Spring 2024

Instructor: Namwali Serpell Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15 pm | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site This course is a survey of the work of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, including most of her novels, a...

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...

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...

Instructor: Alan Niles Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15 pm | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site This class is an introduction to Shakespeare’s writings and their representations of sex, gender, romance...

Instructor: Joseph A. Shack Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30-11:45 am | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site Translations of excerpts from Beowulf will proceed in parallel with careful reading of Heaney's verse...

Instructor: Ju Yon Kim Monday, 9:45-11:45am | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students This course will examine critical works in the interdisciplinary field of performance studies. The class will begin with an exploration of the major...

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...

Instructor: Stephanie Burt Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 15 students What is poetry? What is lyric? Who cares, and why? How have the answers to those questions changed since people began writing verse in English? We will...

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...