Instructor: David J. Alworth Wednesdays, 3-5:45 pm | Location Barker 114 Class will be held from 3-5pm Enrollment: Limited to 18 students
Meta-issues in literary criticism, with readings in critical, philosophical and literary texts. The course provides an overview of the theoretical and methodological aspects of what we do when we talk about literature. The goal is not to learn what others have said but to help students orient themselves in the field...
Instructor: James Simpson Mondays, 3-5:45 pm | Location: Barker 211 Class will be held from 3-5 pm. Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.
What if originality were not what strikes us most forcefully in art? What, instead, if recognition of what and whom we have known already is the most emotionally forceful, illuminating experience of art? This course will test the force of these propositions, by looking to both visual art (painting and movies) and...
Instructor: Marc Shell Wednesdays, 3-5 pm | Location: Dana Palmer 102 Class will be held from 3-5 pm.
This course examines literary, theatrical, and cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Students learn how artists, including Shakespeare, have used creative production of the past to understand and address concrete issues and problems of the present, including political scandal and persecution, imperial...
Instructor: Stephen Greenblatt Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:30-2:45 pm | Location: Art Museums Deknatel Hall
What is the power of a story? For several thousand years Adam and Eve were the protagonists in the central origin myth of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds. That myth was the arena for ethical reasoning about transgression and innocence, sexuality, gender roles, labor, suffering, and death. Jointly taught by History of Art and Architecture and English,...
Instructor: Laura van den Berg Day & Time: Wednesday 12-2:45pm Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Website This course will focus on the art of writing fiction. The initial weeks will focus on reading and craft discussion— exploring craft subjects such as structure, time, point-of-view, and landscape—and generating new work through experiments in craft and imagination. Later in the term, your own fiction will serve as the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop critique and, finally, to revision. The syllabus is likely to include work from Helen Oyeyemi, Claire Vaye Watkins, Nam Le, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Alexander Chee—among others.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of prose (fiction or nonfiction) and a cover letter. In the cover letter, please describe why you want to study creative writing at this time in your life. Otherwise you are welcome to share whatever information about yourself and your interests that you feel is relevant.
At its heart, journalism is a truth-seeking exercise based on reported facts, careful collection of evidence from witnesses, and reasoned, dispassionate analysis. The editing and presentation of stories should honor the intelligence of readers and the audience. The journalist is not a combatant in the story. But these time-honored traditions are under assault like never before. President Trump’s...
Instructor: Musa Syeed Tuesdays, 12-2:45 pm | Location: Barker 018 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Website
This course will focus on non-fiction writing for film, with a primary focus on the documentary treatment. We will discuss various aspects of the craft, including interviewing techniques, research, varying formal approaches, and story structure, as well as ethical concerns in documentary filmmaking. We will examine produced treatments and screen a wide array of documentaries. Students will be expected to perform research, primarily in the field, and identify their own documentary subjects, about whom they will develop a film treatment as a final project.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a 3-5 page writing sample. Screenplays are preferred, but fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and plays are acceptable as well. Also, please write a short note to introduce yourself. Include a couple films/filmmakers that have inspired you, your goals for the class, as well as any themes/subject matter/ideas you might be interested in exploring in your writing for film.
Instructor: David Levine Wednesdays, 12-5:45 pm | Location: TBA
This video and theater production course engages students in the directing of performance and the performance of directing. This dynamic will be introduced to students through the presentation and analysis of moving image and performance work that thematizes direction itself. Students will then engage in an active practice of studio work and research, culminating in individual and collaborative projects in video and...
Instructor: Philip Fisher Mondays, 3-5:45 pm | Location: Sever 101
Is the complexity, the imperfection, the difficulty of interpretation, the unresolved meaning found in certain great and lasting works of literary art a result of technical experimentation? Or is the source extreme complexity—psychological, metaphysical, or spiritual? Does it result from limits within language, or from language’s fit to thought and perception? Do the inherited forms found in...
Harvard’s Department of English has a strong record of job placement. Two faculty Placement Officers work closely with students to help them prepare for each stage of the academic hiring process. In recent years, Harvard PhD’s have accepted tenure track positions, visiting positions, and postdoctoral fellowships at major colleges and universities in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, including Ashoka University, Bar-Ilan University, Indiana University, Ithaca College, Nanjing University, University of Chicago, UCLA, University of Groningen, University of Minnesota,...
Originally from the title of an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, the phrase “The Gilded Age” quickly passed into popular parlance as the name of the period following the Civil War in America: a time when immense fortunes and superficial appearances of growth and prosperity co-existed with growing poverty and unrest. As a number...
An introductory fiction workshop, in which students will explore elements of craft such as character, point of view, setting, detail, style, etc. The first weeks will be devoted to fiction readings (including Gustave Flaubert, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Yiyun Li, Richard Flanagan, NoViolet Bulawayo, among others) and creative exercises; most of the semester will be spent workshopping student fiction. The final project involves significant revision of a story.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of creative writing in prose (fiction is preferable, but non-fiction is also fine) along with a substantive letter of introduction. I’d like to know why you’re interested in writing fiction, and in this course; what experience you’ve had writing; what some of your favorite narratives are and why.
The course will consist of two halves. In the first hour of each class, we will be doing close readings of an assigned text (TBA), with the aim of isolating some aspect of the craft of writing in order to take bearings for your own. In the second half of the class, divided into two equal segments of an hour each, we will be workshopping the writing of two students. Our goal is for each of you to have two turns, and approximately 5-10,000 words of your work critiqued, by the time semester ends. The final project involves significant redrafting of a story or a portion of a novel.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of creative writing in prose (fiction is preferable, but non-fiction is also fine) along with a substantive letter of introduction in which you write about why you’re interested in this course; what experience you’ve had writing; some of your favourite writers; what some of your favorite works of fiction are and why.
Instructor: Josh Bell Tuesdays, 3-5:45 pm | Location: Barker 269 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students.
Initially, students can expect to read, discuss, and imitate the strategies of a wide range of poets writing in English; to investigate and reproduce prescribed forms and poetic structures; and to engage in writing exercises meant to expand the conception of what a poem is and can be. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.