This graduate seminar (welcoming advanced undergrads with instructor permission) examines epic literature’s entanglements with empire, colonialism, ethnicity, indigeneity, and slavery via critical readings of Vergil’s Aeneid. Students will gain methodological and pragmatic familiarity with movements to ‘decolonize’ and globalize the study of antiquity. As a counterbalance to Classics’ historical service to imperialism, we will read Vergil alongside other literary epics on race, identity, and belonging, representing diverse global languages, belief systems, geographies, and positionalities. We will also survey classics of postcolonial thought, from Fanon to Hartman, and apply their theories and methods to primary sources. Our hope is to incubate reparative approaches to the Aeneid and epic literature while also evaluating novel methodologies of comparison, reception, resistant interpretation, and critical fabulation. Classics graduate students will read the Aeneid in Latin. Undergraduate and non-Classics graduate students may read in translation but should plan on substantial engagement with an additional epic of their choice. All will hone professional skills as they produce a final research paper suitable for conference presentation or open-access web publication on race-time.net.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Pandey, Nandini
• Room: Gilman 108
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

The past few years have seen several consequential texts investigating the methods of literary criticism: writing by John Guillory, Jonathan Kramnick, Anaheid Nercessian, Caroline Levine, Anna Kornbluh, and others have responded forcibly to both longstanding disciplinary debates and newly pressing economic forces. Among the most notable features of this discussion has been a new attention to writing as the medium of method; while drawing on a long theoretical history (likely to include work by Weber and Adorno) we will spend a good deal of time with the methodogical implications of contemporary critical prose.

• Days/Times: T 12:00PM - 3:00PM
• Instructor: Miller, Andrew H
• Room: Gilman 130D
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

Today human rights and capabilities are two intertwined concepts, each subject to contemporary critique. In the early modern period, these were much debated and literature was a key site for the development of these imperfect, variable and contested discourses. Reading literary works from the European tradition, in particular in Europeans' engagement with dissident groups both within (women, religious dissidents, the Irish) and outside Europe (Ottoman, African, American), we will explore themes of: exclusion, embodiment, risk, vulnerability, and the languages and practices of equivalence and domination in the variable discourses of humanitarianism, population and resource management and natural law in authors including Shakespeare, Grotius, Montaigne, Hobbes, Behn, Locke, Astell, Swift, Montagu and Defoe.

• Days/Times: Th 10:00AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Achinstein, Sharon
• Room: Gilman 388
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course, we take up Hester Blum’s blunt observation that “the sea is not a metaphor” in order to consider the visions and hopes black writers have associated with the sea, as well as the despair and trauma transatlantic slavery has left “in the wake,” to quote Christina Sharpe.

• Days/Times: F 1:00PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room: Gilman 130D
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 8/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

What if the social doesn't just "contain" literature but takes its cues from it? This course will address the fundamental and ongoing questions about the way people live and the role of social practice in defining, producing, and using literature. In this course we will ask about the material production of texts; about the role of readers in appropriating them; about the alliance of literature to class and institutional settings; about the human interactions that literature models for us and their problems; and about the connection between literary studies and globalization. Rather than regard “the social” as simply a shorthand for “social problems,” and literature’s relationship to it as merely indexical or diagnostic, we will explore more complex versions of both sociality and its relationship to literature. Course materials takes up bodies of knowledge that fall in the contact zone between sociology and literary theory—Marxian hermeneutics, discourse-network theory, media studies, book history, narratology, object-oriented ontologies, and systems theory--and assess their worth for changing conversations in literary studies without rendering literary criticism obsolete. In fact, we will seriously consider the idea that literary criticism has much to say about truly complex sociological and social phenomena, and conditions of modernity, perhaps doing sociology better than sociology in its present form. Another question we will ask is if Kantian aesthetics can be reconciled with Bourdieuian sociology, studying pieces of interpretation and theory that do exactly that. Aside from many canonical sociological texts, students will be given a solid introduction to British Cultural Studies, the Frankfurt School, Poststructuralism, Affect Studies, and Book History.

• Days/Times: W 1:00PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Da, Nan
• Room: Gilman 388
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Daniel, Andrew
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Favret, Mary Agnes
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD students in their first spring semester. They will get their first bit of experience with TAship responsibilities.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 9/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD students in their second year. This indicates they are actively participating as a TA as required by the program.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD students/candidates in their third year. This indicates they are actively teaching a course as required by the program.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. This indicates they are actively teaching a course as required by the program.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 9/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. This indicates they are actively performing an administrative/service role with the program/department or university that precludes any teaching responsibilities.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 9/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. For those who receive external funding and will neither do the expected teaching or participate in any kind of departmental service as required.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD students who have successfully passed their exam and have entered "candidacy." The DGS will host workshops over the course of the spring to help with writing the dissertation prospectus that will outline their dissertation project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD students who have successfully passed their exam and have entered "candidacy." This indicates they are actively writing/working on their dissertation prospectus that will outline their dissertation project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia; Thompson, Mark Christian
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 31/40
• PosTag(s): n/a

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This seminar takes as its jumping off point the question of how the representation of race and ethnicity intersects with theories surrounding aesthetics, literary form, and speculation writ large, proposing that the investigation of these elements and their various imbrications offer an important aperture to consider the contemporary, and ways to reflect on the haunting remainders of history as they become manifest in cultural production.

• Days/Times: M 2:00PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Gil'Adí, Maia
• Room: Gilman 479
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 6/10
• PosTag(s): MLL-SPAN

This course introduces basic computational techniques in the context of empirical humanistic scholarship. Topics covered include the command-line, basic Python programming, and experimental design. While illustrative examples are drawn from humanistic domains, the primary focus is on methods: those with specific domains in mind should be aware that such applied research is welcome and exciting, but will largely be their responsibility beyond the confines of the course. Students will come away with tangible understanding of how to cast simple humanistic questions as empirical hypotheses, ground and test these hypotheses computationally, and justify the choices made while doing so. No previous programming experience is required.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Lippincott, Tom; Sirin Ryan, Hale
• Room: Krieger 304
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 8/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course introduces substantial machine learning methods of particular relevance to humanistic scholarship. Areas covered include standard models for classification, regression, and topic modeling, before turning to the array of open-source pretrained deep neural models, and the common mechanisms for employing them. Students are expected to have a level of programming experience equivalent to that gained from AS.360.304, Gateway Computing, AS.250.205, or Harvard’s CS50 for Python. Students will come away with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different machine learning models, the ability to discuss them in relation to human intelligence and to make informed decisions of when and how to employ them, and an array of related technical knowledge.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Backer, Samuel Ehrlich; Messner, Craig A
• Room: Maryland 114
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is for English graduate students who are pre-candidacy and need to be credited for work over the summer.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 13/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 18/30
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is intended to train students in skills required by the discipline, help prepare them for a range of futures, and integrate them into the university community.

• Days/Times: Th 9:30AM - 12:30PM
• Instructor: Da, Nan
• Room: Gilman 130D
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

This graduate seminar will examine the long history, dating back to the eighteenth century, of reflection on the nature of the modern university and the place of the humanities within it. With a focus on the much-discussed “crisis” of the contemporary humanities, it will examine the emergence and evolution of the humanistic disciplines. Have the humanities in the academy always been in crisis? What could this possibly mean and what does it imply about how we practice the humanities today?

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:30PM
• Instructor: Mufti, Aamir
• Room: Gilman 130D
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course considers the 'conjugal imaginary' in early modern European religious, scientific, economic, and political thought. Readings in early modern literature (More, Erasmus, Shakepseare, Milton, Cavendish, Behn, Locke, Astell) as well as theorists of family, feminism, and sexuality (Engels, Foucault, Cooper, Butler, Lowe, Kottman, Federici, Wynter). Topics include: the ‘sexual contract’ and patriarchalism; the 'private' as opposed to the 'public' sphere; the disciplining of the body; the establishment of racialized and gendered categories of humans; the definition of labor as production or reproduction; coercion and consent; the new anthropological logics regarding the global (in cross-confessional intimacies or with with partners outside Europe); and the new sciences of population and economies of resource management that shaped the emergent colonial logics. We will ask how early modern sexual regimes of consigning the family and sexuality to the intimate and economic spheres shape the meaning of politics in the period 1500-1700.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:30PM
• Instructor: Achinstein, Sharon
• Room: Gilman 130D
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course explores texts from the 19th and 20th centuries that query the distinction between magical, occult, and supernatural discourses and scientific and rational inquiry. Modernism has often been seen to usher in a new and thoroughly disenchanted literature. But this view overlooks texts from across the wider period that challenge the boundaries between ‘official’ and ‘heterodox’ knowledges. Ranging across genres including experimental literatures, life writing, ghost stories and folk tales this course explores how and why writers such as H.G. Wells, Vernon Lee, Zora Neale Hurston, H.D., Shirley Jackson, R.K. Narayan, and J.M. Coetzee imagine the re-enchantment of the world.

• Days/Times: T 10:00AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Hobson, Suzanne
• Room: Gilman 130D
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD students in their second year. This indicates they are actively participating as a TA as required by the program.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Nurhussein, Nadia
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Daniel, Andrew
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jackson, Lawrence P
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Mao, Douglas
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 3/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Miller, Andrew H
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. This indicates they are actively teaching a course as required by the program.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. This indicates they are actively performing an administrative/service role with the program/department or university that precludes any teaching responsibilities.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is a semester-long independent research course for graduate students. Students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with designated faculty throughout the semester.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 30/40
• PosTag(s): n/a

We will use the meanings and methodologies of “materiality” to examine the medieval world, by analyzing objects, texts, networks, patterns of circulation and appropriation, aesthetics and enshrinement, production and knowledge communities.

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Lester, Anne E.
• Room: Gilman 305
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

Humanists possess a reservoir of scholarly abilities that prime them for contributing to debates well beyond the academy. This semester-long workshop will introduce graduate students to the basics of writing for such broad audience. Each session will be organized around particular topics in public humanities writing, including the pitching, writing, editing, and publishing processes of newspapers, magazines, and online outlets. We will also consider the forms of writing that most allow scholars to draw from their academic training and research: reviews, personal essays, op-eds, interviews, and profiles. Throughout the course we will see how the interdisciplinarity, comparativism, and multilingualism of fields from across the humanities can be helpful for reaching wide audiences. Beyond the nuts and bolts of getting started in so-called “public” writing, this course aspires to teach graduate students how to combine quality writing with academic knowledge, scholarly analysis with a general intellectual readership—and, ultimately, make academic knowledge a public good. Taught in English.

• Days/Times: T 3:30PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Lurtz, Casey Marina
• Room: Gilman 490
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Knowing who or what counts as a person seems straightforward, until we consider the many kinds of creatures, objects, and artificial beings that have been granted—or demanded or denied—that status. This course explores recent debates on being a person in culture, law, and philosophy. Questions examined will include: Should trees have standing? Can corporations have religious beliefs? Could a robot sign a contract? Materials examined will be wide-ranging, including essays, philosophy, novels, science fiction, television, film. No special background is required.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Siraganian, Lisa
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course explores recent developments and disputes in critical theory in relation to their longer philosophical genealogies. The three topics—autonomy, form, and critique—have been the subject of much recent debate, contention, and new analysis, yet each was also a source of critical and philosophical interest in years past. Our aim will be to make sense of today’s exciting and controversial interventions in conversation with earlier theory. “Historical” theory writing will include Poe, Adorno, Benjamin, Lukács, Cavell, R. Williams, Shklovsky, and Jameson; contemporary theory will include Stephen Best, Barbara Fields, Sharon Marcus, Walter Benn Michaels, Sianne Ngai, Nicholas Brown, Rita Felski, Caroline Levine, Mark McGurl, and Toril Moi.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Siraganian, Lisa
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/12
• PosTag(s): n/a