Lecture Courses

Instructor: Beth Blum Monday & Wednesday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location: TBD How have authors throughout history channeled anxiety into meaningful and imaginative works of art? The poet WH Auden described the 1940s as “the age of anxiety,” but he could have...

Instructor: Peter Sacks Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site A study of selected American poetry, mostly published after 1945. Authors include Marianne Moore, Muriel Rukeyser...

Instructor: Namwali Serpell Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15 pm | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site This course is a survey of the work of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, including most of her novels, a...

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Monday & Wednesday, 3:00-4:15pm | Location: TBD African American poets have long embraced the private freedoms of the lyric poem—freedom to claim the authority of an uncontested first person “I”; freedom to wrangle language into...

Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran Spring 2027 TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD Our thoughts and feelings about identity, self-expression, and the power of the imagination draw on the British Romantic poetry of...

Instructor: Tara K. Menon Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location: TBD Course Site What does the novel still have to offer? As newer genres—movies, television, Youtube, TikTok—compete for our attention, why do people still immerse themselves in long...

Instructor: Alan Niles Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15 pm | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site This class is an introduction to Shakespeare’s writings and their representations of sex, gender, romance...

Instructor: Joseph A. Shack Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site Translations of excerpts from Beowulf will proceed in parallel with careful reading of Heaney's verse...

Instructor: James Engell and James Anderson Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45am | Location: Harvard Hall 201 Course Site What one thing is changing everything in your lifetime—and for generations to come? It’s changing what you eat; it’s changing buildings...

Instructor: Stephanie Burt Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: Science Center Hall E Course Site What’s a hero? What’s a superhero? Who gets to be one, and who decides? Why are superheroes so popular now? What do their stories tell us—casual...