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    English CRLC. Fiction: Craft and Workshop

    Instructor: Raven Leilani
    TBD | Location: TBD
    Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

    In this creative writing workshop, we will read/annotate workshop pieces and assigned readings. We will talk critically about craft. We will discuss the work of writing—the emotional and practical demands of getting words down on paper, the contract you uphold with your reader—all of the trust, generosity, and anxiety involved. We will focus on the sentence level, hone our precision with language, and examine effective ways of breaking the rules. We will read with an eye for what we can borrow. We will read (short fiction and excerpts) Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Loorie Moore, Milan Kundera, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rachel Cusk, Ling Ma, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, and more.

    English 180aw. American Women Writers

    Instructor: Maggie Doherty
    Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15 pm | Location:  TBD
    Course Site

    This course is organized thematically, and loosely chronologically, around the vexed and contested category of American women’s literature. Our readings and discussions will prompt questions about this central theme. How do we define “women” or “women writers”? What does the literature produced by such writers look like? How do the writers in our course engage with social and political questions, particularly those relating to gender, race, and other markers of identity? Where is America, and what does it mean to write about it? How do women writers participate in—or challenge—the American literary tradition? Could the writers in our course be said to have developed a literary tradition of their own? Through critical analysis of texts from a range of writers—including Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Toni Morrison, and Cristina Rivera Garza—we will collectively propose provisional answers to these questions. As we do so, we will also develop our critical reading and writing skills through the completion of formal and informal writing assignments.

    This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students. 

    Freshman Seminar 60C. Comics and Graphic Novels

    Instructor: Stephanie Burt
    Monday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: Barker 218 

    Comics and graphic novels, or sequential art, are one of the world’s great storytelling media: we’re going to learn how to read them, how to talk about how they get made and how they work, how to understand—and how to enjoy— some of the kinds of comics and graphic novels (that is, some of the genres) that make up the history of this medium in the modern English-speaking world. That history has three strands, which cross and re-cross, but which need to be understood independently, and we will see all three: short-form strip comics, designed for newspapers beginning in the 1890s and now flourishing on the Web; action-adventure and superhero comics, invented in the late 1930s, transformed in the 1960s and again in the 1980s, usually created by teams, and important to popular culture today; and a third strand beginning with “underground” or “alternative” comics or comix (with an x) in the 1960s and evolving into long form graphic novels, often created by single writer-artists, today.  That history comes with visual references, which you will learn to recognize; comics also comes with its own set of theoretical terms, which you’ll learn to use. Comics today share a medium (pictures and usually words in sequence) but belong to several genres: we’ll learn how to talk about them, and how they’ve evolved.You’ll get the chance to make comics, and to figure out how creators collaborate, advocate, distribute, and sometimes even earn a living from the comics they make, but the course will focus on existing comics, from McCay to Bechdel, from Kirby to Ms. Marvel— as events in culture and as works of art.

    This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

     

    English 292ph. Public Humanities Workshop

    Instructor: Martin Puchner
    Monday, 9:45-11:451m | Location: Barker 269
    Enrollment: Limited to 15 students
    Course Site

    Public humanities are becoming increasingly central for careers both inside and outside of academia. This workshop, which is open to beginning and advanced graduate students, introduces participants to the tools they need to address audiences other than specialists in their own field. These tools range from writing op-eds based on dissertation research to writing general interest books, and also include book reviews, podcasts, social media strategies and more. While we will discuss some historical context, the emphasis is on practice and skills. Our work will be supplemented by visits from editors and literary agents. 

    English CCEP. Ekphrastic Poetry: Workshop

    Instructor: Tracy K. Smith
    Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Lamont 401
    Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
    Course Site

    What can a poem achieve when it contemplates or even emulates a work of art in another medium? In this workshop, we'll read and write poems that engage with other art forms--and we'll test out what a foray into another artistic practice allows us to carry back over into the formal methods and behaviors of poetry. With poems by Keats, Rilke, Auden, Hughes, and Brooks, as well as Kevin Young, Evie Shockley, Ama Codjoe and other contemporary voices.

    Apply via Submittable (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26)

    Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a writing sample of 5-10 poems and an application letter explaining your interest in this course.

    Spring Term 2025

    Looking for courses that satisfy a specific concentration or secondary field requirement? Use the filtering tool at the top left corner of this page!

    English 98r. Junior Tutorial

    Spring 2025 Junior Tutorials

    Disability and Tragedy: Then and Now (Sam Bozoukov)
    Asian Forms & Asian American Poetry (Eunice Lee)
    20th-Century American Poetry: Manifestos, Modernisms, and Magazines (Sarah Liu)
    Bad English: Aesthetics of Non-Standard Language in the African Diaspora (William Martin)
    Science Fictional and Magical Realities (Karina Mathew)
    Arthurian Literature and the Uses of Fantasy (Andrew Maxwell)
    Who Will Survive in America: Fictions of American Families (Denson Staples)

    Junior Tutorial assignments will be made in early April 2024. Junior tutorial preference forms were distrubuted to concentrators on March 27 and are due by April 3. If you didn't receive this form and would like to be considered for tutorial enrollment, please contact Lauren Bimmler. 

    English 191c. Constellations

    Instructor: Homi Bhabha
    Thursday, 3:00-5:00pm | Location: TBD
    Course Site

    “Constellations” is an attempt at putting key literary works in conversation with significant texts from other disciplines and discourses --- philosophy, politics, history, law, and  the social sciences. The conversations initiated between these texts might converge on conceptual or historical issues; on other occasions, they may conflict on matters of aesthetic form or cultural belief. What gives these ‘coupled” conversations a thematic or curricular coherence is their sustained interest in the life-worlds of minorities as they struggle to gain the recognition and protection of human rights. One of the key questions running through the course will be what it means to make a claim to human dignity from a position of inequality and injustice.

    I have chosen landmark texts that describe a wide arc of historical experience from colonization and segregation to migration and the predicament of refugees. These conditions of life and literature will be framed by questions of national sovereignty and international cosmopolitanism. Discourses of race, gender and identity will intersect with conceptual issues of cultural representation and literary form. The conversations initiated by this course will be polyphonic and plural.... Read more about English 191c. Constellations

    Freshman Seminar 63n. Narrative Negotiations: How do Readers and Writers Decide on What are the Most Important Voices and Values Represented in a Narrative?

    Instructor: Homi K. Bhabha
    Day & Time: Wednesday 9:45-11:45am 

    Narrative Negotiations explores narrative “voice” in a wide range of literary and cultural texts. Narrative voice is a lively dialogue between the author and the reader as they engage in the experience of determining the value and veracity of the narrative: whose story is it anyway? The writer creates the imaginative universe of character, plot, emotions and ideas—she seems to be holding all the cards; but it is the reader who rolls the dice as she draws on her human experience and moral values to question the principles and priorities of the storyteller. The game of narrative becomes deadly serious when storytelling confronts issues of colonialism, slavery, racial profiling and gender discrimination. Is the right to narrative restricted to those who have suffered the injustices of exclusion? What is my responsibility as a storyteller—or a reader—if I am a witness to violence, or an advocate against injustice, but my life-story is one of privilege, protection and security? What is the role of the politics of identity or cultural appropriation in determining whose story is it anyway? Throughout the seminar students will be encouraged to draw on their own histories, memories and literary experiences as the enter into the world of the prescribed readings. For the final assessment I hope students will choose critical and creative ways of telling their own stories, or the stories of others who have captured their imaginations. Seminar participants will be required to come to each class with two questions that pose issues or problems based on the texts that are important for them, and may prove to be significant for their colleagues. I will invite members of the group to pose their questions and start a discussion.
    ... Read more about Freshman Seminar 63n. Narrative Negotiations: How do Readers and Writers Decide on What are the Most Important Voices and Values Represented in a Narrative?

    Freshman Seminar 63n. Narrative Negotiations: How do Readers and Writers Decide

    Instructor: Homi Bhabha
    TBD | Location: TBD
    Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

    Narrative Negotiations explores narrative “voice” in a wide range of literary and cultural texts. Narrative voice is a lively dialogue between the author and the reader as they engage in the experience of determining the value and veracity of the narrative: whose story is it anyway? The writer creates the imaginative universe of character, plot, emotions and ideas—she seems to be holding all the cards; but it is the reader who rolls the dice as she draws on her human experience and moral values to question the principles and priorities of the storyteller. The game of narrative becomes deadly serious when storytelling confronts issues of colonialism, slavery, racial profiling and gender discrimination. Is the right to narrative restricted to those who have suffered the injustices of exclusion? What is my responsibility as a storyteller—or a reader—if I am a witness to violence, or an advocate against injustice, but my life-story is one of privilege, protection and security? What is the role of the politics of identity or cultural appropriation in determining whose story is it anyway? Throughout the seminar students will be encouraged to draw on their own histories, memories and literary experiences as the enter into the world of the prescribed readings. For the final assessment I hope students will choose critical and creative ways of telling their own stories, or the stories of others who have captured their imaginations. Seminar participants will be required to come to each class with two questions that pose issues or problems based on the texts that are important for them, and may prove to be significant for their colleagues. I will invite members of the group to pose their questions and start a discussion.

    English 90lt. Theory Matters: Problems in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory

    Instructor: Homi Bhabha
    Spring 2024: Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
    Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.
    Course Site

    Why study literary theory? Is theory a conceptual framework or a tool-kit? Is theory a companion to literary study or is it crucial for literary interpretation? These are some of the questions I propose to address in this seminar which will address  literary and cultural problems that have been shaped by theoretical concerns and concepts. This course will not adopt a historical approach nor will it be a survey of “schools” of literary theory. The syllabus will focus on topics such as Power, Race, Identity, Sexuality, Environmentalism, Postcolonialism, Inequality, Poverty etc. etc.  and trace theoretical contributions that have been formative in shaping the diverse discourses around these issues. Aesthetic, political and ethical approaches will be knotted together in our conversations. The seminar will be concerned with the relation between cultural form and cultural value. Literary texts will be used in conjunction with theoretical works.

    English 294z. On Beauty: Graduate Seminar

    Instructor: Elaine Scarry
    Thursday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD
    Enrollment: Limited to 15 students
    Course Site

    Philosophic and literary accounts of beauty from Greek through modern, including Plato, Aquinas, Dante, Kant, Keats, and Rilke. In addition, the major arguments against beauty; and its stability across four objects (gods, gardens, persons, and poems).

    English 191rw. Reading for Fiction Writers

    Instructors: Neel Mukherjee and Laura van den Berg
    Monday & Wednesday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location: TBD
    Enrollment: Limited to 45 students
    Course Site

    There is no writing without reading. This is an unimpeachable and incontrovertible fact that all writers know. Ask any writer why they became a writer, and they'll tell you that it's because they read. Octavia Butler, who came from a poor family, once said that she became a writer because she had access to public libraries. Books, in other words; they showed her what was possible. What kind of training in reading prepares one to become a writer? This is an open-enrollment creative writing course that will introduce you to some extraordinary writers who will inspire you, make you think, make you quarrel with them, fill you with wonder and awe and, sometimes, bafflement. It is by no means representative in any way, nor is it exhaustive, nor does it have any historical ordering. It is meant to be a stepping-stone to possibilities, to greater imaginative and creative worlds.

    The list is diverse in terms of genres. We will read sci-fi (Ursula K. Le Guin, Butler), fairytale inspired fiction (Angela Carter, Helen Oyeyemi), metaphysical fiction (Leo Tolstoy), realist fiction (Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant). We will consider fiction through the lens of race and gender and politics (Mavis Gallant, Edward P. Jones, Vivek Shanbagh, Annie Ernaux), and read several writers who wrote in languages other than English (Anton Chekhov, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar). We will learn how to read closely, to interpret stories and novels, to figure out what literary works mean and, most importantly, how they embody their meanings in form. We will look at the wide spectrum of effects writers create in their texts. We will also be asking ourselves throughout the semester: How do writers read other writers? What are the technical things they look out for when they are reading? These conversations will, in turn, inform the creative work you generate this semester.

    This class will be co-taught by two creative writing faculty members, Professors Laura van den Berg and Neel Mukherjee. The lecture component of the course will meet twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, for 75 minutes per session; one of those classes will be largely devoted to craft Q & A and workshopping student writing. You will also meet for an hour-long section (separate from the weekly lectures) each week where you'll have the opportunity to do your own creative writing. This will involve writing exercises, imitations of writers we will be reading, flash fiction, and other writing prompts.

    English 98r. Junior Tutorial

    Fall 2024 Junior Tutorials

    Banned Books: Censorship, Ethics and Twentieth-Century Literature (Andrew Koenig)
    Science Fictional and Magical Realities (Karina Mathew)
    Black Literature and the Ethics of Betrayal (Jordan Taliha McDonald)
    Monsters & Monstrosity (Emily Sun)
    Religion and Transcendentalism: Douglass, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman (Adam Walker)

     

    Junior Tutorial assignments will be made in early April 2024. Junior tutorial preference forms were distrubuted to concentrators on March 27 and are due by April 3. If you didn't receive this form and would like to be considered for tutorial enrollment, please contact Lauren Bimmler. 

    Fall 2023 Junior Tutorials

    Provisional Magic: Trends in Experimental Contemporary Poetry (Nicholas Belmore)
    Human, Mind, Machine: Artificial Intelligence from Antiquity to AI (Vanessa Braganza)
    Crime Fiction (Sarah Liu)
    Critical Approaches to the Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (Joseph Shack)
    A Variety of Unfreedoms: 20th and 21st Century Narratives of Slavery, Neo-Slavery, and Emancipation (Denson Staples)

    Advising

    Advising in the English Department

    English invites concentrators to pursue questions fundamental to culture and literature, within and across historical periods and geographic boundaries, over a vast range of imaginative writing. We study—we can help you study (and also write)—fiction and nonfiction, poetry and drama, games and comics, TV and film, epic and comedy, tragedy and devotional writing, lyric introspection and public argument. That help comes primarily in our course offerings, but also through advisers and our advice.

    Every English concentrator has...

    Read more about Advising

    Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

    The English Department studies how people make and interpret language. We accept, as a matter of principle, that nuances of language can profoundly affect meaning. This is as true in our classroom interactions and internal departmental operations as it is in our writing and research. All parties must therefore listen closely to each other and consider the effects of their words, so that we can create and uphold collegiality and mutual respect among students, staff, and faculty.

    The English Department Development Committee strives to make the English Department a welcoming,...

    Read more about Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

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