Spring Term 2025

English 20. Literary Forms

Spring 2026 Section 1 Instructor: Glenda Carpio Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Section 2 Instructor: Christopher Pexa Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Fall 2025 Instructor: Leah...

English 97. Sophomore Tutorial: Literary Methods

Section 1 Instructor: Anna Wilson Monday & Wednesday, 3:00-4:15pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Section 2 Instructor: Tara K. Menon Tuesday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students This course, taught in small...

English 103g. Advanced Old English: Scribes and Manuscripts

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 the...

English 110ff. Medieval Fanfiction

Instructor: Anna Wilson Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm | 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...

English 131p. Milton's Paradise Lost

Instructor: Gordon Teskey TBD | Location: TBA 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...

English 141. When Novels Were New

Instructor: Deidre Lynch Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45am | 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...

English 172ad. American Democracy

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...

English 182ca. Literature Under Capitalism

Instructor: Jesse McCarthy Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45am | 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...

English 185e. The Essay: History and Practice

Instructor: James Wood Spring 2026: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: 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...

English 197ls. Introduction to Indigenous Literary Studies: Poetry, Prose, and Politics

Instructor: Christopher Pexa Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD Introduction to Indigenous Literary Studies: Poetry, Prose, and Politics" introduces students to critical conversations in English, Indigenous Studies, and related disciplines...

GENED 1050. Act Natural

Instructor: David Levine Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | 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...

GENED 1133. Is the U.S. Civil War Still Being Fought?

Instructor: John Stauffer Monday & Wednesday, 1:30-2:45pm | 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...

GENED 1183. The English Language Today, Yesterday, and Tomorrow

Instructor: Daniel Donoghue Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45pm | 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...

Humanities 10b. A Humanities Colloquium from Homer to Joyce

Spring 2026: Instructors: David Elmer, Jay M. Harris, Beth Blum, Neel Mukherjee, Spencer Lee-Lenfield, and Jesse McCarthy Tuesday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location: TBD A Humanities Colloquium: from Homer to Joyce: 2,500 years of essential works, taught by six...

Complit 133x. Why Braille Matters: A Radical Revision of Literary Theory and World Literature

Instructor: Marc Shell Thursday, 3:00-5:00pm | Location: TBD In this seminar, students will explore tactile reading and writing systems with a focus on Braille, the tactile reading and writing system used by the blind. Students will learn the Braille code...

English 90ae. The Art of Minor Feelings: Asian American Emotional Lives in Contemporary Literature

Instructor: Sophia Mao Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students In her essay collection Minor Feelings (2020), Cathy Park Hong argues that Asian Americans experience a “racialized range of emotions”—what she calls “minor...

English 90d. Literature and Disability

Instructor: Marc Shell Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students. How has literature influenced the rhetoric and philosophy of disability? This seminar considers literary and cinematic works that focus on the body (deafness...

English 90eb. Elizabeth Bishop and Others

Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran Monday, 12:00-2:00pm | 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...

English 90ex. The Exorcist

Instructor: David Levine Thursday, 9:00-11:45am | 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...

English 90hm. Shakespeare Before Hamlet

Instructor: Gordon Teskey Monday, 3:45-5:45 | 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...

English 90ik. Ibsen and Chekhov

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...

English 90ka. The Brontës

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...

English 90rj. Race and Jurisprudence

Instructor: Louis Menand Thursday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students How has the American judicial system dealt with racial discrimination, racial segregation, racial exclusion, and systemic or institutional racism? Has the...

English 91r. Supervised Reading and Research

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...

English 98r. Junior Tutorial

Spring 2027 Junior Tutorials To be Announced Spring 2026 Junior Tutorials World Literature and its Discontents (Yoojung Chun) Travel, Travelers, Travelogues: A Global Perspective (Manan Kapoor) Friendships, Intimacies, & Collaborations in Modern &...

English 99r. Senior Tutorial

Supervised individual tutorial in an independent scholarly or critical subject. Students on the honors thesis track will register for English 99r in both the fall and spring terms.

English 210q. Queer/Medieval

Instructor: Anna Wilson Thursday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students The / in this course title can suggest a slippage or interchangeability; opposition and polarization; or erotic or romantic friction. This course functions...

English 251. The Representation of Labor in the 19th-Century Novel: Seminar

Instructor: Elaine Scarry Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | 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...

English 276x. African-American Literary Tradition

Instructor: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBA Enrollment: Limited to 15 students An exploration of the emergence and development of the African-American literary "tradition'' from the 18th to the 20th century. Close reading of...

English 285sa. South Asian Poetry

Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Originally, this course centered poets resident in, and writing from, post-Independence India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It will now also examine South Asian-American and...

English 290mh. Migration and the Humanities

Instructor: Homi Bhabha Spring 2027 TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students By focusing on literary narratives, cultural representations, and critical theories, this course explores ways in...

English 291w. Writers, Readers, Canons: Studies in Premodern Authorship

Instructor: Leah Whittington and Irene Peirano Garrison Wednesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students This course examines role played by writers and readers in the construction of literary canons and concepts of canonicity...

English 320. G1 Proseminar

Spring 2027 Instructor: Gordon Teskey TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Instructor: Nicholas Watson Wednesday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD The first-year proseminar (taken in the spring semester of the first year) introduces students to the theories...

English 330. G2 Proseminar

Spring 2027 Instructor: Ju Yon Kim TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Instructor: Ju Yon Kim Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD This second-year proseminar has a two-part focus: it introduces students to the craft of scholarly publishing by helping them...

Freshman Seminar 63n. On Peace and Protest

Instructor: Homi Bhabha Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Wednesday, 3:00-5:00pm | Location: TBD This seminar is attuned to the times we live in while addressing universal concerns of human life and historical experience. The relationship between “peace”...

Freshman Seminar 65o. Reading Native Nations

Instructor: Christopher Pexa Monday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students What are Native American and Indigenous literatures, and how might we best understand their/our relationship to U.S. and Canadian national literatures...