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.

FYS: What is the Common Good?
AS.001.100 (01)

What is “the common good”? How do individuals consider this idea, this question, and how are societies led, or misled, by its pursuit? Together, we will explore sources from a range of perspectives: What does Aristotle’s theory of the common good teach us? Or the Federalist Papers, the design of Baltimore’s public transportation system, meritocracy in higher education, the perniciousness of pandemics, proliferation of nuclear weapons, restorative justice, or intimate love? Drawing from film, journal articles, literature, and other sources—authors/creators include Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Bong Joon-ho, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Sandel, and more—this First-Year Seminar is as much about how we ask and interrogate challenging, timeless questions as it is about the answers themselves. Engaging our material and each other, we will work together to hone the habits of scholarly inquiry essential to this practice: reading, writing, talking. The seminar will culminate in a final, collaborative research project that seeks to map, and manifest, versions of the common good.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Watters, Aliza
  • Room: Gilman 134
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 11/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

How Not to be Afraid of Poetry
AS.001.192 (01)

What is poetry? And why don't we like it? Can poetry save the world? Can it save us? This First-Year seminar will explore what makes poetry turn ordinary language into something extraordinary, something necessary to our world. The course will involve reading poetry aloud, thinking about poetry in its many purposes, places, and forms, and you will be clapping, blogging, creating video and written projects about these. You'll attend poetry slams in Baltimore, visit bookstores, make some poetry, and most of all, talk and think aloud about language and its powers. Three assignments, spaced across term (75%), attendance/participation (25%).

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Achinstein, Sharon
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

FYS: Games: History, Theory, and Practice
AS.001.205 (01)

From game theory to gamification, games have become a central part of everyday life. More and more, in fields as diverse as economics, entertainment, and education, the game has become the principal model for interpreting and interacting with the social world, and with ourselves. This First-Year Seminar will look at the history of games in the modern world, with an eye to understanding their increasing prominence in the 20th and 21st centuries. What social and technological changes brought about this shift? And yes -- we will play, and seek to analyze, some games as well (both analog and digital).

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Rosenthal, Jesse Karl
  • Room: Gilman 130D
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

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: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Thompson, Mark C
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/15
  • 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: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
  • Instructor: Crisostomo, Johaina Katinka
  • Room: Hodson 216
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 14/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Robots, Androids, Slaves
AS.060.109 (01)

Since the rise of Silicon Valley, tech enthusiasts and futurists have been debating the possibility of what has been called “the singularity” — the moment when artificial intelligence (AI) decisively and irreversibly surpasses human abilities. If this does happen, observers worry, it’s not just that robots will take our jobs; will we become subservient to our new robot masters? Will we become extinct, and not because of climate change? This course explores such questions through the lens of literature and popular media. We will watch several films from the last 15 years or so that depict the rise of AI. We will ask about the roles tat gender, race and class have in our imagination of the work robots do. And we will read a range of short essays that approach the question of labor and technology from different angles than mass media usually do.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Nealon, Chris
  • Room: Gilman 217
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

If The Walls Could Talk: Meaningful Environments in Literary Worlds
AS.060.117 (01)

For most of us, the smaller details marking the four walls of a room that we find ourselves in for long stretches of time eventually blend into the background noise of our day-to-day lives--always present, but screened out of our active notice. But if the walls and objects all around us could talk—or at least be made legible to us—what stories might they have to tell? Faced with such seemingly insubstantial traces of the animate within the inanimate, we might well end up with a newfound appreciation for the word "haunted" in a day-to-day life that has largely been exorcised of all thought of indwelling spirits. In this course, we will read a series of texts that invite us to think more deeply about overlooked meanings, attachments, conflicts, and other social relationships embedded in private and public environments. In so doing, we will learn methods for carefully reading environmental details in literature that will translate to an ability to better grasp the meanings made manifest in our own day-to-day environments.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
  • Instructor: Oliver, Xavier A
  • Room: Gilman 313
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Literature and Visual Art
AS.060.169 (01)

We’ll glance at the history of the relations between painting and literature, before turning to the art of the past 200 years. What has drawn writers to place their powers against those of painters (in particular)? How have they managed the comparisons? How might we understand the distinctive powers and limitations of these two modes of responding to human experience? While we may have an exam, writing assignments will constitute most of your grade.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Miller, Andrew
  • Room: Bloomberg 168
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

William Shakespeare
AS.060.207 (01)

Who was William Shakespeare, and what can his poems, histories, comedies and tragedies tell us about our overlap with, and divergences from, the early modern world?

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
  • Instructor: Daniel, Andrew
  • Room: Gilman 186
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 11/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800

William Shakespeare
AS.060.207 (02)

Who was William Shakespeare, and what can his poems, histories, comedies and tragedies tell us about our overlap with, and divergences from, the early modern world?

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
  • Instructor: Daniel, Andrew
  • Room: Gilman 186
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800

African American Literature from 1900 to Present
AS.060.223 (01)

A survey of the major and minor texts written by African Americans during the twentieth century, beginning with Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition and concluding with Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
  • Instructor: Jackson, Lawrence P
  • Room: Gilman 219
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC, ENGL-GLOBAL

African American Literature from 1900 to Present
AS.060.223 (02)

A survey of the major and minor texts written by African Americans during the twentieth century, beginning with Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition and concluding with Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PM
  • Instructor: Jackson, Lawrence P
  • Room: Gilman 219
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC, ENGL-GLOBAL

Nineteenth-Century American Literature: History, Philosophy, Insight
AS.060.229 (01)

This lecture course will introduce students to the literature and literary culture of nineteenth-century America and its wider world. Focusing on history, genre and print practices, and culturally hybrid narrative logics, the course will move from the deeply curious and disturbing qualities of this body of literature to the origins and real asks of liberalism, progressivism, national and transnational ideology, secularism, and global modernity. Our core literary selection will comprise of nineteenth century American literature, including but not limited to the works Alexis de Tocqueville, Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Jane Johnson Schoolcraft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Spofford, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Edgar Allen Poe, David Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Francis Parkman, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Yung Wing, and Sui Sin Far.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Da, Nan
  • Room: Gilman 186
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC

Nineteenth-Century American Literature: History, Philosophy, Insight
AS.060.229 (02)

This lecture course will introduce students to the literature and literary culture of nineteenth-century America and its wider world. Focusing on history, genre and print practices, and culturally hybrid narrative logics, the course will move from the deeply curious and disturbing qualities of this body of literature to the origins and real asks of liberalism, progressivism, national and transnational ideology, secularism, and global modernity. Our core literary selection will comprise of nineteenth century American literature, including but not limited to the works Alexis de Tocqueville, Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Jane Johnson Schoolcraft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Spofford, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Edgar Allen Poe, David Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Francis Parkman, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Yung Wing, and Sui Sin Far.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
  • Instructor: Da, Nan
  • Room: Gilman 186
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-LEC

Literature of the Settler Revolution
AS.060.313 (01)

The nineteenth century saw the creation of an “Angloworld” as a result of what one historian has called “the settler revolution.” In perhaps the largest mass migration in human history, millions of English-speakers (and others) invaded Indigenous worlds in what have consequently come to be known as the United States, Canada, and Australia. This seminar offers an introduction to nineteenth-century Indigenous and settler Anglophone writing in the US, Canada, and Australia with a view to understanding the role of literature in inciting, interrogating, and resisting this settler revolution.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Hickman, Jared W
  • Room: Shaffer 2
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Reimagining the Past: History and Memory in Asian American Fiction
AS.060.344 (01)

In this course, we will be focusing on Asian American historical fiction to investigate the constitutive tension between fact and fiction in narratives about the past. What kinds of historical claims, if any, can novels make? How is historical memory transformed in the process of narration? How does the past continue to condition our present/future, and, conversely, in what ways is the past haunted by the present?

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Crisostomo, Johaina Katinka
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/15
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-GLOBAL

Utopias
AS.060.364 (01)

This course examines how writers have imagined perfect, or at least vastly improved, human societies from antiquity through our own day. Topics of particular interest will be the relation between individual liberty and social cohesion in utopian schemes, views on the nature of happiness and justice, and speculations about the ease or arduousness with which utopia might be created or maintained. Authors to be studied may include Plato, Thomas More, Margaret Cavendish, Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Octavia Butler.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Mao, Douglas
  • Room: Latrobe 107
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 1/15
  • PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

Literary Studies as Data Science
AS.060.375 (01)

This course introduces students to variety of approaches to literary studies, underscoring their common interest in the nature of data, its collection, and its analysis. Materials are drawn from the fields of British empiricism, Law and Literature, Marxist and Foucauldian critique, the Birmingham School, New Criticism, Genre Studies, New Historicism, Structuralism, Systems theory, Russian formalism, computational analytics, and the Sociology of Literature.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Da, Nan
  • Room: Bloomberg 168
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 11/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Passing in American Culture
AS.100.275 (01)

This course explores passing narratives – stories that feature people who cross race, class, ethnic, or gender boundaries. We will consider what passing narratives can teach us about power and identity, especially as power is presumed to reside in the self and race is presumed to no longer matter.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Mott, Shani T
  • Room: Hodson 301
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/15
  • PosTag(s): HIST-US

Jewish in America, Yiddish in America: Literature, Culture, Identity
AS.211.314 (01)

iddish was the language of European Jews for 1000 years. From the 19th century to the present day it has been a language that millions of Americans — Jewish immigrants and their descendants–have spoken, written in, conducted their daily lives in, and created culture in. This course will examine literature, film, newspapers, and more to explore how Jewish immigrants to America shaped their identities—as Jews, as Americans, and as former Europeans. What role did maintaining, adapting, or abandoning a minority language play in the creation of Jewish American identity—cultural, ethnic, or religious? How was this language perceived by the majority culture? How was it used to represent the experiences of other minoritized groups? What processes of linguistic and cultural translation were involved in finding a space for Yiddish in America, in its original or translated into English? The overarching subjects of this course include migration, race, ethnicity, multilingualism, and assimilation. We will analyze literature (novels, poetry, drama); film; comedy; and other media. All texts in English.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Spinner, Samuel Jacob
  • Room: Gilman 381
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 10/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Dissent and Cultural Productions: Israeli Culture as a Case Study
AS.211.361 (01)

This course explores the interplay between protest and cultural productions using the Israeli society as a case study. We will examine the formation and nature of political and social protest movements in Israel, such as the Israeli Black Panthers, Israeli feminism, the struggle for LGBTQ rights and the 2011 social justice protest. Dissent in the military and protest against war as well as civil activism in the context of the Palestinians-Israeli conflict will serve us to explore the notion of dissent in the face of collective ethos, memory and trauma. The literary, cinematic, theatrical and artistic productions of dissent will stand at the center of our discussion as well as the role of specific genres and media, including satire and comedy, television, popular music, dance and social media. We will ask ourselves questions such as how do cultural productions express dissent? What is the role of cultural productions in civil activism? And what is the connection between specific genre or media and expression of dissent? All material will be taught in English translation.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Stahl, Neta
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/10
  • PosTag(s): INST-CP, INST-GLOBAL

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: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Denithorne, Margaret
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.001.100 (01)FYS: What is the Common Good?T 1:30PM - 4:00PMWatters, AlizaGilman 134
AS.001.192 (01)How Not to be Afraid of PoetryT 3:00PM - 5:30PMAchinstein, Sharon 
AS.001.205 (01)FYS: Games: History, Theory, and PracticeMW 10:30AM - 11:45AMRosenthal, Jesse KarlGilman 130D
AS.060.107 (01)Introduction to Literary StudyTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMThompson, Mark C 
AS.060.107 (02)Introduction to Literary StudyMW 3:00PM - 4:15PMCrisostomo, Johaina KatinkaHodson 216
AS.060.109 (01)Robots, Androids, SlavesF 1:30PM - 4:00PMNealon, ChrisGilman 217MSCH-HUM
AS.060.117 (01)If The Walls Could Talk: Meaningful Environments in Literary WorldsTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMOliver, Xavier AGilman 313
AS.060.169 (01)Literature and Visual ArtW 1:30PM - 4:00PMMiller, AndrewBloomberg 168
AS.060.207 (01)William ShakespeareMW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AMDaniel, AndrewGilman 186ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800
AS.060.207 (02)William ShakespeareMW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AMDaniel, AndrewGilman 186ENGL-LEC, ENGL-PR1800
AS.060.223 (01)African American Literature from 1900 to PresentTTh 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMJackson, Lawrence PGilman 219ENGL-LEC, ENGL-GLOBAL
AS.060.223 (02)African American Literature from 1900 to PresentTTh 12:00PM - 12:50PM, F 12:00PM - 12:50PMJackson, Lawrence PGilman 219ENGL-LEC, ENGL-GLOBAL
AS.060.229 (01)Nineteenth-Century American Literature: History, Philosophy, InsightMW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMDa, NanGilman 186ENGL-LEC
AS.060.229 (02)Nineteenth-Century American Literature: History, Philosophy, InsightMW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AMDa, NanGilman 186ENGL-LEC
AS.060.313 (01)Literature of the Settler RevolutionTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMHickman, Jared WShaffer 2
AS.060.344 (01)Reimagining the Past: History and Memory in Asian American FictionT 3:00PM - 5:30PMCrisostomo, Johaina Katinka ENGL-GLOBAL
AS.060.364 (01)UtopiasW 3:00PM - 5:30PMMao, DouglasLatrobe 107MSCH-HUM
AS.060.375 (01)Literary Studies as Data ScienceTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMDa, NanBloomberg 168
AS.100.275 (01)Passing in American CultureW 1:30PM - 4:00PMMott, Shani THodson 301HIST-US
AS.211.314 (01)Jewish in America, Yiddish in America: Literature, Culture, IdentityMW 12:00PM - 1:15PMSpinner, Samuel JacobGilman 381INST-GLOBAL
AS.211.361 (01)Dissent and Cultural Productions: Israeli Culture as a Case StudyTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMStahl, Neta INST-CP, INST-GLOBAL
AS.225.318 (01)21st Century Female PlaywrightsT 3:00PM - 5:30PMDenithorne, Margaret