Instructor: TBD
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 27 students

This foundational course for English concentrators examines literary form and genre. We explore some of the many kinds of literature as they have changed over time, along with the shapes and forms that writers create, critics describe, and readers learn to recognize. The body of the course looks to the great literary types, or modes, such as epic, tragedy, and lyric, as well as to the workings of literary style in moments of historical change, producing the transformation, recycling, and sometimes the mocking of past forms. While each version of English 20 includes a different array of genres and texts from multiple periods, those texts will always include five major works from across literary history: Beowulf (epic), The Winter’s Tale (tragicomedy or romance), Persuasion (comic novel), The Souls of Black Folk (essays; expository prose), and Elizabeth Bishop’s poems (lyric). The course integrates creative writing with critical attention: assignments will take creative as well as expository and analytical forms.

Note: English 20 is one of the required Common Courses for English concentrators and Secondaries and is a limited enrollment course which will prioritize sophomores and first-years; juniors and seniors who want to take it as an elective will be considered for any remaining spots. Enrollment priority exceptions may be made for people changing concentrations or presenting other notable reasons.

Section 1 Instructor: Derek Miller
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Section 2 Instructor: Alan Niles
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

This course, taught in small groups and required for concentrators, introduces theories, interpretive frameworks, and central questions about literature and literary media. What do we do when we read? What is an author? What do we mean by “literature” itself? How might we compare and evaluate interpretations? How do the historical, social, cultural, and legal frameworks around a text shape its meanings and its effects? Combining major critical and theoretical writings with primary works, the course investigates how literary production and interpretation are informed by philosophical and aesthetic traditions, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, national and post-colonial identities, and the material forms in which literature circulates, from parchment books to the internet. Students will also practice fundamental literary research methods through close engagement with Harvard libraries.

Note: English 97 is one of the required Common Courses for English concentrators and is open to sophomores and first-years planning to concentrate in English. Enrollment priority exceptions may be made for people changing concentrations or presenting other notable reasons.

Instructor: Daniel Donoghue
TBD | Location: TBD

Building on the basic grammar and translation skills learned in English 102, this course introduces students to Old English literature in its most immediate context: the manuscripts that preserve their earliest copies. The weekly task of translation will be supplemented by consistent attention to the manuscript contexts of Old English literature. The texts will include selections from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the OE Genesis with its illustrations, Exeter Book Riddles, Beowulf, and others. The instruction will guide students through basic principles of manuscript study. As a special event we will invite a professional calligrapher to instruct students—equipped with a goose quill!—on the traditional skill of calligraphy. At the end of the term, with the help of personal coaching, each student will edit and translate manuscript folios in a collaborative edition of an Old English text.

Recommended Preparation: English 102.

Students who complete both English 102 and 103 with honors grades will fulfill the College language requirement.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students. 

Instructor: Anna Wilson
TBD | Location: TBD

Fanfiction is a surprisingly powerful tool for examining medieval literature. It sheds light on the dynamics of rereading and transformation that characterizes medieval literary culture, which in turn deepen our own understanding of the nature of creativity. In this class we will read some twentieth- and twenty-first century retellings of medieval stories, including fanfiction, alongside medieval literary texts that rewrite, reimagine, or let their authors star in pre-existing stories. This medieval fanfiction will include different takes on the medieval superhero Sir Gawain (including the 2020 movie starring Dev Patel), unauthorized additions to The Canterbury Tales, and medieval Christian devotional manuals which encourage their readership to participate in imaginative exercises where they imagine themselves as participating in events in the life of Jesus Christ. Along the way we will learn what medieval readers and writers thought of questions like, what is an author? What is literature? What is a character? And what happens in our brains when we read? 

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students. 

Instructor: Gordon Teskey
Spring 2024: Monday & Wednesday, 1:30-2:45 pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Course Site
Spring 2025: TBD

This course focuses on Milton’s most famous work, Paradise Lost, the greatest long poem in English and the only successful classical epic in the modern world. Milton went totally blind in his forties and composed Paradise Lost by reciting verses to anyone available to take them down, like the blind prophets and poets of legend. Yet the moral and political questions he raised—what is the human? what is gender? what is the political? what is religion? what is dissent? what is legitmacy? what is revolt?—are surprisingly enduring and modern. His own solutions to these questions may not be ours, but his abilility to provoke thought on them speaks to our time. We will consider how Milton generates the sublime and how he builds great scenes and characters, especially his most famous one, Satan.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Deidre Lynch
TBD | Location: TBD

What was it like to read and write a novel at a moment before that term named a stable category and before the genre’s conventions were established? How did it feel to be a writer or reader in an era when the novel was (as some authors put it in the middle of the eighteenth century) “a new species” or “a new province” of writing?  

This class is devoted to the remarkable record of literary experimentation that forms the history of the early novel. As we study works by Aphra Behn, Mme de Lafayette, Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen, we’ll attend particularly to questions of genre and genre hierarchy, fictionality and realism. To investigate what was novel about novels, we will ponder, for instance, how novels differ from epics or histories or the news in newspapers. That pondering will give us rich new insights into the formal devices that empowered this new kind of fiction as it claimed--unlike its predecessors in the narrative line-- to tell the truth: a claim that would eventually, by the time of Jane Austen, underwrite the novel’s emergence as the crucial genre of modern times. At the same time, we will also investigate what this emergence can tell us about modernity itself--about love, sex, and marriage, consumer capitalism, race, and empire.  We’ll cap our reading by pairing Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with an extraordinary novel in letters from 1808 (only recently rediscovered, and anonymously published), The Woman of Colour: A Tale.    

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Philip Fisher
TBD | Location: TBD

A set of major works of art produced at the peak of the novel’s centrality as a literary form: Sense and Sensibility, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, Buddenbrooks. Society, family, generational novels and the negations of crime and adultery; consciousness and the organization of narrative experience; the novel of ideas and scientific programs; realism, naturalism, aestheticism and the interruptions of the imaginary.

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: John Stauffer and Roberto Unger
Spring 2024: Tuesday, 1:00-3:00 pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Course Site
Spring 2025: TBD

Democracy, inequality, and nationalism in America. The white working class and American politics. Class and race. Identities and interests. Conditions for socially inclusive economic growth and for the deepening and dissemination of the knowledge economy. Alternative directions of institutional change, viewed in light of American history. Democratizing the market and deepening democracy. Self-reliance and solidarity.

We explore and discuss the past, present, and especially the future of the American experiment among ourselves and with invited guests: thinkers, politicians, social activists, and entrepreneurs.

Readings drawn from classic and contemporary writings about the United States.

Note: This course is cross-listed with HLS 2955 and HDS.

 

Instructor: Jesse McCarthy
TBD | Location: TBD

Literature has been profoundly shaped by the advent of modern industrial capitalism. Since the Industrial Revolution, traditional social orders focused on local marketplaces have been supplanted by a global market society driven by an economy fueled by financial speculation. Perhaps not coincidentally, this same period witnessed the rise of the modern novel. The novel is therefore the perfect vehicle in which to examine ‘the way we live now,’ to borrow the famous title of Anthony Trollope’s novel inspired by the financial scandals of the 1870s. Can fiction help us to unveil the role of money in our lives? Its significance, how it shapes, corrupts, enhances, and deforms desire and ultimately how we understand the good life and what prevents or allows us to achieve it? Does art and literature suffer or flourish under a society dominated by bourgeois taste? How do we find meaning in a world of fluctuating values and transactional relations? How are age-old philosophical questions about freedom, love, death, inequality, language, and art, get reflected in the literature of this age? In addition to reading classic texts about the nature and functioning of capitalism itself by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, we will read mainly novels and some non-fiction by authors such as Sally Rooney, Bret Easton Ellis, George Orwell, Guy de Maupassant, Raven Leilani, Don DeLillo, Martin Amis, Joan Didion, and Marcel Proust.

Instructor: James Wood
Spring 2024: Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Course Site
Spring 2025: TBD

Matthew Arnold famously said that poetry is, at bottom, “a criticism of life.” But if any literary form is truly a criticism of life, it is the essay. And yet despite the fact that all students write essays, most students rarely study them; bookshops and libraries categorize such work only negatively, by what it is not: “non-fiction.” At the same time, the essay is at present one of the most productive and fertile of literary forms. It is practiced as memoir, reportage, diary, criticism, and sometimes all four at once. Novels are becoming more essayistic, while essays are borrowing conventions and prestige from fiction. This class will disinter the essay from its comparative academic neglect, and examine the vibrant contemporary borderland between the reported and the invented. We will study the history of the essay, from Montaigne to the present day. Rather than study that history purely chronologically, each class will group several essays from different decades and centuries around common themes: death, detail, sentiment, race, gender, photography, the flaneur, witness, and so on. In addition to writing about essays – writing critical essays about essays – students will also be encouraged to write their own creative essays: we will study the history of the form, and practice the form itself. Essayists likely to be studied: Montaigne, De Quincey, Woolf, Benjamin, Orwell, Primo Levi, Barthes, Baldwin, Sontag, Didion, Leslie Jamison, Hanif Abdurraqib, Helen Garner, Cathy Park Hong. 

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

Instructor: Louis Menand
TBD | Location: TBD

How has the American judicial system dealt with racial discrimination, racial segregation, racial exclusion, and systemic or institutional racism? Has the design of the American legal system made it easier or harder to remedy cases of racial inequality and injustice? What should we expect from the courts in the future?

We study cases involving Americans of African and of Asian ancestry, beginning with Dred Scott and ending with the Harvard College admissions case. The primary readings are legal documents: the Constitution, judicial opinions, and the statutes judges interpret. We’ll analyze the opinions in order to understand the jurisprudential logic that led to their outcomes. We will see, by doing this, how courts are constrained by the system that was designed by the Constitution’s framers and by the traditions of the common law. We will also consider the historical context in which these cases were decided, but the main focus of the course is on Supreme Court opinions. Two papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

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

Fall 2023 Instructor: Daniel Heath Justice
Monday & Wednesday, 10:30-11:45pm | Location: Sever 206
Course Site

Indigenous literatures are not simply subsets of settler national literatures—they have deep roots in their respective homelands, through which storytellers, scholars, artists, activists, and visionaries have explored and articulated their own imaginative, political, and relational concerns and commitments. From codices and winter counts to wampum belts, totem poles, medical formulae books, songs, treaties, letters, autobiographies, histories, poems, stories, novels, podcasts, comic books, plays, and many other expressive forms, Indigenous literatures across the world are as varied in aesthetic concern and literary technique as in political, cultural, and historical context. And while necessarily grappling with the violence of colonialism, Indigenous literatures extend far beyond the limitations of the settler imaginary. This introductory course will connect students with a range of key Indigenous texts and issues as well as critical work about the field from English, Indigenous Studies, and related disciplines, framed through four key themes: sovereignty, land, kinship, and futurity.

Spring 2025 Instructor: Christopher Pexa
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Introduction to Indigenous Literary Studies: Poetry, Prose, and Politics" introduces students to critical conversations in English, Indigenous Studies, and related disciplines by exploring key themes of sovereignty, land, kinship, and futurity.

English 197LS fulfills the Harvard College Arts & Humanities divisional distribution requirement and an English Concentration elective requirement. This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: David Levine
TBD | Location: TBD

How do we draw the line between being yourself and performing yourself, between acting and authenticity?

“To thine own self be true,” runs the famous line in Hamlet. But which self? And why? And who’s judging? Does this injunction to be authentic even make sense today, when profiles proliferate online and surveillance is ubiquitous? Acting—the art of creating and reproducing selves—can help us navigate these questions. Just as every century’s approach to acting tells us something about their idea of personhood, so too can our own era’s quandaries around empathy, personae, identity, work, art-making and politics be explored through our approach to acting. This course will examine the construction of private and public selves across eras and disciplines, through a combination of lectures, screenings, readings, and talks. Sections and examinations will be practice-based, focused on a single basic task: students will be asked to turn into each other over the course of the term. THIS COURSE IS OPEN TO ACTORS AND NON-ACTORS.

This is a lecture course with a strong practical component. Full course meets Wednesdays from 12pm-2:45pm for lecture and acting workshops, with additional mandatory discussion sections (1h/week) to be scheduled on Thursdays/Fridays. No previous experience of acting or English classes is required, although a willingness to immerse yourself in both reading and performance is expected.

Instructor: John Stauffer
TBD | Location: TBD

How and why does the U.S. Civil War continue to shape national politics, laws, literature, and culture---especially in relation to our understanding of race, freedom, and equality?

Most of us were taught that the Civil War (which most Northerners called a "Rebellion") was fought on battlefields chiefly in the American South between the years of 1861-1865. In this narrative, the North won and the South lost. But what if the issues were never resolved? What if the war never ended? This course analyzes the ways in which the United States is still fighting the Civil War, arguably THE defining event in U.S. culture. In each class, we connect current events to readings and themes from the past, highlighting how and why the war is still being fought. From Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831 to the riot (or battle) in Charlottesville and the seditious conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results, we explore the ways in which the South has won the war, even though the Rebellion was destroyed and the Constitution radically altered. We explore the different kinds of war—ideological, political, cultural, military, and para-military—that placed the unfreedom of blacks—as slaves, serfs, and prisoners—at the center of larger conflicts over federal versus state and local rule; welfare; globalization; and "free trade." We analyze the Civil War in literature, art, politics, photography, prints, film, music, poetry, speeches, and history, while also discovering how these cultural forms worked to shape our memory of the event itself. We will on occasion have guest speakers. By the end of the course, we will be able to understand how and why contemporary U.S. debates are rooted in this defining narrative, and we will better understand the dilemmas the nation faces today.

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Daniel Donoghue
TBD | Location: TBD

How does the English language shape our world, and how does the world shape English?

How does the English language shape our world? And how does the world shape English? Our “world” includes our most intimate thoughts and feelings, but it also can expand into an ever-widening social network; either way, whether personal or global, the English language has a profound and reciprocal relation with its speakers. This is not a traditional grammar course, warning against dangling participles. Instead, you will discover that notions of correct grammar have a surprising and whimsical history. But our inquiry goes much further: Why is English spelling so weird? Is the language morphing online? Will innovations in HipHop and Spanglish become standard? How did an obscure medieval dialect expand to become a world language? What did Shakespeare sound like? How do we know? Is the spread of world Englishes endangering its coherence as a language? Is that a problem? The course is guaranteed to unsettle some common assumptions, and the English already familiar to you will become more quirky and fascinating. Besides thrilling your inner word geek, the knowledge you gain will sharpen your writing skills and make you a more perceptive reader. You will also gain greater confidence about the place of your English in your world.

Instructor: Beth Blum
Spring 2024:
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15 pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Course Site
Spring 2025: 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 been describing our own stress-ridden times: anxiety is today the most common class of contemporary mental health condition. This course pursues two guiding questions: how has anxiety changed throughout history and how has it stayed the same? And how have authors throughout history productively channeled anxiety into creating beautiful and meaningful works of art? Through a combination of readings and fieldwork, we’ll investigate anxiety’s potential causes, from the universal fear of death to the more historical contexts of urbanization and self-optimization, for instance, as well as its various treatments, such as stoicism, self-help, and psychopharmacology. The course combines practical and theoretical perspectives to examine the relation between anxiety and creativity and to engage with various aesthetic responses—from comedy to literature and film—to the troubles of being that anxiety designates. Smaller weekly assignments will include slow reading, technological unplugging, and proposing one improvement to the mental health culture on campus. Final project may be scholarly, creative, or a hybrid of both. Students will emerge from class readings and discussions with an understanding of anxiety as a social formation, literary preoccupation, and, when harnessed, a spur to aesthetic invention and political intervention.

Spring 2024:
Instructors: David Elmer, Namwali Serpell, David Armitage, Glenda Carpio, Tara K. Menon, Kelly Mee Rich
Tuesday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Course Site
Spring 2025: TBD

2,500 years of essential works, taught by six professors. Humanities 10b will likely include works by Homer, Sappho, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Austen, Du Bois and Joyce, along with the Book of Genesis. One 75-minute lecture plus a 75-minute discussion seminar led by the professors every week. Students will receive instruction in critical writing one hour a week, in writing labs and individual conferences. Students also have opportunities to participate in a range of cultural experiences, ranging from plays and musical events to museum and library collections.  

Note: The course is open only to first-year students who have completed Humanities 10a. Students who complete Humanities 10a meet the Harvard College Curriculum divisional distribution requirement for Arts & Humanities. Students who take both Humanities 10a and Humanities 10b fulfill the College Writing requirement. This is the only course outside of Expository Writing that satisfies the College Writing requirement. No auditors. The course may not be taken Pass/Fail.

Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

This course introduces students to the poetry, literary prose, and artful correspondence of one of the major poets of the twentieth century, considering her innovations in all these genres. We will look at her writing in multiple genres alongside the mid-century shift from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ verse forms, and relate stylistic issues to the intellectual and social changes, and political and historical developments of the period. Bishop’s critique of received ideas about nationality, race, power, gender, sexual orientation, and the overlap between culture and nature, is connected with her status as a cosmopolitan poet with links to Canada, the U.S. and Brazil.  ‘Others’ refers both to how her writing comes to terms with the (sociopolitical) reality of other people, and to the comparisons we’ll draw between her writing and that of other poets.   

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

Instructor: David Levine
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Briefly America’s most terrifying movie, now an inexhaustible source of camp, reference, and technique, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is a rich allegory of postwar America. But its very deficiencies, blind spots, and occlusions also make a powerful lens onto the present day. This advanced workshop in devising, adaptation, and critical intervention will perform (literally) an examination of the significance, meaning, and unholy afterlife of The Exorcist, created over the semester using historical research, conversations, attempts at re- staging, religious rites, death-metal growls, and head turns of 180 degrees or more.

The Exorcist is horror fiction. The book and film contain offensive language, depictions of sexual and domestic violence, sacrilegious treatment of religious icons, realistically depicted invasive medical procedures, and expulsion of bodily fluids. We will be treating these subjects with care, but we will be discussing disturbing images and themes throughout the semester.

Students who have taken English 10 and 20, or at least two practice-based/studio courses in TDM (or TDM 97), will be prioritized for enrollment.

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

Instructor: Gordon Teskey
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.

Shakespeare’s career in playwriting (1589-1611) divides into two creative phases, each one lasting a decade. At the center is his most famous play, Hamlet (1600-1601), which closes with a roar of cannons, a premonition of the great tragedies to come. Before Hamlet, Shakespeare’s poetic style is brilliant, declamatory, and virtuosic. He discovers as he writes his own astonishing powers of expression, his uncanny ability to represent character from the inside and, not the least of these, his skill at plotting. Before Hamlet, Shakespeare is a crowd-pleasing entertainer who is gathering his powers. The plays of this period, especially the comedies, offer some of the purest delights in the theatre.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Derek Miller
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

The plays of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov effected an essential shift in the trajectory of Western dramatic writing. From a theater of melodrama and romance, Ibsen and Chekhov helped define and develop theatrical realism, symbolism, and modernism. Psychologically based acting, known generally as the Method, emerged to solve the problem of acting in their plays. Philosophical and political debates across Europe responded to their ideas. Their work became a cornerstone of the independent theater movement, and the model for playwrights from Shaw to Miller to Hansberry to Baker.

This course delves into these playwrights’ theatrical canons. We will read closely their major works, along with some lesser known plays and writing in other genres. We will attend to their experiences as nineteenth-century artists: their lives and artistic friendships, their relationships to the theater and to publishing, the reception of their works by their contemporaries and in the century since they wrote. Along the way, we will learn about the theaters that staged their works, the supporters that brought them fame in England and the United States, and the contemporary writers who challenged and learned from them, such as Zola, Hauptmann, Strindberg, and Gorky. In the final weeks we will examine their contemporary legacy in modern adaptations and plays by Ibsenite and Chekhovian artists.

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Elaine Scarry
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Writings by Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Brontë, as well as the later novels and films their work inspired.

This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Leah Whittington
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

This course traces the reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses through the diverse responses of Petrarch, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and Dryden, exploring how Renaissance writers fashioned their own poetry in response to the generative power of Ovid’s work.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

Instructor: Anna Wilson
TBD | Location: TBD

The / in this course title can suggest a slippage or interchangeability; opposition and polarization; or erotic or romantic friction. This course functions as an introduction to queer theory as an intellectual tool with which to read texts far removed from the political, cultural, and social discourses from which queer theory emerged. We will ask: what can queer theory offer readers of medieval literature in its explorations of gender, sexuality, race, power, narrative, trauma, and time? We will read a range of queer theorists from foundational works to new thinkers, usually including but not limited to Judith Butler, C. Riley Snorton, Lee Edelman, Eve Sedgwick, Kadji Amin, and Carolyn Dinshaw, alongside a selection of medieval texts from the European middle ages (roughly 500-1500). Texts will be in modern English translation or in Middle English (no experience in Middle English is required; additional support is provided for learning to read Middle English, which is quick to learn and fun). Medieval texts may include Aelred of Rievaulx’s Rule of Life for a Recluse, The Book of Margery Kempe, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the poems of Baudri of Bourgeuil and other twelfth century Latin poets of the Loire school, the plays of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, The King of Tars, and Roman de Silence. No experience with medieval literature is required. This is a graduate course; applications from senior undergraduates will be considered.

Instructor: Elaine Scarry
TBD | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

How far narrative can accommodate and express the nature of human labor is explored in a study of three 19th-century British writers, Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy, as well as in novels and short stories by Turgenev, Zola, Tolstoy, Stowe, and Melville. Background readings on the social and philosophic theory of work.

Instructor: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Spirng 2024:
Tuesdays, 12:00-2:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students
Course Site
Spring 2025: TBD

An exploration of the emergence and development of the African-American literary "tradition'' from the 18th to the 20th century. Close reading of the canonical texts in the tradition, and their structural relationships are stressed.

Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran
TBD | Location: TBD

Originally, this course centred poets resident in, and writing from, post-Independence India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It will now also examine South Asian-American and British-South Asian writers. In terms of poets living in the Global South, it will concentrate on those who make a decisive break with the wannabe-colonial, archaically emulous stuff which came before them—doing this with the aid of European modernism, and US poetry’s turn to open forms and a streetwise vernacular: writers like Nissim Ezekiel, Srinivas Rayaprol, Kamala Das, Arun Kolatkar, Dom Moraes, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawalla and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra—poets whose politics is inextricable from the aesthetic richness of their work. Moving to the US and UK, we’ll ask if a lineage can be mapped out, connecting practitioners of lyric—Sujata Bhatt, Agha Shahid Ali, and A.K. Ramanujan are examples—with the explicitly racialized, post-lyric, experimental work (encompassing prose poetry) of 21st century authors like Bhanu Kapil and Divya Victor.

Focusing on post-1947 Indian poetry, this course will also glance at Sri Lankan poetry from this period. These poets make a decisive break with the wannabe-colonial, archaically emulous stuff which came before them—and they do this with the aid of European modernism, and US poetry’s turn to open forms and a streetwise vernacular. We’ll read Nissim Ezekiel, Sujata Bhatt, A.K. Ramanujan, Kamala Das, Arun Kolatkar, Dom Moraes, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawalla, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, and Agha Shahid Ali—poets whose politics is inextricable from the aesthetic richness of their work. 

Instructor: Homi Bhabha
Spring 2024:
Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students
Course Site
Spring 2025: TBD

By focusing on literary narratives, cultural representations, and critical theories, this course explores ways in which issues related to migration create rich and complex interdisciplinary conversations. How do humanistic disciplines address these issues—human rights, cultural translation, global justice, security, citizenship, social discrimination, biopolitics—and what contributions do they make to the “home” disciplines of migration studies such as law, political science, and sociology? How do migration narratives compel us to revise our concepts of culture, polity, neighborliness, and community? We will explore diverse aspects of migration from existential, ethical, and philosophical perspectives while engaging with specific regional and political histories.

Note: Cannot be taken for credit if ROM-STD 290 already complete.

Instructor: Leah Whittington and Irene Peirano Garrison
TBD | Location: TBD

This course examines role played by writers and readers in the construction of literary canons and concepts of canonicity, with an emphasis on texts from classical antiquity, the late middle ages, and the early modern period. What are canons and how are they created? How to writers construct their own canonicity? How do readers participate in the processes of canonization? What can the history and reception of pseudepigraphic texts, para-canonical works, biofictions, and fictions of authentication tell about the cultural processes of canon formation in the premodern era?

Spring 2024:
Instructor: Gordon Teskey
Monday, 3:45-5:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Spring 2025:
Instructor: Tara K. Menon
TBD | Location:  TBD

The first-year proseminar (taken in the spring semester of the first year) introduces students to the theories, methods, and history of English as a discipline, and contemporary debates in English studies. The readings feature classic texts in all fields, drawn from the General Exam list. This first-year proseminar helps students prepare for the General Exam (taken at the beginning of their second year); it gives them a broad knowledge for teaching and writing outside their specialty; and it builds an intellectual and cultural community among first-year students.

Note: This seminar is only for first year graduate students in the English Department.

Spring 2024:
Instructor: John Stauffer
Wednesday, 12:45-2:45am | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Spring 2025:
Instructor: Martin Puchner
TBD | Location:  TBD

This second-year proseminar has a two-part focus:  it introduces students to the craft of scholarly publishing by helping them revise a research paper for publication in a peer-reviewed journal by the end of the course.  It thus gives students the tools to begin publishing early in their career.  It also introduces students to the growing array of alternative careers in the humanities by exposing them to the work of scholars who are leaders in fields such as editing, curating, and digital humanities.  

Note: Open to English graduate students only. Prerequisite: For G2+ students