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LitLab: In the Archives

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Literary scholars and writers sometimes find new documents that change the way we think about authors, texts, periods, and cultural movements. What do these “discoveries” mean? How and why are they important? Who gets credit for a discovery and what makes...

LitLab: Young Adult Fiction

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Young Adult Fiction Bring a passage from your favorite piece of YA fiction to share and talk about! We'll also brainstorm other topics that you want to discuss this term.

LitLab: Literature and Accountability...

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Literature and Accountability/Literature in the #MeToo Era/Literature and "Cancel Culture" This week we will think about what to do with writers and books that espouse opinions or advance ethical positions that we do not agree with, support, or condone...

LitLab: The Art of the Podcast

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Many of us have fallen in love with podcasts as a new form of storytelling. What makes story-telling in podcasts different from other kinds of story-telling? What is the relationship between podcasts and previous forms of oral narrative (radio drama...

LitLab: Harvard Reads: Guest Lectures/Speakers

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This week we’ll watch and discuss a public lecture by an important literary figure currently at Harvard. Open to the Harvard community. For more information visit our canvas site: Canvas

LitLab: Practicing Anti-Racism

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The past several months have seen a nationwide renewal and recommitment to civil rights and racial justice. What is Anti-Racism, and how does one practice it? This week we will watch Raoul Peck’s 2016 film I Am Not Your Negro, which profiles the activism...

LitLab: What’s Funny Now?

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Humor has often been associated with the assertion of aggression or superiority, at least since Sigmund Freud offered his theory of comedy as a manifestation of unconscious hostility in his work “Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious,” published in...

LitLab: Revenge Feminism

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Convenor(s): Madi Fabber The post-MeToo landscape has given rise to shows and stories created by women that explore the aftermath of sexual assault. At times borrowing from the conventions of the detective story or thriller, these works depict women...

LitLab: The Personal (Pandemic) Essay

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Convenor(s): Cindy Zhang & Michelle Kurilla The past year has seen the rise of a new sub-genre: the personal pandemic essay. What are the possibilities and limitations of this "quick response" art, to borrow a phrase from The Atlantic? We will check out a...

LitLab: Crossing Borders: Literature and Immigration

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The remarkable ethnic diversity of the United States is the result of the many generations of immigrants who have settled here. Many people now living in America have parents or grandparents who came from other places; many have recently arrived...

LitLab: New and Emergent Media / Digital Humanities

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Digitally-generated content is now a huge part of what we read and write--from blogs and social media to internet fan fiction and web-born poems. Digital tools are also increasingly important in the production of knowledge in the humanities. This week, we...

LitLab: The Power of Young Adult Fiction

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Young Adult literature is one of the fastest growing and most popular areas of the publishing industry, and yet YA fiction writers still have trouble getting the respect they deserve. Why is this the case? What has contributed to the marginalization of YA...