Graduate Courses

The courses listed below are provided by the JHU Public Course Search. This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses and may not be complete.

Course registration information can be found on the Student Information Services (SIS) website.

Course # (Section)	Title	Day/Times	Instructor	Location	Term	Additional Details
AS.060.634 (01)	Warfare, Welfare Windrush: Literature in Britain at Mid-Century	W 1:00PM - 4:00PM	Mao, Douglas	Gilman 130D	Spring 2026	Description: It has lately been recognized that the middle of the twentieth century was a period of exceptional literary invention. The 1930s through the 1960s gave us challenging, fascinating, sometimes infuriating texts that offer crucial windows onto the birth of the postwar world order and thus into the life of our own time. This course will examine British mid-century writing addressing the aftermath of World War II, the rise of the welfare state, and the “colonization in reverse” that brought the Windrush writers from the Caribbean to England. Authors studied may include Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, T.S. Eliot, Richard Hoggart, George Lamming, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jennings, Sam Selvon, Alan Sillitoe, John Osborne, and John Wyndham. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 1/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.664 (01)	Logics of Sacrifice	Th 1:00PM - 4:00PM	Daniel, Andrew	Gilman 130D	Spring 2026	Description: This seminar will investigate the staging of sacrifice at the border between scripture and literature. Imagined variously as a crucial site of affective investment, a bloody spectacle of corporeal destruction and a means of familial or communal rescue, sacrifice connects the history and theory of religious doctrine to political questions of sovereign power and aesthetic questions of form and genre. In this graduate seminar we will examine a sequence of sacrificial scenes primarily from classical literature, Hebrew scripture and early modern literature. We will conclude with a final discussion of contemporary art and culture. Across these transhistorical discussions, we will study and test the affordances of an array of theories of sacrifice. What forms of agency are modeled by the available logics of sacrifice? How does sacrifice operate across drama, lyric poetry and the early novel? Can we refuse the logic of sacrifice? Possible texts and authors include: Euripides’ “Hecuba” and “Iphigenia at Aulis”, late medieval passion plays on the death of Jesus, George Buchanan’s “Jephtha”, John Lyly’s “Gallathea”, William Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” and “The Merchant of Venice”, John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets”, George Herbert’s “The Temple”, John Milton’s “The Passion”, Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko”, and philosophical and theoretical writings by Søren Kierkegaard, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Rene Girard, Eugenie Brinkema and others. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 5/8 Tags: ENGL-PR1800
AS.060.800 (01)	Independent Study		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 5.00 - 10.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.800 (15)	Independent Study		Miller, Andrew H		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 5.00 - 10.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 4/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.811 (01)	TA Apprenticeship		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: For English PhD students in their first spring semester. They will get their first bit of experience with TAship responsibilities. Credits: 1.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 5/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.822 (01)	Teaching Assistant		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: For English PhD students in their second year. This indicates they are actively participating as a TA as required by the program. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 8/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.833 (01)	Third-Year Teaching		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: For English PhD students/candidates in their third year. This indicates they are actively teaching a course as required by the program. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 6/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.839 (07)	Independent Study for Oral Exam Preparation		Daniel, Andrew		Spring 2026	Description: This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams Credits: 6.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 4/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.855 (01)	Fifth-Year Teaching		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. This indicates they are actively teaching a course as required by the program. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 7/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.857 (01)	Fifth-Year Service		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 10/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.859 (01)	Fifth-Year Fellowship		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 10/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.881 (01)	Dissertation Prospectus Workshop		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 6/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.883 (01)	Dissertation Prospectus Writing		Hickman, Jared W		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 6.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 6/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.893 (01)	Individual Research		Hickman, Jared W; Nurhussein, Nadia		Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 - 9.00 Status: Closed Seats Available: 32/40 Tags: n/a
AS.360.605 (01)	Introduction to Computational Methods for the Humanities	TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM	Lippincott, Tom; Sirin Ryan, Hale	Bloomberg 168	Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 10/10 Tags: n/a
AS.360.606 (01)	Computational Intelligence for the Humanities	TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM	Messner, Craig A	Bloomberg 168	Spring 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 10/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.800 (01)	Independent Study		Hickman, Jared W		Summer 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 5.00 - 10.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.803 (01)	Pre-Dissertation Summer Work		Hickman, Jared W		Summer 2026	Description: This course is for English graduate students who are pre-candidacy and need to be credited for work over the summer. Credits: 9.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 13/20 Tags: n/a
AS.060.893 (01)	Individual Research		Hickman, Jared W		Summer 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 - 9.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 17/30 Tags: n/a
AS.060.602 (01)	Proseminar	T 10:30AM - 1:30PM	Rosenthal, Jesse Karl	Gilman 130D	Fall 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 8/8 Tags: n/a
AS.060.606 (01)	The Single Author Seminar	Th 1:00PM - 4:00PM	Bronstein, Michaela	Gilman 130D	Fall 2026	Description: What is the value and use of engaging deeply with a single author's work? Each member of the seminar will independently select an author to focus on for the semester based on their own research interests, and read a substantial body of the work of whatever author you choose. As a group, we will organize our discussion by themes that can unite many writers: the canonical masterpiece, the 'forgotten' minor work; historical context. We'll also address collaboration, institutional history, and other challenges to the individual author as a meaningful object of study. This seminar will provide practice in engaging in scholarly conversation that does not revolve around shared primary texts. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 4/8 Tags: n/a
AS.060.618 (01)	Milton	M 1:00PM - 4:00PM	Achinstein, Sharon	Gilman 130D	Fall 2026	Description: Close reading and reconsideration of the poetry and prose of John Milton, with an eye to readings and possibilities opened up by current critical approaches. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 5/8 Tags: n/a
AS.060.691 (01)	The World Viewed	W 1:00PM - 4:00PM	Miller, Andrew H	Gilman 130D	Fall 2026	Description: This course will be devoted to reading Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed, a book which occupies an influential but anomolous place in both film theory and philosophy. We’ll read some of the film theory on which the book draws, and watch some of the films to which it refers, but most of our time will be spent patiently studying the book itself. In most seminars and in exam preparation one is trained in the necessary skills of reading more, and reading quickly; this seminar, by contrast, will require that you read slowly and intensely. No previous knowledge of film theory is required. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 6/8 Tags: n/a
AS.060.800 (01)	Independent Study		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 5.00 - 10.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.822 (01)	Teaching Assistant		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: For English PhD students in their second year. This indicates they are actively participating as a TA as required by the program. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 6/10 Tags: n/a
AS.060.839 (01)	Independent Study for Oral Exam Preparation		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams Credits: 6.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.839 (17)	Independent Study for Oral Exam Preparation		Nealon, Chris		Fall 2026	Description: This is an independent study for third years preparing for their candidacy oral exams Credits: 6.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 4/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.855 (01)	Fifth-Year Teaching		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: For English PhD candidates in their fifth year. This indicates they are actively teaching a course as required by the program. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 5/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.857 (01)	Fifth-Year Service		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 4/5 Tags: n/a
AS.060.893 (01)	Individual Work		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: 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. Credits: 3.00 - 9.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 35/40 Tags: n/a
AS.060.895 (01)	Journal Club		Hickman, Jared W		Fall 2026	Description: Credits: 1.00 Status: Approval Required Seats Available: 8/10 Tags: n/a
AS.211.606 (01)	The Author’s Responsibility	M 1:00PM - 3:00PM	Stahl, Neta	Gilman 479	Fall 2026	Description: The overarching goal of this seminar is to study the connection between aesthetics and responsibility, but the more specific question we will ask is: What is the author's responsibility in the face of injustice? Drawing on philosophical literature and texts from various genres, we will examine changes in the status of the author in Western culture. We will look at the influence of changes in the meanings of authorship in the post-Roland Barthes “death of the author” and the post-deconstruction era, and will explore the question of today’s authors/poets’ sense of responsibility to social, political, environmental, and racial injustice and ask how their sense of responsibility is reflected in their works. Credits: 3.00 Status: Canceled Seats Available: 10/10 Tags: n/a
AS.213.606 (01)	The Melancholic Imagination	Th 2:00PM - 4:00PM	Tobias, Rochelle	Gilman 479	Fall 2026	Description: Melancholia is marked by two competing tendencies: on the one hand, it clings to the objects of this world as if they could provide a path to transcendence and, on the other, it recognizes the weight of these objects, their transience, and concomitant senselessness. This course will examine the melancholic disposition from Robert Burton’s 1621 tome The Anatomy of Melancholy onward to Martin Heidegger’s analysis of boredom in Being and Time. We will consider the religious dimensions of melancholia as explored in different contexts by Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg and will pay particular attention to Warburg’s notion of the Pathosformel while reflecting on literary works by Flaubert, Adrian, Chekhov, Hofmannsthal, Musil, Pessoa, Rilke, and W. G. Sebald. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 8/15 Tags: n/a
AS.213.702 (01)	Aesthetic Judgment, Political Agency: Kant to Kafka	T 3:00PM - 5:00PM	Frey, Christiane	Gilman 443	Fall 2026	Description: Following Hannah Arendt’s seminal claim that Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” contains his unwritten political philosophy, this seminar investigates how the structure of aesthetic judgment defines the possibilities of political agency. We begin with Kant’s aesthetic theory and Arendt’s “Lectures on Kant” to understand how the ability to think from the standpoint of others constitutes the core of the political. Through this lens, we trace the genealogy of aesthetics from Baumgarten’s sensuous cognition to Herder’s empathy, Schiller’s aesthetic education, and Novalis’ poetics of the state. The course then examines exemplary and radical challenges to these models: the fanaticism of justice in Kleist’s “Michael Kohlhaas,” the aesthetic appeal for social justice in Bettina von Arnim’s “This Book Belongs to the King,” the fragmented political consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s “Three Guineas,” the transition from disinterested distance to radical attention in Simone Weil, and finally, the law as inscrutable form in Kafka’s “The Trial.” Readings include: Baumgarten, Kant, Herder, Schiller, Novalis, Kleist, Arnim, Arendt, Weil, Woolf, and Kafka. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 5/12 Tags: n/a
AS.214.626 (01)	Sacred/Subversive: Gender, Authority, and Devotion in Early Modern Italy	T 1:00PM - 3:00PM	Ray, Meredith	Gilman 479	Fall 2026	Description: This graduate seminar examines how women in early modern Italy used devotional language to negotiate questions of literary voice and authority, community and critique. We will approach devotion not only as a spiritual practice informed by the developments of the sixteenth- and seventeenth century (the intensified religious fervor of the Counter Reformation, the reassessment of female Biblical figures, the imposition of strict enclosure on convents), but as a framework through which to shape intellectual agency, claim authority, experiment with hybrid genres, and resist gendered cultural constraints. Close readings include a range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women writers, with particular attention to Arcangela Tarabotti, whose work allows for powerful reflection on the tensions between piety, authority, and dissent. As we consider how the literary strategies of these early modern women maneuver between the sacred and subversive, we will draw on theoretical readings on voice, enclosure, and literary authority. Some familiarity with Italian is recommended. Credits: 3.00 Status: Open Seats Available: 8/10 Tags: n/a