Spring Term 2026

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...

AFRAMER 10. Introduction to African American Studies

Instructor: Jesse McCarthy Fall 2026 TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Monday & Wednesday, 10:30-11:45am | Location: TBD This course aims to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the complex array of African-American cultural and political practices...

English 111. Epic: From Homer to Star Wars

Instructor: Leah Whittington Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm | Location: TBD Epic is one of the most enduring and far-reaching forms of artistic expression. From the heroic poems of the ancient Near East to modern films of quest and adventure, epic speaks...

English 145a. Jane Austen's Fiction and Fans

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...

English 152kd. Keats Isn't Dead: How We Live Romanticism

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...

English 169y. William Butler Yeats and the Modern World

Instructor: Stephanie Burt Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45am | Location: TBD One of the great creators in his, or any, era. W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) left us a matchless body of lyric and dramatic verse, including love poems, political meditations, ballads...

English 170se. American Literature & the Environment

Instructor: Sarah Hopkinson Fall 2026 Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD What are the natural worlds that define America? How did these landscapes – the towering redwoods of California, the...

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 173bl. The Black Lyric

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Monday & Wednesday, 3:00-4:15pm | Location: TBD African American poets have long embraced the private freedoms of the lyric poem—freedom to claim the authority of an uncontested first person “I”; freedom to wrangle language into...

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 192. Political Theatre and the Structure of Drama

Instructor: Elaine Scarry Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 18 students The estranged, didactic, intellectual theatre of Brecht, and the ritualistic, emergency theatre of Artaud serve as reference points for a range of...

English 199ad. Adaptation: The Art of Retelling

Instructor: Anna Wilson Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD 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...

Gened 1206. Asian Americans as an American Paradox

Instructor: Ju Yon Kim, Erika Lee, and Taeku Lee Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD How have paradoxical conceptions of Asian Americans informed Asian American history, culture, and politics, shaping modern America and the world? This course examines...

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...

English 90ff. Indigenous Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, and Futurisms

Instructor: Christopher Pexa Spring 2027 TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Monday, 3:00-5:00pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students This course will examine contemporary writings by Native American and Indigenous authors across the genres of...

English 90hc. Hamlet, Act 1

Instructor: David Levine Spring 2027 TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 14 students Students will gain facility with reading, speaking, performing, and directing Shakespeare through a simple task...

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 90ln. Harvard and Native Lands

Instructor: Alan Niles and Philip Deloria Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Harvard’s beginnings included a promise to educate both “English and Indian youth.” From its inception, however, Harvard’s endowment...

English 90mc. Before the Novel: Medieval Romance

Instructor: Nicholas Watson Spring 2027 TBD | Location: TBD Spring 2026 Thursday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Medieval romances are ancestors of the modern novel, including the psychological novel and the fictions we...

English 90su. Superheroes: Stories, Characters, Comics, Art and Society

Instructor: Stephanie Burt Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students What's a superhero and why do people care? Where do they come from, what do they do, and why would anyone ever choose to be one? We will follow those...

English 90tk. Tolkien’s Library

Instructor: Daniel Donoghue Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students J. R. R. Tolkien's day job at Oxford was professor of medieval English literature. Throughout his career he cultivated a deep acquaintance with early...

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 202b. Beowulf and Seamus Heaney

Instructor: Daniel Donoghue Thursday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD This course balances translation, poetics, and literary criticism. The commercial success of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf has given it a prominence in the general reading public...

English 273cl. Uncommon Tongue: Lucille Clifton and her Literary Kin

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Across her body of work, great American poet Lucille Clifton celebrates, defends and bears witness to the complexities and the revelations of Black life...

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 292ph. Public Humanities Workshop

Instructor: Martin Puchner Thursday, 9:00-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Public humanities are becoming increasingly central for careers both inside and outside of academia. This workshop, which is open to beginning and...

English 293b. Book Theory

Instructor: Deidre Shauna Lynch Monday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students In this seminar we will work our way through theoretical work presenting the Western book as, variously, medium, interface, commodity, technology...

English 299wc. Wild Criticism

Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthrian Monday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students Beginning with Oscar Wilde, who suggested in 1891 that “the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not ,” this course...

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”...