All literature was contemporary at some point, but the literature that is contemporary now provides special opportunities for enjoying, questioning, and understanding the world. Literature Today focuses on works written since 2000—since most of you were born. It explores how writers from around the world speak to and from their personal and cultural situations, addressing current problems of economic inequality, technological change, structural prejudice, and divisive politics. We will encounter a range of genres, media, and histories to study contemporary literature as a living, evolving system. The course uniquely blends literary study and creative writing—students will analyze literature and make literature. The conviction that these practices are complementary will inform our approach to readings and course assignments.
Note: English 10 is one of the required Common Courses for the English concentrators. The course is designed as a “gateway” course for first and second year students, but it is open to all undergraduates.
Section 1 Instructor: Christopher Pexa Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 27 students Course Site
Section 2 Instructor: Leah Whittington Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 27 students Course Site
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.
Tutorial Instructor: Namwali Serpell Monday & Wednesday, 3:00-4:15pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
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.
This course combines language study with the investigation of a critical theme. The narratives set for translation provide a thematic coherence as we dig into the language of Old English, which is the vernacular used in England from the sixth century until about 1100. Although some of its features remain recognizable today, Old English needs to be learned as a foreign language with its own spelling, pronunciation, syntax, and so on. The term begins with an emphasis on grammar, which will be covered in graduated steps until midterm, after which the readings and translation will take up more of our class time.
The unifying theme of the readings will be remedies to preserve the health of the human body. Old English literature offers an abundance of medical texts, including herbal remedies and magical incantations. Some come from ancient Greek and Latin sources, while others are local folk recipes. Some are fantastical, some are known to be effective, and others clearly rely on the placebo effect. The readings will move from simple prose to intricate poetry. An end-of-term project will assign each student a short Old English magical charm—think of it as a human utterance charged with power to control nature. With the help of personal coaching, each student will produce a literal and a creative translation.
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
Note: Fulfills the College language requirement if its continuation, English 103, is also completed.
We will begin with Shakespeare's early slasher play, Titus Andronicus, and read works from the full course of his career, sampling all of his major genres: comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. Along the way, we will consider one or more of the "problem plays" that challenge all generic categories. In addition to his writing for the stage, we will read his long erotic poem, "Venus and Adonis" and a selection of his sonnets. We will learn about the Elizabethan theater and publishing industry, the class system, and the government censorship. And we will acquire a sense of Shakespeare dominant styles, his methods, and his recurrent obsessions.
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
When, at the end of the eighteenth century, Jane Austen began to write, the novel was still liable to be dismissed by serious readers and writers on both moral and aesthetic grounds. Austen’s achievement helped to transform the genre, helping establish fiction as the form that (paradoxically enough) explains reality and as the form that explains us to ourselves. In this class we'll read all six of Austen’s novels and study the contribution they made to the remaking of modern fiction. Though our emphasis will fall on these works’ place in the literary culture of Austen’s day and on their historical contexts in an era of political, social, and literary revolution, we’ll also acknowledge the strong and ardent feelings that Austen’s oeuvre continues to arouse today. To that end, we’ll do some investigating of the frequently wild world of contemporary Austen fandom and the Austenian tourism, shopping, adaptations, and sequels that nurture it. At the same time, we’ll also remember that Austen knew fandom from both sides; part of our work this semester will be to learn about the early-nineteenth-century cultures of literary appreciation in which Austen both enrolled the heroines of her fiction and enrolled herself.
This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
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 works of prose fiction? And why do certain nineteenth-century British novels continue to captivate so many readers to this day? In this course, we will read four nineteenth-century novels by four authors that many consider to be the greatest writers that have ever lived: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, and George Eliot’s Middlemarch. We will pay close attention to technique: how do these novels work? And we will also explore social and political themes: what are these novels about? At every stage, we will consider the unique capacities of narrative fiction: what can the novel do that other genres can’t? Implicitly and explicitly, this course will argue first, that these superlative nineteenth-century novels let us see the world (not only then but also now) in new ways, and second, that the novel is a tool for thinking that beats all others. Alongside these texts, we will watch film, television and theatre adaptations as well as read contemporary criticism to better understand the enduring legacy of these canonical works.
This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
This course is a survey of the American novel since 1900: its forms, patterns, techniques, ideas, cultural contexts, and intertextual networks. We will pay special attention to questions of aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics—e.g. what is beautiful? how do we know? what should we do?—in the American milieu over the course of the twentieth century and beyond.
We will read around ten authors selected from among the following: L. Frank Baum, Don DeLillo, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lisa Halliday, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Valeria Luiselli, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, N. Scott Momaday, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Vladimir Nabokov, John Okada, Thomas Pynchon, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, Leslie Marmon Silko, Jean Toomer, Nathaniel West, Richard Wright, Edith Wharton...
This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
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.
“Indians are an invention,” declares an unnamed hunter in Gerald Vizenor’s (White Earth Ojibwe) 1978 novel, Bearheart. The hunter’s point, as Vizenor has explained in interviews and elsewhere, is not that Indigenous peoples don’t exist, but that the term “Indian” is a colonial fiction or shorthand that captures, essentializes, and thus erases a vast diversity of Indigenous lives and peoples. This course begins from the contention that other categories, and maybe most consequentially that of “nature,” have not only historically borne little resemblance to the lived lives of Indigenous people but have been used as important tools for capture and colonization. We will begin with European writings on the “noble savage” who lives harmoniously in a state of Nature, then move to Indigenous writers and thinkers whose work refuses this invention, along with its corollary category of the supernatural. We will spend most of our time reading 20th- and 21st- century Indigenous literary depictions of other-than-human beings and Indigenous relationships with those beings, highlighting how forms of kinship with them are integral to Indigenous ways of understanding difference, to acting like a good relative, and to Indigenous practices of peoplehood. Readings may include works by Billy-Ray Belcourt, Ella Deloria, Louise Erdrich, Stephen Graham Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Leanne Simpson, Kim TallBear, and Gerald Vizenor, among others.
This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
This is an open-enrollment writing course, cross-listed in both English and Physics, that requires writing 300 words a day, 4 days a week, all semester, responding to prompts. We will consider a variety of writing genres and ways to engage with science concepts: non-fiction, journalism, fiction, poetry, etc. The writing portion of the class aims to enable students above all to explore writing freely, with the expectation that they will learn how to express themselves more lucidly and effectively as they grow in literary understanding. This year’s theme is “The Time Things Take." In science, we ask questions like: what is the lifetime of a particle; how long does it take for raindrops to fall; how long does it take the universe to expand; how long does it take a rocket ship to reach infinity. And we ask ourselves how we might measure these times. This course will consider scientific concepts, the questions we can pose about them, and the thought experiments we might perform. The literary portion of the class involves close readings of these texts from a writerly perspective, also addressing questions of time and narrative, including pacing and form. We will examine precision in diction and syntax, the use of metaphor and other rhetorical strategies.
The course has no prerequisites in either English or Physics. There will be no problem sets. The course will involve two lectures per week + a section. The final assessment will be a portfolio and a presentation.
Note: English 187r is also offered as Physics 187r. Students cannot take both courses for credit.
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.
What makes a good adaptation? Why retell an old story? This class explores texts that are in conversation with others: adaptation, translation, fanfiction, parody, pastiche, and the remix. We will think about the role of form, genre, and media in adaptation, the decisions involved in transposing a story from novel to screen or stage, from oral storytelling to the printed page to digital archive, across times, contexts, languages, and audiences. Texts/movies discussed include fairytales, The Great Gatsby, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Arrival. We will also consider the legal frameworks, technologies, cultural institutions, and audience expectations that constrain adaptation: what is the nature of authorship? How much can a person own a text, or a character? How far can an adaptation go before audiences no longer recognize, or reject, an adaptation? What economic and cultural roles do adaptations play in our contemporary media landscape? The final assignment will include the option to create your own adaptation using some of the critical models we have explored. This is a lecture and discussion class accessible to non-concentrators.
We live in a moment of “crisis” around regimes of preservation and loss. As our communication becomes ever more digital— and, therefore, simultaneously more ephemeral and more durable—the attitudes and tools we have for preserving our culture have come to seem less apt than they may have seemed as recently as a generation ago. This course examines how texts have been transmitted from the past to the present, and how we can plan for their survival into the future. We will examine what makes texts durable by considering especially the media by which they are transmitted, the changing cultural attitudes toward their content, and the institutions by which they are preserved. The European Renaissance will provide a central case study. During this period scholars became aware of the loss of ancient texts and strove to recover and restore them insofar as possible. These interests prompted new developments in scholarly conservation techniques which we still value today (philology, libraries, and museums) but also the creation and transmission of new errors, ranging from well-intentioned but overzealous corrections and “improvements” to outright forgeries. What can the Renaissance teach us about how to engage productively with these problems, both as the source of our current attitudes toward preservation and loss, and as a case study of another culture dealing with anxiety over preservation and loss? Ultimately, we hope that students will be able to think productively about how to preserve from the past and the present for the future, while recognizing that all preservation inherently involves some kind of transformation.
A Humanities Colloquium: from Homer to Morrison: 2,500 years of essential works, taught by six professors. Humanities 10a will tentatively include works by Homer, Sophocles, Sappho, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Descartes, Mary Shelley, Marx, Kafka, Du Bois, and Morrison. 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. 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. Students must apply to be admitted to the course. Enrollment is limited to 90.
Instructor: John Stauffer Thursday, 12:45-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 25 students Course Site
This course is a critical examination of the speeches and rhetoric of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, who are among the greatest orators and nonfiction writers in English. We explore Douglass’s and Lincoln’s rhetorical practices, especially in relation to their politics and self-making. Along the way, we analyze the influences (the Bible, the literary canon at the time, journalism, regional writings) that contributed to their oratory. And we explore the contexts of their great speeches and their legacies.
This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
Instructor: Beth Bulm Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
This course addresses the genre of the “Harvard novel,” from Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! to Elif Batuman’s The Idiot and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, in order to examine Harvard’s status and signification within the cultural imaginary. It brings together novels (and some films) where Harvard offers the narrative setting, supplies a character’s backstory, or even serves as a character in its own right. We will address themes of tradition, access, privilege, race, anxiety, competition, and canonicity.
In addition to serving as an introduction to 20th-21st century Anglo-American literature, this seminar is designed to offer students an opportunity to slow down and engage more reflectively with the meaning and substance of their time on campus. Lectures will explore narrative depictions of how Harvard experiences extend into broader society, and also thelarger trajectory of the individual’s post-collegiate life.
This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
Instructor: Alan Niles Tuesday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
Harvard’s beginnings included a promise to educate both “English and Indian youth.” From its inception, however, Harvard’s endowment included Native lands expropriated through war, theft, and coercion. Drawing inspiration from Harvard’s own Legacy of Slavery initiative and the Land-Grab Universities website, this class will conduct original research on Harvard’s long history of involvement with Native communities and Native lands. We will work hands-on with archives at Harvard and other area institutions, developing research skills in navigating collections, reading early handwriting, and interpreting colonial documents. Readings and class activities will engage New England colonialism, the long history of Indigenous dispossession and resistance, and the political struggles of Indigenous communities today. We will closely examine texts including poems, speeches, oral narratives, maps, short stories, and deeds, exploring the centrality of land and environment in colonial and Indigenous histories and literatures. In the second half of our class, we will work collaboratively to design and execute group or individual research projects. Previous iterations of this course in Fall 2022 and Fall 2023 gathered data on Harvard’s land transactions and resulted in a set of student-driven research projects on sites, properties, and individuals connected to Harvard’s Indigenous pasts; our research will build on that work.
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
Note: Interested students should petition to enroll on my.harvard. In your petition, say a few words about your interest in the course (including concentrations you are considering if you are undeclared), any requirement the course may satisfy, and whether you have taken any other History & Literature seminars. Please contact the instructor if you have any questions.
This course is also offered through the History and Literature Department as Hist-Lit 93 AD. Credit may be earned for either English 90LN or Hist-Lit 93 AD, but not both.
Instructor: Deidre Lynch Tuesday, 12:45-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students. Course Site
This seminar explores literacy, literacy instruction, and literacy movements past and present, in theory and practice. Engaging with recent fictions and memoirs by authors such as Elena Ferrante and Ocean Vuong, with African-American slave narratives, and with materials from the history of alphabet books and children’s literature, “Literacy Stories” investigates the rich, ambivalent ways in which literature has depicted the literacy needed to consume it. Given under the auspices of the English Department and Harvard’s Mindich Program for Engaged Scholarship, “Literacy Stories” also involves collaborations with various community organizations devoted to literacy advocacy and instruction.
This class will give us the opportunity to reflect—something we’ll do in part by learning about the many ways of relating to texts that flourish beyond the limits of Harvard Yard—on the contradictory ways in which we value reading. We’ll consider, for example, the friction between solitary and social reading: how the pleasures of this activity lie sometimes with how it separates us from others and sometimes with how it connects us. We will be thinking about literacy’s long-standing association with individual self-determination and thinking about how that association is put into question whenever people’s reading matter gets weaponized as an instrument of their domination. Literacy, the literary and theoretical texts on the syllabus will alike remind us, has a politics. Learning to be literate often involves experiences of unequal power relations and exclusion. Reading with (rather than “to” or “at”) others is an ethical challenge—one that all humanities concentrators and all students interested in social justice ought to explore.
Note: This course can be credited toward the Graduate School Education’s secondary field in Educational Studies. This course may also be credited towards the Harvard College Certificate for Civic Engagement.
Instructor: James Wood Monday, 3:45-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
In this seminar, we’ll be looking at the ways in which a range of writers represent the mind on the page: the mind at thought, in agitation, at rest, at prayer, in distress, in rebellion, and just doing nothing (or apparently nothing). This examination allows us to scrutinize just over a hundred years of novelistic development and experiment – from 1813 to 1927, from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf – a period that might rightly be considered the high-point of the novel’s rise. We will discover that as the novelistic treatment of consciousness changes, so the idea of what a mind (or a self) is, also changes: the form (the means of representation) modifies the content (what is represented). What might seem at first like a fairly small thing – a question of novelistic technique – will turn out to have massive and far-reaching consequences for our sense of self.
This course satisfies the “1700-1900 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
Instructor: Gordon Teskey Monday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
In an age of scientific and political revolution, how do poets respond when common beliefs about God, humans, cosmic and social order, consciousness, and gender have been taken away? Modern poetry starts in the seventeenth century when poets, notably women poets, sought new grounds for poetic expression.
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.
The Supervising Reading and Research tutorial is a type of student-driven independent study offering individual instruction in subjects of special interest that cannot be studied in regular courses. English 91r is supervised by a member of the English Department faculty. It is a graded course and may not be taken more than twice, and only once for concentration credit. Students must submit a proposal and get approval from the faculty member with whom they wish to work.
Proposed syllabi and faculty approval must be submitted and verified by the English Department Undergraduate Office by the Course Registration Deadline.
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)
Instructor: Claire Messud Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
Intended for students with prior fiction-writing and workshop experience, this course will concentrate on structure, execution and revision. Exploring various strands of contemporary and recent literary fiction – writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Chimamanda Adichie, Douglas Stuart, Ocean Vuong, etc – we will consider how fiction works in our present moment, with emphasis on a craft perspective. Each student will present to the class a published fiction that has influenced them. The course is primarily focused on the discussion of original student work, with the aim of improving both writerly skills and critical analysis. Revision is an important component of this class: students will workshop two stories and a revision of one of these.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of prose fiction, along with a substantive letter of introduction. I’d like to know why you’re interested in the course; what experience you’ve had writing, both in previous workshops and independently; what your literary goals and ambitions are. Please tell me about some of your favorite narratives – fiction, non-fiction, film, etc: why they move you, and what you learn from them.
Instructor: Andrew Krivak Tuesday, 9:00-11:45 1m | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course is a workshop intended for students who are interested in writing longer form narratives from the first-person point of view. The “I” at the center of any novel poses a perspective that is all at once imaginatively powerful and narratively problematic, uniquely insightful and necessarily unreliable. We will read from roughly twelve novels written in the first-person, from Marilynne Robinson and W.G. Sebald, to Valeria Luiselli and Teju Cole, and ask questions (among others) of why this form, why this style? And, as a result, what is lost and what is realized in the telling? Primarily, however, students will write. Our goal will be to have a student’s work read and discussed twice in class during the semester. I am hoping to see at least 35-40 pages of a project —at any level of completion—at the end of term.
Supplemental Application Information: Please write a substantive letter telling me why you’re interested in taking this class, what writers (classical and contemporary) you admire and why, and if there’s a book you have read more than once, a movie you have seen more than once, a piece of music you listen to over and over, not because you have to but because you want to. Students of creative nonfiction are also welcome to apply.
Instructor: Laura van den Berg Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course will serve as an introduction to the fundamentals of writing fiction, with an emphasis on the contemporary short story. How can we set about creating “big” worlds in compact spaces? What unique doors can the form of the short story open? The initial weeks will focus on exploratory exercises and the study of published short stories and craft essays. Later, student work will become the primary text as the focus shifts to workshop discussion. Authors on the syllabus will likely include Ted Chiang, Lauren Groff, Carmen Maria Machado, and Octavia Butler. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels of experience.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a letter of introduction. I’d like to know a little about why you are drawn to studying fiction; what you hope to get out of the workshop and what you hope to contribute; and one thing you are passionate about outside writing / school. Please also include a very brief writing sample (2-3 pages). The sample can be in any genre (it does not have to be from a work of fiction).
Instructor: Neel Mukherjee Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
The course will consist of two halves. In the first hour of each class, we will be doing close readings/literary-critical analyses of an assigned text (see below, ‘Course Schedule’, for all the reading material for the semester), with the aim of isolating some aspect of the craft of writing in order to take bearings for your own. We will be looking at technical things such as point of view, free indirect discourse, narration, character, interiority, style, movement, affect, but also at broader issues: metaphysics, politics, inequality, race, colonialism/imperialism, the white gaze. You will not only have read the assigned text with critical rigor but also taken notes of the points you want to raise in class. While I do not expect you to hand in short critical essays on the texts, I will be looking for engaged, alert discussions, so it may help to have something written down to facilitate our conversations. Please note: Reading the assigned text is obligatory. Previous Creative Writing workshop experience is desirable. If you’re writing YA fantasy, there are other courses on offer that would be a better fit.
In the second half of the class, divided into two equal segments of 55 minutes each, we will be workshopping the writing of two students. To this end, every week two students will hand in something they have written, to the tune of 2,500-5,000 words, to me and to everyone in the group, ideally one week before their turn. At our first meeting, I will circulate a rota for you to put down your names and walk you through the syllabus, the aims and objectives of the course, workshop rules, expectations, requirements etc. For our first workshopping session, two students should hand in work five to seven days before. 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. Copies of these writing samples will be returned to you at the end of each workshop with comments from me and from everyone in class. Work submitted must be single-sided, double-spaced, paginated and, ideally, bearing a title. It must have your name on it and, on the top right-hand corner of the first page, my name and ‘Advanced Fiction, Fall 2024’.
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, especially what Creative Writing workshops you’ve already taken at Harvard; some of your favourite writers; what some of your favourite works of fiction are and why.
An introductory workshop where we will learn to read as writers and study all aspects of the craft of fiction writing, including such topics as character, point of view, structure, time, and plot. The first weeks will focus on writing exercises and reading contemporary short fiction. As the semester progresses, the focus of the workshop will shift to creating and discussing your own work at the table.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit ONLY a letter to me. I want to know what your favorite work of fiction is and why; and then tell me something you are passionate about and something you want to be better at; and, lastly, tell me why of all classes you want to take this one this semester. Please no writing samples.
Instructor: Maggie Doherty Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This course will consider critical writing about art–literary, visual, cinematic, musical, etc.—as an art in its own right. We will read and discuss criticism from a wide variety of publications, paying attention to the ways outlets and audience shape critical work. The majority of our readings will be from the last few years and will include pieces by Joan Acocella, Andrea Long Chu, Jason Farago, and Carina del Valle Schorske. Students will write several short writing assignments (500-1000 words), including a straight review, during the first half of the semester and share them with peers. During the second half of the semester, each student will write and workshop a longer piece of criticism about a work of art or an artist of their choosing. Students will be expected to read and provide detailed feedback on the work of their peers. Students will revise their longer pieces based on workshop feedback and submit them for the final assignment of the class.
Supplemental Application Information: Please write a letter of introduction (1-2 pages) giving a sense of who you are, your writing experience, and your current goals for your writing. Please also describe your relationship to the art forms and/or genres you're interested in engaging in the course. You may also list any writers or publications whose criticism you enjoy reading. Please also include a 3-5-page writing sample of any kind of prose writing. This could be an academic paper or it could be creative fiction or nonfiction.
Instructor: Michael Pollan Monday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
There are few literary forms quite as flexible as the personal essay. The word comes from the French verb essai, “to attempt,” hinting at the provisional or experimental mood of the genre. The conceit of the personal essay is that it captures the individual’s act of thinking on the fly, typically in response to a prompt or occasion. The form offers the rare freedom to combine any number of narrative tools, including memoir, reportage, history, political argument, anecdote, and reflection. In this writing workshop, we will read essays beginning with Montaigne, who more or less invented the form, and then on to a varied selection of his descendants, including George Orwell, E.B. White, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and Rebecca Solnit. We will draft and revise essays of our own in a variety of lengths and types including one longer work of ambition. A central aim of the course will be to help you develop a voice on the page and learn how to deploy the first person—not merely for the purpose of self-expression but as a tool for telling a story, conducting an inquiry or pressing an argument.
Supplemental Application Information: To apply, submit a brief sample of your writing in the first person along with a letter detailing your writing experience and reasons for wanting to take this course.
Instructor: Louisa Thomas Tuesday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
How does one tell -- vividly, interestingly -- the story of a life? How do we access a private life, or situate it in a public world? What if the subject is dead, or is famous, or is a dog, or is oneself? How do we ask the right questions in interviews, or know where to begin? This course will examine the art of writing narrative nonfiction about individual lives. We will read and discuss examples of profiles, biographies, and memoir/personal essays, paying special attention to structure, language, and style. We will also read and discuss each other’s work. Students are expected to produce (and to revise) two pieces of longform nonfiction writing. Readings by authors such as Hilton Als, Rachel Aviv, Robert Caro, Hermione Lee, Hua Hsu, and others.
Supplemental Application Information: To apply, please write a letter introducing yourself and explaining your interest in the course. Include a few examples of profiles, nonfiction books, or essays that you admire, along with a sentence or two explaining why. No other writing sample is required.
Instructor: Melissa Cundieff Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
In this workshop-based class, students will think deeply about how music is often at the center of their experiences, may it be as a song, an album, an artist, their own relationship with an instrument, etc. This class will entail writing true stories about one's life in which the personal and music orbit and/or entangle each other. This will include some journalism and criticism, but above all it will ask you to describe how and why music matters to your lived life. We will read work by Hayao Miyazaki, Jia Tolentino, Kaveh Akbar, Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag, Adrian Matejka, among many others, (as well as invite and talk with guest speaker(s)). This class is open to all levels.
Supplemental Application Information: Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.
Instructor: Darcy Frey Fall 2024: Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD
In this hands-on writing workshop, we will study the art of narrative journalism in many different forms: Profile writing, investigative reportage, magazine features. How can a work of journalism be fashioned to tell a captivating story? How can the writer of nonfiction narratives employ the scene-by-scene construction usually found in fiction? How can facts become the building blocks of literature? Students will work on several short assignments to practice the nuts-and-bolts of reporting, then write a longer magazine feature to be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from the published work of literary journalists such as Joan Didion, John McPhee, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and John Jeremiah Sullivan. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required.
Supplemental Application Information: Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with journalism or narrative nonfiction; what excites you about narrative journalism in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of journalism or narrative nonfiction or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.
Instructor: Darcy Frey Fall 2024: Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD
Whether it takes the form of literary journalism, essay, memoir, or environmental writing, creative nonfiction is a powerful genre that allows writers to break free from the constraints commonly associated with nonfiction prose and reach for the breadth of thought and feeling usually accomplished only in fiction: the narration of a vivid story, the probing of a complex character, the argument of an idea, or the evocation of a place. Students will work on several short assignments to hone their mastery of the craft, then write a longer piece that will be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from published authors such as Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ariel Levy, Alexander Chee, and Virginia Woolf. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required.
Supplemental Application Information: Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with creative/literary nonfiction; what excites you about nonfiction in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of creative/literary nonfiction (essay, memoir, narrative journalism, etc, but NOT academic writing) or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.
Instructor: Michael Pollan Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
The arc of this writing workshop will follow, step by step, the process of researching and writing a single long piece of science journalism: finding and pitching story ideas; reporting in depth and at length; outlining and structuring your story; choosing a narrative voice and strategy, crafting leads and “overtures,” and forging connections between your story and its larger contexts. As a group, we’ll also work as editors on one another’s ideas and pieces. And since reading good prose is the best way to learn to write it, we’ll be closely reading an exemplary piece of narrative science journalism each week. Students will be expected to complete a draft and a revision of a substantial piece of science journalism by the end of the term.
Supplemental Application Information: To apply, submit a brief sample of your non-academic writing along with a letter explaining your reasons for wanting to take this course and describing your science experience, if any.
Instructor: Melissa Cundieff Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
In this workshop-based class, students will consider themes that intersect with the Young Adult genre: gender and sexuality, romantic and platonic relationships and love/heartbreak, family, divorce and parental relationships, disability, neurodivergence, drug use, the evolution/fracturing of childhood innocence, environmentalism, among others. Students will write true stories about their lived lives with these themes as well as intended audience (ages 12-18) specifically in mind. For visual artists, illustrating one’s work/essays is something that I invite but of course do not require. We will read work by Sarah Prager, Robin Ha, ND Stevenson, Laurie Hals Anderson, Dashka Slater, and Jason Reynolds.
Supplemental Application Information: Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.
Instructor: Josh Bell Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Barker 018 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
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.
This workshop will be an exploration into the ways that poets in the past have reckoned in print with the personal and the public, while also provided students with a fundamental understanding of what the public/private dichotomy is, as seen through the works of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Jack Gilbert and others, with the ultimate goal being to produce a body of work of their own that is aware of both its referents and singularities. Students will be expected to produce drafts on a weekly basis.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, up to ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Josh Bell Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site
By guided reading, classroom discussion, one on one conference, and formal and structural experimentation, members of the Advanced Poetry Workshop will look to hone, deepen, and challenge the development of their poetic inquiry and aesthetic. Students will be required to write and submit one new poem each week and to perform in-depth, weekly critiques of their colleagues' 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.
Instructor: Musa Syeed Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 student Course Site
“I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us,” the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami said, “unless it’s inside a frame.” For our communities confronting invisibility and erasure, there’s an urgent need for new frames. In this workshop, we’ll explore a community-engaged approach to documentary and fiction filmmaking, as we seek to see our world more deeply. We’ll begin with screenings, craft exercises, and discussions around authorship and social impact. Then we each will write, develop, and shoot a short film over the rest of the semester, building off of intentional community engagement. Students will end the class with written and recorded materials for a rough cut. Basic equipment and technical training will be provided.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. Please also discuss what participants/communities you might be interested in engaging with for your filmmaking projects. For your writing sample, please submit 3-5 pages of your creative work from any genre (screenwriting, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc.)
Instructor: Musa Syeed Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
The short film, with its relatively lower costs of production and expanded distribution opportunities, has become one of the most disruptive, innovative modes of storytelling--and is often an emerging filmmaker's first step into a career. This course will introduce students to the basics of short form screenwriting, including narrative theory/structure, character design, and dialogue/voice. In the first quarter of the semester, we will hone dramatic techniques through several craft exercise assignments and in-class writing. In the following weeks, students will write two short screenplays. Throughout the semester, we will be workshopping and doing table reads of student work, discussing screenplays and craft texts, and screening a wide array of short films. The emphasis will be on discovering a sense of personal voice and completing two short screenplays (under 20 pages).
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. You may comment on what films/filmmakers inspire you and what kind of subject matter you may be interested to write about. For your writing sample, please submit 3-5 pages of your creative work from any genre (screenwriting, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc.)
Instructor: Sam Marks Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
This workshop introduces the television pilot with a focus on prestige drama and serialized comedy. Students will excavate their own voice and explore the structure and execution of pilot writing through a first draft of their own original script. With intensive reading and discussion of student work we will examine elements of TV writing, such as treatments and outlines as well as character, dialogue, tone, plot, and, most importantly, vision. Over the semester, we’ll turn ideas into worlds and worlds into scripts.
Supplemental Application Information: Prior experience in dramatic writing is encouraged, though not necessary. Please submit a 5-10 page writing sample (preferably a play or screenplay, but all genres are acceptable). Also, write a few sentences about one of your favorite television shows and why you wish to write for TV.
Instructor: Gordon Teskey Monday, 3:45-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
A seminar on the poetry of Spenser and the practice of theory. In contrast to Milton, Spenser thinks as he writes and also lets the poem think for him. He does not think with poetry but through it. One consequence is that the kind of poem he writes—an allegory—invites us to think along with it as well, in our own terms. In the seminar, we will attend to the tensions in Spenser’s imagination between personal expression, social and political structure, and cosmic order. Alongside the poems, especially "The Faerie Queene", we will read some major works of literary theorists from the postwar period to the present day.
Instructor: Beth Blum Wednesday, 9:45-11:45 am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
This graduate seminar offers an overview of seminal works of anxiety theory by Kierkegaard, Freud, Heidegger, May, Beck, Salecl, and Ngai, as well as in-depth analysis of modern and contemporary authors who thematize and formalize anxiety in their works (for instance, Joyce, Woolf, Larsen, Heti, Moshfegh, Andersson, Offill, Lerner, Cole). We will examine the specificity of modern anxiety by exploring literary responses to total war, technology, climate change, psychopharmacology, race, sexuality, upward mobility, and more.
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).
Instructor: Derek Miller Tuesday, 9:45-11:45 am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Course Site
This course considers the relationship between art and repetition. We will go beyond the repetition of content—sequels; adaptations—to explore repetition as artistic form (such as the sonnet or a musical theme and variations) and repetition as an essential practice for producing (editing and revising) and consuming art. We will investigate the varieties of repetition in the arts and consider how a general theory of art and repetition helps us better understand art as a human practice. Examples include literature, theater, music, and visual art, but students are expected to pursue their own interests in course assignments.
Instructor: Philip Fisher Thursday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
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 literature permit only certain variations within experience to reach lucidity? Is there a distinction in literature between what can be said and what can be read? The members of the seminar will investigate the limits literature faces in giving an account of mind, everyday experience, thought, memory, full character, and situation in time. The seminar will make use of a classic case of difficulty, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and a modern work of unusual complexity and resistance to both interpretation and to simple comfortable reading, Joyce’s Ulysses. Reading in exhaustive depth these two works will suggest the range of meanings for terms like complexity, resistance, openness of meaning, and experimentation within form.
