Humanities 10b: A Humanities Colloquium: From Joyce to Homer
Profs. Stephen Greenblatt (English), Louis Menand (English), Jay Harris (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), Sean Kelly (Philosophy), Melissa McCormick (East Asian Languages & Civilizations), Leah Whittington (English), Spring 2017
In Hum 10, you will study and discuss important works of literature, philosophy, and the arts. You will receive intensive training in writing critical papers. And you will have the opportunity to experience current cultural events at Harvard and in the Boston area. Hum 10 is a two-part series: Hum 10a includes works from the ancient world to the present, chronologically. Hum 10b begins with a work of literary modernism and moves backward in time to the ancient world. Professors run both lectures and seminars. The course is designed for students interested in concentrating in a Humanities discipline, but all freshmen are welcome.
Taught through the Harvard College General Education Program, Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding & Culture and Belief Divisions. Taken for a full year, this course also fulfills the College's requirement for Expository Writing
______________________________________________________________
Humanities 10a: A Humanities Colloquium: From Homer to Marquez
Profs. Stephen Greenblatt (English), Louis Menand (English), David Carrasco (Anthropology), Jay Harris (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), Jill Lepore (History), Deidre Lynch (English), Fall 2016
In Hum 10, you will study and discuss important works of literature, philosophy, and the arts. You will receive intensive training in writing critical papers. And you will have the opportunity to experience current cultural events at Harvard and in the Boston area. Hum 10 is a two-part series: Hum 10a includes works from the ancient world to the present, chronologically. Hum 10b begins with a work of literary modernism and moves backward in time to the ancient world. Professors run both lectures and seminars. The course is designed for students interested in concentrating in a Humanities discipline, but all freshmen are welcome.
Taught through the Harvard College General Education Program, Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding & Culture and Belief Divisions. Taken for a full year, this course also fulfills the College's requirement for Expository Writing
______________________________________________________________
Poetry of the Long Eighteenth Century
Prof. Stephen Osadetz, Spring 2016
An introduction to reading poetry, by means of the wide variety of verse written in Britain during the long eighteenth century. We will begin with Milton’s Paradise Lost, then turn to lofty hymns, vicious satires, and lyrics of startling beauty.
Taught through the Harvard English Department's Common Ground Program
______________________________________________________________
Modern Monsters in Literature and Film
Prof. Deidre Lynch, Spring 2015
This is a class on the aesthetics and politics of the Gothic tradition, from Frankenstein to Freaks. How has this tradition’s fascination with those who come back from the dead mediated social anxieties about the generation of life or the lifelike? We’ll be considering vampire and other monster fictions by such authors as John Polidori, Mary Shelley, Sheridan LeFanu, Bram Stoker, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Gaston Leroux. We’ll conclude the semester with an investigation of early horror cinema exploring how the modern medium of cinema gave Gothic preoccupations with the animation of the dead a new lease on life.
Taught through the Harvard College General Education Program, Culture and Belief Division
______________________________________________________________
The Nineteenth-Century Novel
Prof. Leah Price, Fall 2011
Texts: Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Gaskell, North and South; Dickens, Bleak House; Thackeray,Vanity Fair; and Eliot, Middlemarch.
______________________________________________________________
The Gothic Tradition
Prof. Andrew Warren, Fall 2010
The Gothic novel is more than just the predecessor of Twilight; it's also an astute commentary upon a turbulent era in England's history. This course will examine the Gothic genre through the lens of that time's political preoccupations (the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars) and aesthetic theories (e.g., "the sublime"). Readings will include novels by Walpole, Beckford, Radcliffe and Lewis; Romantic poetry; satires by Austen and Peacock; and philosophical works by Burke and Schiller.
______________________________________________________________
Enlightenments and Their Literary Discontents
Prof. James Simpson, Spring 2010
What is the function of literary texts in moments, from Plato to the Russian Revolution, that promise total, enlightened societal transformation? A hypothesis: literary texts do not participate easily in the new order. Literary texts are more divided in their sympathies; they recognize the value of the past order; they reveal the ways in which the repressed past resurfaces. They resist the textual simplicities of philosophy. Which do we believe: philosophy, or literature?
Taught through the Harvard College General Education Program, Culture and Belief Division.
______________________________________________________________
English Romantic Poets
Prof. James Engell, Fall 2009
Readings in Blake, Baillie, Coleridge, Clare, Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and others. Lyric and narrative forms. Close aesthetic readings linked to thematic considerations. Social and political contexts. Romanticism as an artistic movement and cultural era.
Taught through the English Department's Common Ground Program.