Guided Elective: 1700-1900

Instructor: Elaine Scarry TBD | Location: TBD 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...

Instructor: John Stauffer Thursday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students This course offers an introduction to and critical examination of Melville’s writings. Moby-Dick is the centerpiece of the course (and of Melville’s works...

Instructor: Stephanie Burt Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students. One of the major poets in the English language, Whitman also became an emblem of an American possibility, a beacon of what we now call queer identities...

Instructor: Ju Yon Kim Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students. This seminar will explore the American short story with a special focus on writers of the nineteenth century who were critical to establishing the short...

Instructor: James Wood Monday, 3:45-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students In this seminar, we look 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...

Instructor: Derek Miller Tuesday, 9:45-11:45am | 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...

Instructor: Deidre Lynch Monday & Wednesday, 1:30-2:45 pm | Location: TBD 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...

Instructor: John Stauffer and Roberto Unger Friday, 1:30-3:30 pm | Location: TBD Democracy, inequality, and nationalism in America. The white working class and American politics. Class and race. Identities and interests. Conditions for socially inclusive...

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

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