Summer Term 2023

ENGL S-207. The Culture of Capitalism

Instructor: Martin Puchner
Day & Time: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:00–1:30pm (EDT)
Summer 7-week session | CRN 33124

The course asks how literature, theater, and film have captured the spirit of capitalism—fueling its fantasies, contemplating its effects, and chronicling its crises. More than just an economic system, capitalism created new habits of life and mind; it also created new values, forged and distilled by new forms of art. Core readings by Franklin, O'Neill, Rand, Miller, and Mamet, films by Chaplin and Lang, and background readings by Smith, Marx, Taylor, Weber, and Schumpeter.

This course meets via web conference. Students may attend at the scheduled meeting time or watch recorded sessions on demand. The recorded sessions are typically available within a few hours of the end of class and no later than the following business day. Harvard College students: This course is eligible for degree credit, but see important policy information. Please note: In addition to the scheduled class time, this course has required recorded lectures and activities that students complete on demand. Please see course syllabus for details. The overall amount of time students spend on this course is equivalent to other 4-credit courses.

ENGL S-257. Superheroes and Power

Instructor: Stephanie Burt
Day & Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00–3:00pm
Summer 7-week session | CRN 35152

What makes superheroes popular? How can they help us think about power, belonging, queerness, race, citizenship, art, or disability? In this course we explore those questions in Marvel and DC favorites (especially the X-Men) as well as in older literature, independent comics, novels, and readings from several critical disciplines.

All students are required to attend and participate during the regularly scheduled class time, either by being present in the classroom or via web conference. Harvard College students: This course is eligible for degree credit, but see important policy information. This course counts for the Aesthetics and Culture Gen Ed requirement and is equivalent to Gen Ed 1165. It does not count for the College's divisional distribution requirement.

ENGL S-140. The Rise of the Novel

Instructor: Leo Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, Emeritus
Day & Time: Mondays & Wednesdays, 8:30–11:30am 
Summer 7-week session | CRN 35352
Open Enrollment

Literary narrative goes back to ancient times, but the novel, as the term is used today, did not appear until the seventeenth century, and only in the eighteenth century did it establish itself as the dominant literary form of our culture. This course explores the eighteenth-century novels long considered the best and most important, both for their achievement in developing the possibilities of narrative, and for their ability to give pleasure to readers. To bring out the particular qualities of each work, scenes from modern film adaptations are shown whenever available. Issues to be considered include genre (What was new about novels? Is the novel a genre?); features of omniscient, first-person, and epistolary narration; representation of character and subjective experience; the social function of fiction; the attractions of plot; the paradoxes of realism; moral didacticism and its subversion; and differences between British and French fiction. Novels include The Princesse de Clèves, Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa, Tom Jones, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Pride and Prejudice. Due to the condensed summer schedule, the longer works are read in abridged form.

This course meets via live web conference. Students must attend and participate at the scheduled meeting time. Harvard College students: This course is eligible for degree credit, but see important policy information.