Ph.D., Yale (1986) Interests: Old English; Middle English; History of the Language, Medievalism, Cognitive Literary Studies, Digital Humanities, Comedy. Selected Works...
Darcy Frey
frey@fas.harvard.eduSenior Lecturer on English
Education: B.A., Oberlin College (1984) Interests: Narrative journalism; essay; memoir; travel writing; literary science writing. Selected Works: “George Divoky’s Planet” (forthcoming, Pantheon). *The Last Shot* (1994).
Administration
Glenda Carpio, Chair
carpio@fas.harvard.eduChair of the Department of English
Harvard College Professor
Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature
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 Visual Art; Anglophone Caribbean Literature; Theories on Memory and Textuality; Gender...
Lauren Bimmler
lbimmler@fas.harvard.eduUndergraduate Program Administrator
Lauren oversees the administration of the undergraduate concentration, and is a resource to concentrators and prospective concentrators on matters of program requirements, creative writing, advising, course selection, honors opportunities (senior thesis...
Ju Yon Kim, DGS
juyonkim@fas.harvard.eduPatsy Takemoto Mink Professor of English, Harvard College Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
Education: B.A., Yale University (2002) Ph.D., Stanford University (2011) Interests: Asian American literature; modern and contemporary theater; performance studies. Selected Works: “Between Paper and Performance: Suspicion, Race, and Casting in The Piano...
Sol Kim-Bentley
svkim@fas.harvard.eduFinancial Associate
Sol helps department affiliates with anything related to money, hiring research assistants and the related processes, paying invoices or getting reimbursed, and identifying appropriate resources at the university.
Tara K. Menon, ADUS
taramenon@fas.harvard.eduAssistant Professor of English
Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies
Education: B.A., Columbia University (2011) M.A., New York University (2014) Ph.D., New York University (2019) I Interests: the novel; realism; narrative theory; nineteenth-century British literature; contemporary fiction, climate fiction Selected Works:...
Graduate Students
E Ambrose
elizabethambrose@fas.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: 20th/21st Century Literature Interests: Queer theory, poetry and poetics, genre studies, ecocriticism, African American literature
Aditya Banerjee
adityabanerjee@g.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: 18th Century / Enlightenment Interests: Law and Literature, Novel Theory, Ephemera, the East India Company
Nicholas Belmore
nicholasbelmore@g.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Renaissance Interests: Medieval; Criticism and Theory; Multiethnic Literature of the US; Drama and Performance; Poetry
Sam Bozoukov
sbozoukov@fas.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Renaissance Interests: Symbol, Allegory, and Poetics; Aurality and Sound Studies; John Milton and English Renaissance; British and American Romanticism; Authorship and reader response theories; Philosophies of perception, aesthetics & imagination.
Katherine Budinger
PhD Candidate
Field: 19th Century British/Romantics/Victorian Interests: Literature and Visual Art and Comparative Literature, Criticism and Theory, History of the Book, Special Collections and Archives, and Aesthetics
Sofia Carbonell-Realme
scarbonellrealme@fas.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Medieval Interests: Criticism & Theory; Cultural Studies
Thomas Casalaspi
casalaspi@g.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Poetry Interests: Poetry from Chaucer to Bishop; Milton; British and American Romanticism; High Modernism
Yooj Chun
yoojung_chun@g.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Renaissance Interests: Medieval, Renaissance, The Novel, Drama and Performance, Medical Humanities, Comparative Literature, Transnational Anglophone / Postcolonial literature
Kritika Dixit
kritikadixit@fas.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Long 18th Century Interests: History of Atlantic Slavery, 19th-century British/Romantics, Criticism and Theory
Sage Doane
PhD Candidate
Field: Poetry Interests: Renaissance/Early Modern; Medieval; Music and Literature
Caroline Engelmayer
cengelmayer@fas.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Renaissance Interests: History of the Book, Literature and Visual Art and Comparative Literature
Harriet French
harrietfrench@g.harvard.eduPhD Candidate
Field: Poetry Interests: 20th Century American; Music and Literature; Cognitive Psychology and Literary Criticism
Emeriti
Lawrence Buell
lbuell@fas.harvard.eduPowell M. Cabot Research Professor of American Literature, Emeritus
Interests: American Literature Selected Works: Literary Transcendentalism (1973), New England Literary Culture (1986), The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (1995), Writing for an Endangered World...
Leo Damrosch
damrosch@fas.harvard.eduErnest Bernbaum Research Professor of Literature, Emeritus
Education: A.B. 1963 Yale; A.B./A.M. 1966 Cambridge; Ph.D. 1968 Princeton. Interests: Restoration and 18th-Century Literature; Romanticism; Puritan Imagination; Enlightenment. Selected Works: The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age...
James Engell
jengell@fas.harvard.eduGurney Research Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature
Education: B.A., Harvard University (1973) Ph.D., Harvard University (1978) Interests: Eighteenth Century and Restoration; Romanticism; Criticism and Critical Theory; Rhetoric; Environmental Studies. Selected Works: The Call of Classical Literature in the...
Philip Fisher
pjfisher@fas.harvard.eduFelice Crowl Reid Professor of English, Emeritus
Education: A.B., University Pittsburgh (1963) M.A., Harvard University (1966) Ph.D., Harvard University (1971) Interests: American Novel; English Novel; Cultural Theory; Modernism; American Art and its Cultural Institutions; The Philosophy and Literature...
Marjorie Garber
garber@fas.harvard.eduWilliam R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Emerita
Education: B.A., Swarthmore College (1966) Ph.D., Yale University (1969) Interests: Shakespeare; Modern Drama, Dramatic Theory, and Performance; Cultural Studies; Psychoanalysis and Literature; Renaissance Drama; Gender Theory; Visual Studies; Media...
Jorie Graham
Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric Emerita
Education: B.A., New York University (1973) M.F.A., University of Iowa (1978) Interests: English Poetry; American Poetry; Contemporary Poetics; Film Theory; Painting. Selected Works: All poetry: Fast (2017); Place (Ecco 2012); Sea Change (Ecco 2008)...
Joseph C Harris
harris@fas.harvard.eduFrancis Lee Higginson Research Professor of English and Research Professor of Folklore
Education: B.A. 1961 University of Georgia; B.A. 1967 Cambridge; M.A. 1963, Ph.D. 1969 Harvard. Interests: Old English; Old Norse-Icelandic; Folklore and Mythology. Selected Works: Child’s Children: Ballad Study and Its Legacies , ed. (2012); ‘Speak...
Robert Kiely
rkiely@fas.harvard.eduDonald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Emeritus
Education: B.A. 1953 Amherst College; Ph.D 1962 Harvard University. Selected Works: Blessed and Beautiful: Picturing the Saints (2010); Still Learning: Spiritual Sketches from a Professor’s Life (1999); Reverse Tradition, Postmodern Fiction and the...
Jamaica Kincaid
jkincaid@fas.harvard.eduProfessor of African and African American Studies in Residence, Emerita
Selected Works: See Now Then (2013); Best American Travel Essays (2005, Editor); Among Flowers, A Walk In The Himalaya (2004); Mr. Potter (2002); Talk Stories (2001); Poetics Of Place(1999) My Favorite Plant (1998, Editor); My Garden Book (1998); My...
David Perkins
davidperkinsnh@gmail.comJames P. Marquand Professor of English and American Literature, Emeritus
Education: B.A. 1951 Harvard University; A.M. 1953, Ph.D. 1957 Harvard University. Interests: Romanticism Selected Works: Romanticism and Animal Rights (2003); English Romantic Writers (1995); Is Literary History Possible (1992); A History of Modern...
Michael Pollan
michael_pollan@fas.harvard.eduProfessor of the Practice of Non-Fiction, Emeritus
Education: B.A., Bennington College (1977) M.A., Columbia University (1981) Interests: Nature; the food system; altered states of consciousness Selected Works: The Botany of Desire (2001); The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006); In Defense of Food (2008); Cooked...
Peter Sacks
John P. Marquand Professor of English Emeritus
Education: B.A., Princeton University (1973) M.Phil., Oxford University (1976) Ph.D., Yale University (1980) Interests: English Language Lyric Poetry; Writing of Poetry; Art and Literature. Selected Works: Necessity (2002); O Wheel (poems, 2000); Natal...
Associates
Valeria Luiselli
vluiselli@fas.harvard.eduAssociate of the Department of English
Education: B.A., National Autonomous University of Mexico (2007) PhD, Columbia University (2015) Valeria Luiselli is the author of Sidewalks (2013), Faces in the Crowd (2014), The Story of My Teeth (2015), Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions...
Roger Stoddard
stoddard@fas.harvard.eduAssociate of the Department of English
Education: A.B. 1957 Brown Interests: Rare books; Bibliography Selected Works: A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American Verse Printed from 1610 Through 1820 (2012); A Library-Keeper’s Business (2002); Edmond Jabès in Bibliography–...
Andrew Warren
warren@fas.harvard.eduAssociate of the Department of English
Education: B.A., Dartmouth College (2001) Ph.D., University of California at Irvine (2009) Interests: Romantic Poetry; 18th- & 19th-Century British Literature; Philosophy & Critical Theory; Satire; the Gothic Novel; Postcolonial Theory & Novel. Selected...
