Studies a broad range of texts essential to understanding the two great sources of Western conceptions of the world and humanity’s place within it: the ancient world of Greece and Rome and the Judeo-Christian world that challenged and absorbed it. Readings vary but usually include works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, St. Augustine, and Dante. Enrollment limited.

An introduction to poetry in English. We will explore poems written during several periods and in several genres (nature-poems, narratives, the epic, sonnets, odes, experimental forms).  Focus will be less on names and dates than on tactics of analytic reading. Poets whose work we’ll read include William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Li-young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and others. Special course-related events (readings, lectures, film screenings) will take place on selected evenings throughout the term. Regular classroom hours will be reduced in the weeks for which a special event is scheduled.

William Shakespeare didn’t go to college. If he could time-travel like Dr. Who, he would be stunned to find his words on a university syllabus. But he would not be surprised at the way we will be using those words in this class, because the study of rhetoric was essential to all education in his day. We too will focus on communication using words, with Shakespeare as a capacious model and inspiration for dialogue, self-presentation, and writing. By writing ‘with’ Shakespeare—critically, creatively, in groups, and in a variety of media—you will have ample opportunity to explore the elements and occasions that shape effective, meaningful communication. We will consider how his plays have in turn been reinterpreted across the globe: in addition to reciting famous speeches, we will analyze both text and film versions of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing and the tragedy Othello, and you will explore an online MITx module as preparation to perform dramatic scenes from what is now a ‘problem play,’ The Merchant of Venice. Finally, we will look at how Shakespeare revises his stories and style in the late ‘romance’ A Winter’s Tale. In the process, you will get to ‘play’ a Shakespeare scholar, and debate the reasons for the playwright’s enduring power. Nevertheless, our aim is less to appreciate his works as an end in themselves than to draw on his remarkable drama (including its vocabulary, variety, verve, and verbal command) in order to help you improve your own writing, speaking, analytic thinking, use of resources, and understanding of media today.

Once upon a time we began telling stories and we never stopped. Why do we tell them? What makes for a good story? How are the best stories told? This course examines leading examples of major genres of storytelling in the Western tradition including epics, fairy tales, novels, short stories, films, and television. Works studied will include Homer’s Odyssey, Grimm’s Cinderella, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Fritz Lang’s M. The class will investigate how the formal construction of these stories shape our desires, perceptions, and beliefs. Students will also be introduced to theoretical readings from thinkers such as Marx, Freud, Auerbach, and Jameson.

This subject examines the cultural, artistic, social, and political impact of globalization across international borders in an historical context. Novels and short stories as well as case studies on global health, human trafficking, and labor migration illuminate the shaping influence of contemporary globalization on gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Guest lecturers visit class as we examine the impact of globalization on cultural identity, the arts, the politics of language, and the media. How has migration changed notions of cultural and racial hybridity? What can we learn from specific examples of global media and expressive culture including popular music and film? In what ways has globalization affected human rights? Students develop sensitivity to other cultures and the ability to read broadly across national boundaries. Furthermore, the emphasis on the historical context gives students a foundation to continue work in literature, history, and the arts from a global perspective.

​​Today we have the luxury of reading more literatures in more languages than ever before, giving us the opportunity to explore the great diversity of what is called “literature” across the time and space of world history. This course introduces you to some of the most seminal and thought-provoking texts from East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam), and is conceived as complementary to the Foundations of Western Literature course in the Literature curriculum. We persistently ask how “literature” looks different when viewed through the literary heritage of East Asia: what does poetry written in Chinese characters accomplish that alphabetic poetry cannot? How does Buddhist reincarnation change the way you tell stories and devise novels? Why is Japan the world’s only major literature where female authors dominated certain literary genres as early as the 11th century? How did the complex interplay in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam between high-brow literature in the cosmopolitan language of Literary Chinese, and vernacular or popular literatures expand the possibilities of literary expressivity, gender figuration, and identity play? What was it that made American avant garde writers of the Beat-generation so ecstatic about classical Chinese and Japanese poetry?

Our strategic journey through East Asian literatures and cultures will take us through philosophical master texts such as Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi; Tang poetry; China’s classical novels such as Journey to the West; Japan’s female-authored tales and diaries, such as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book; Korea’s classical novel The Nine Cloud Dream, and the heart-wrenching pansori play Song of Ch’unhyang.

This class will take you through a sampling of bestselling 21st-century fiction, where we will cover topics such as climate crisis, public health, and social and economic inequity. We will read novels, short stories, and poetry that not only represent the current moment, but that also use fiction as a way to imagine better worlds. Assessment (presentations, short written responses, and group projects) is based on consistent participation and engagement throughout the semester, rather than a final paper.

Overturn the government. Invent your own belief system. Go blind. Then rewrite “Genesis,” and reimagine the origins of everything: culture, knowledge, gender, human beings, and the universe. That’s the story behind John Milton’s Paradise Lost: arguably the greatest epic poem written in English.

The focus of the class will be on reading and discussion of Milton’s text. Work will include frequent, informal writing, leading discussions, one or two short quizzes, and a final reflection paper.

The focus of this course will be to analyze the ways in which sex and gender are represented and transformed by literature and film. In the first part of the course, we will consider the representation, misrepresentation, and erasure of gendered and sexualized identities, examining feminist critiques and the queering of Hollywood classics such as Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Hawk’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). In the second part of the course, we will explore a wide variety of books and films that challenge and reimagine dominant constructions of gender and sexuality. Topics will include gender fluidity in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), oppressive domesticity in Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman (1975), the legendary drag queens and ‘voguers’ of Livingston’s Paris is Burning (1991), and normalizing “illicit” desire in contemporary television. Students will hone their critical capacities through the study of key theoretical texts that engage with questions of gender, race, queerness, transgender identity, and intersectionality.

Provides a workshop environment for understanding interactive narrative (print and digital) through critical writing, narrative theory, and creative practice. Covers important multisequential books, hypertexts, and interactive fictions. Students write critically, and give presentations, about specific works; write a short multisequential fiction; and develop a digital narrative system, which involves significant writing and either programming or the structuring of text. Programming ability helpful.

Today, translation is frequently delegated to machines. But despite impressive technological advances, literary texts quickly demonstrate the limits of artificial intelligence. Why do sophisticated machines struggle with literary translation? We will address this question by engaging perspectives articulated by a range of influential thinkers – from Luther’s reflections on translating the Bible, to Goethe and Schleiermacher’s thoughts on translation as an interpretive act, to twentieth-century responses developed by Nietzsche and Benjamin. Over the course of the semester, students will create a structured portfolio of their own translations with critical reflections that will connect their experiences as translators to issues broached in the theoretical texts. Equipped with a nuanced appreciation of translation as an art, we will turn our attention to machine translation and critically assess the affordances and limitations of translation engines to generate satisfactory output in response to a variety of literary and expository genre. Our discoveries will provide us with a deeper understanding and critical appreciation of a variety of characteristics of literary discourse. Oral fluency in a foreign language is not required, but the willingness and comfort to engage with a language other than English using dictionaries and other tools is required.

(begins Oct 23) Introductory Greek subject for students with some prior knowledge of basic grammar and vocabulary. Intended to refresh and enrich ability to read ancient and/or medieval literary and historical texts. May be taken independently of Greek I with permission of instructor. Greek I and Greek II may be combined (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H.

(ends Oct 20) Building on 21L.613, 21L.614 develops the ability to read and analyze Latin literary texts, focusing on prose and poetry in alternate years. Increases fluency in reading comprehension and recognition of stylistic, generic, and grammatical features. Texts vary from term to term (Fall 2023 features Latin Women Poets). May be repeated once for credit if content differs. 21L.613 and 21L.614, or two terms of 21L.614, may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H.

This course provides an interdisciplinary exploration of African diaspora poetics, with a special emphasis on environmental poetry. Following Ed Roberson’s contention that “the world does not run the earth, but the earth does run the world” we will linger with the poetry of those who view literary studies not only or primarily as an institutional enterprise, but as planetary thinking, as a commitment to care for the earth. We will draw on a range of texts to wrestle with the key concerns of black writers from the 19th century through the present. As the course title promises, we will indeed read and write poems; but we will also collectively listen to music, study film, and take field trips to local performance venues and community archives. We will establish a workshop space that is also a space of experimentation: one where we craft new works, new forms, new approaches, as an ensemble.

This subject provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the literary and scholarly work of the inimitable writer Toni Morrison. Morrison’s novels are well known for being stylistically dense and sometimes difficult to read and understand. But to borrow Morrison’s own words, from The Bluest Eye, the semester-long exercise of reading, thinking, and writing about her work promises to be “a productive and fructifying pain.” My goal is to ensure that all participants in the class actually gain something useful and fortifying from such an in-depth analysis of her oeuvre. As we allow ourselves the opportunity to meditate on her writings, during the course of the semester, I hope we will open ourselves to the possibility of growing more intellectually conscious not only as readers, writers, and thinkers in the classroom, but also as compassionate citizens out in the world. We will watch interviews of her and read seven or eight of her novels, some of her speeches, her short story “Recitatif,” and critical essays about her work.

This class features close examination of a few classic novels from a great age of novel-writing, the 19th century.  We will most likely read: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion; either Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters or Margaret Oliphant’s Miss Marjoribanks; and (definitely) George Eliot’s incomparable Middlemarch. (George Eliot was the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans).

The books we’ll study were written by women and feature female protagonists facing a variety of challenges in the society of their day. They take place in a changing rural England in the early to middle stages of the Industrial Revolution — a time when the long-established rules of society were under pressure and new questions arose about such matters as family, courtship and marriage, women’s ambition and scope for action, pride and honor, interpretation and rationalization, innovation and conservatism, old and new money, authority and power.  The authors of these novels used their fiction to probe the question of what it means for individuals and society to become “modern.”