Undergraduate Courses

To see a complete list of courses offered and their descriptions, visit the online course catalog.

The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at https://sis.jhu.edu/classes.

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Literature of the Holocaust
AS.211.440 (01)

How has the Holocaust been represented in literature? Are there special challenges posed by genocide to the social and aesthetic traditions of representation? Where does the Holocaust fit in to the array of concerns that literature expresses? And where does literature fit in to the commemoration of communal tragedy and the working through of individual trauma entailed by thinking about and representing the Holocaust? These questions will guide our consideration of a range of texts — nonfiction, novels, poetry — originally written in Yiddish, German, English, French and other languages (including works by Primo Levi and Isaac Bashevis Singer). A special focus will be works written during and in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. All readings in English.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Spinner, Samuel Jacob
  • Room: Shaffer 2
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/15
  • PosTag(s): MLL-HEBR, MLL-ENGL

Shakespeare: The Novel
AS.060.326 (01)

What if King Lear had been a mother? What if the we thought about Othello through the lens of the holocaust? What if the indigene Caliban was the hero, not the villain? What if Miranda chose Caliban over her European suitor? (The Tempest) Could a modern-day Kate be tricked into marriage and “tamed” (The Taming of the Shrew)? When contemporary novelists rewrite Shakespeare, they pose questions left hanging in the play and bring the plays into our own world. In this course, we will read Shakespeare plays (King Lear, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice) along with contemporary novelists that rewrite – and confront -- those plays (Jane Smiley, Caryl Phillips, J. M. Coetzee, Anne Tyler). Students will take up important literary questions about kinds of literature (plays vs novels), the canon, imitation, adaptation, and also address the themes of power, gender and sexuality, family dynamics, authority, colonization and the environment.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Achinstein, Sharon
  • Room: Maryland 202
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/18
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-PR1800

Introduction to Literary Study
AS.060.107 (01)

This course serves as an introduction to the basic methods of and critical approaches to the study of literature. Some sections may have further individual topic descriptions; please check in SIS when searching for courses.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
  • Instructor: Favret, Mary
  • Room: Gilman 219
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Global Victorians: Race, Empire, Re-Imagination
AS.060.213 (02)

The British nineteenth century was marked by rapid industrialization and increasing social inequality. It gave birth to some of the most well-known novelists and thinkers in the English language, while introducing technologies of communication and surveillance that continue to trouble us today. It was also a period of the British Empire’s overseas expansion and racial-economic empowerment, especially in Africa, East Asia, and the Mediterranean. This course surveys a wide range of literary, artistic, intellectual developments that took place across a wide geographical terrain in the British imperial nineteenth-century, as well as later imperial and post-imperial renditions of it.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Jackson, Jeanne-Marie, Rosenthal, Jesse Karl
  • Room: Shaffer 304
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 15/20
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-GLOBAL, ENGL-LEC, INST-GLOBAL

Ulysses and The Waste Land at 101
AS.060.336 (01)

This course celebrates the centenary of two of the most famous works of literature to appear in the twentieth century, James Joyce’s Ulysses and T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Attention to historical contexts, connections with other works of literature, and influence on writing worldwide. We will also read, in counterpoint, another groundbreaking text of 1922: the brilliant, challenging, and inexhaustible novel Jacob’s Room, by Virginia Woolf.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Mao, Douglas
  • Room: Gilman 377
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

American Bibles
AS.060.347 (01)

This course will juxtapose pertinent key passages of the Bible with modern American texts that are fundamentally biblical in their inspirations, aspirations, proportions, and allusions. We will consider these texts’ attempts, in the face of globalizing and secularizing forces, such as Atlantic slavery and German higher criticism, to affirm, undermine, appropriate, and redirect the authority of the ur-canonical text. Texts may include: Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred; Pauline Hopkins, Hagar’s Daughter; Mark Twain, Diaries of Adam and Eve and Letters from the Earth; Terrence Malick, dir., Tree of Life; Michal Lemberger, After Abel and Other Stories.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
  • Room: Gilman 55
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Introduction to Literary Study
AS.060.107 (02)

This course serves as an introduction to the basic methods of and critical approaches to the study of literature. Some sections may have further individual topic descriptions; please check in SIS when searching for courses.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
  • Instructor: Achinstein, Sharon
  • Room: Gilman 377
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Global Victorians: Race, Empire, Re-Imagination
AS.060.213 (01)

The British nineteenth century was marked by rapid industrialization and increasing social inequality. It gave birth to some of the most well-known novelists and thinkers in the English language, while introducing technologies of communication and surveillance that continue to trouble us today. It was also a period of the British Empire’s overseas expansion and racial-economic empowerment, especially in Africa, East Asia, and the Mediterranean. This course surveys a wide range of literary, artistic, intellectual developments that took place across a wide geographical terrain in the British imperial nineteenth-century, as well as later imperial and post-imperial renditions of it.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Jackson, Jeanne-Marie, Rosenthal, Jesse Karl
  • Room: Shaffer 304
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/20
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-GLOBAL, ENGL-LEC, INST-GLOBAL

Global Victorians: Race, Empire, Re-Imagination
AS.060.213 (03)

The British nineteenth century was marked by rapid industrialization and increasing social inequality. It gave birth to some of the most well-known novelists and thinkers in the English language, while introducing technologies of communication and surveillance that continue to trouble us today. It was also a period of the British Empire’s overseas expansion and racial-economic empowerment, especially in Africa, East Asia, and the Mediterranean. This course surveys a wide range of literary, artistic, intellectual developments that took place across a wide geographical terrain in the British imperial nineteenth-century, as well as later imperial and post-imperial renditions of it.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Jackson, Jeanne-Marie, Rosenthal, Jesse Karl
  • Room: Shaffer 304
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 14/20
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-GLOBAL, ENGL-LEC, INST-GLOBAL

American Literature to 1865
AS.060.219 (01)

A survey course of American literature from contact to the Civil War.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 3:50PM, F 3:00PM - 3:50PM
  • Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
  • Room: Gilman 17
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 15/20
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800

American Literature to 1865
AS.060.219 (02)

A survey course of American literature from contact to the Civil War.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 3:50PM, F 3:00PM - 3:50PM
  • Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
  • Room: Gilman 17
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 19/20
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800

The Rhetoric of Black Radicalism
AS.060.379 (01)

This course will focus on the history of black resistance to oppression and injustice from the early republic to the present through different forms of radical speech acts. The main question(s) that we will explore are as follows: how do radical speech acts shape and inform our understanding of social and political issues, including our very conception of the United States as a nation (and ourselves as a people)? In this course, we will investigate such questions through reading radical speeches and essays from a range of black activists and examining the principles of persuasion that help shape the relationship between polemical language and activism. This course will engage with writers and speakers such as Lemuel Haynes, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, and Alicia Garza.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Young, Jarvis Aaron
  • Room: Krieger 309
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/18
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-GLOBAL

U.S. Colonialism and Science Fiction
AS.060.385 (01)

Recent scholarship has noted the persistence of a colonial gaze in science fiction’s imaginations of the future. In the US, the earliest proto-science fiction emerged out of pulp stories about the violent settlement of the post-bellum Midwest. Similarly, figures such as the “alien other” and tropes of space exploration were inseparable from turn-of-the-century US imperial ventures. At the same time, diverse forms of speculative fiction have flourished that challenge and reinterpret the colonial assumptions of the genre. This course will focus on the links between US imperialism, settler colonialism and the “other worlds” imagined by science fiction, and the ways that writers have deconstructed technologies of scientific racism and colonial domination. As we read texts from H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, N. K. Jemisin, and watch Hollywood films like James Cameron’s Avatar or Marvel’s Black Panther, we will consider how science fiction raises provocative questions about the role of science and technology, race and gender in post-humanist imaginations, and the politics of futurity.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
  • Instructor: Cram, Mitchell Allan
  • Room: Gilman 130D
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

21st Century Female Playwrights
AS.225.318 (01)

This is a writing intensive class exploring the current wealth of women playwrights, including Pulitzer Prize winners: Wendy Wasserstein, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, and Jackie Sibblies Drury (2019 Prize for FAIRVIEW). We will discuss Script Analysis and read (and see) plays by numerous writers including Claire Barron, Kia Corthron, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl, Danai Gurira, Caleen Sinnette Jennings, and Hansol Jung. This class will include a mid-term and a Final Paper.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
  • Instructor: Denithorne, Margaret
  • Room: Merrick 105
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/14
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Forms of Moral Community: The Contemporary World Novel
AS.300.336 (01)

Literary and philosophical imaginations of moral community in the post-WWII period. Texts include: Coetzee, Disgrace; McEwan, Atonement; Achebe,Things Fall Apart; Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World; Roy, The God of Small Things; Lessing, The Grass is Singing; Mistry, A Fine Balance; Morrison, Beloved; and essays by Levi, Strawson, Adorno, Murdoch, and Beauvoir on the deep uncertainty over moral community after the crisis of World War II. Close attention to novelistic style and narrative will inform our study of the philosophical questions that animate these works. What does it mean to acknowledge another person’s humanity? Who are the members of a moral community? Why do we hold one another responsible for our actions? How do fundamental moral emotions such as contempt, humiliation, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, and regret reveal the limits of a moral community?

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Ong, Yi-Ping
  • Room: Gilman 377
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

All That Jazz: African American Literature and Music, Origins through the 1950s
AS.060.430 (01)

This course examines fiction writing, memoir, and film that engages the creation and meaning of jazz music. Beginning with writers who explore the late 19th experience of urban black musical cultures roughly designated “ragtime,” the course will offer a deep engagement with the representations of the “blues” and “swing” music of the long New Negro Movement between 1915 and 1940. The final section of the course considers the post-war novelists and memoirists who charted the emergence of the “Be bop” jazz musician as tragic hero, countermanding New Negro representations of entertainer par excellence. Each text will be paired with musical selections from a prominent artist. Questions of the political significance of music, black urban habitus, and musical codings of gender, race and sexuality as an oppositional or counter-hegemonic formation will be important to the course. The seminar will also have sessions to investigate key archival repositories in Baltimore, like the Eubie Blake Center and the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Texts and artists considered include: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Scot Joplin, Eubie Blake, Stomping the Blues, Bessie Smith, Satchmo, Louis Armstrong Hot Fives, Jazz, Duke Ellington, The Blacker the Berry, Fletcher Henderson, Home to Harlem, Ella Fitzgerald, Good Morning Blues, Count Basie, A Drop of Patience, Thelonius Monk, Lady Sings the Blues, Billie Holiday, Chico and Rita, Dizzy Gilespie&Chano Pozo, Night Song, Charlie Parker.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Jackson, Lawrence P
  • Room: Gilman 130D
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/18
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-GLOBAL

Literature and the Idea of Nature
AS.300.355 (01)

This course traces the changing idea of nature and our relation to it. We will study this topic through the close attention to a variety of exemplary literary texts from a range of different historical situations. These include drama, poetry, novels, and essays, as well as topics such as renaissance pastorals, the dream of dominating our environment through mechanical reason, the idealization of nature in romantic poetry, and contemporary confrontations with our planet’s sixth mass extinction, climate change, and problems of environmental justice. We will read texts by Tasso, Shakespeare, Defoe, Hölderlin, Leopardi, Mary Shelley, Thoreau, Hemingway, Carson, Albee, as well as writings in current ecological humanities.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Lisi, Leonardo
  • Room: Gilman 10
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/12
  • PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR

Introduction to Computational Humanities
AS.360.304 (01)

This course introduces students and researchers from humanities disciplines to ideas and practices from the computational sciences. The course aims to provide the understanding needed for self-sufficient exploration and well-informed criticism of how computational methods relate to traditional scholarship. The semester begins with a history of computational research, then covers three major aspects of computational inquiry for the humanities: 1) representing primary sources, domains, and scholarly knowledge, 2) interacting with such representations via basic computer programming, and 3) introducing data-driven machine learning ("AI") to complement existing humanistic practices. Lectures and labs will also cover specific methods that immediately assist the scholar with practical tasks, such as regular expressions for pattern-based information retrieval and topic modeling for unsupervised primary source exploration. No prior experience with computation or programming is needed, and the course is particularly suited for advanced undergraduate and graduate students pursuing applied research in the humanities.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Backer, Sam E, Lippincott, Tom, Messner, Craig A, Sirin Ryan, Hale
  • Room: Gilman 17
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.211.440 (01)Literature of the HolocaustT 1:30PM - 4:00PMSpinner, Samuel JacobShaffer 2MLL-HEBR, MLL-ENGL
AS.060.326 (01)Shakespeare: The NovelT 1:30PM - 4:00PMAchinstein, SharonMaryland 202ENGL-PR1800
AS.060.107 (01)Introduction to Literary StudyMW 4:30PM - 5:45PMFavret, MaryGilman 219
AS.060.213 (02)Global Victorians: Race, Empire, Re-ImaginationMW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMJackson, Jeanne-Marie, Rosenthal, Jesse KarlShaffer 304ENGL-GLOBAL, ENGL-LEC, INST-GLOBAL
AS.060.336 (01)Ulysses and The Waste Land at 101W 1:30PM - 4:00PMMao, DouglasGilman 377
AS.060.347 (01)American BiblesTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMHickman, Jared WGilman 55
AS.060.107 (02)Introduction to Literary StudyTTh 9:00AM - 10:15AMAchinstein, SharonGilman 377
AS.060.213 (01)Global Victorians: Race, Empire, Re-ImaginationMW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMJackson, Jeanne-Marie, Rosenthal, Jesse KarlShaffer 304ENGL-GLOBAL, ENGL-LEC, INST-GLOBAL
AS.060.213 (03)Global Victorians: Race, Empire, Re-ImaginationMW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMJackson, Jeanne-Marie, Rosenthal, Jesse KarlShaffer 304ENGL-GLOBAL, ENGL-LEC, INST-GLOBAL
AS.060.219 (01)American Literature to 1865MW 3:00PM - 3:50PM, F 3:00PM - 3:50PMHickman, Jared WGilman 17ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800
AS.060.219 (02)American Literature to 1865MW 3:00PM - 3:50PM, F 3:00PM - 3:50PMHickman, Jared WGilman 17ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800
AS.060.379 (01)The Rhetoric of Black RadicalismTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMYoung, Jarvis AaronKrieger 309ENGL-GLOBAL
AS.060.385 (01)U.S. Colonialism and Science FictionTTh 9:00AM - 10:15AMCram, Mitchell AllanGilman 130DMSCH-HUM
AS.225.318 (01)21st Century Female PlaywrightsTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMDenithorne, MargaretMerrick 105
AS.300.336 (01)Forms of Moral Community: The Contemporary World NovelTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMOng, Yi-PingGilman 377
AS.060.430 (01)All That Jazz: African American Literature and Music, Origins through the 1950sT 1:30PM - 4:00PMJackson, Lawrence PGilman 130DENGL-GLOBAL
AS.300.355 (01)Literature and the Idea of NatureTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMLisi, LeonardoGilman 10MSCH-HUM, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR
AS.360.304 (01)Introduction to Computational HumanitiesMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMBacker, Sam E, Lippincott, Tom, Messner, Craig A, Sirin Ryan, HaleGilman 17