English
Department Website:
https://www.haverford.edu/english
The English Department offers courses in the literary traditions of the English-speaking world. Students will expand their ability to respond to texts thoughtfully and critically, and to articulate those responses in clear and fluent English. The department aims to develop cultural and media literacy by introducing students to the range of literary traditions, broadly conceived, in the English language, and to familiarize them with major or defining instances of filmic, performative and visual texts.
This discipline prepares interested students for postgraduate work in English and other subjects as well as careers in publishing, law, international business, arts and culture, government and policy, education, healthcare, and more. Our students have been recipients of many prestigious awards, including Fulbright Fellowships and a Rhodes Scholarship, and graduates have gone on to highly selective graduate schools and law schools. Many of our graduates have served in the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps and pursue careers in service and social justice.
English majors who plan to do postgraduate work should know that doctoral programs require a reading knowledge of one or two foreign languages.
Learning Goals
Our courses provide opportunities to:
- cultivate particular and deep understanding of specific periods, genres, authors, movements, and aesthetic or analytically significant issues.
- grow into discerning and careful readers responsive to formal, stylistic, and thematic elements of texts, and capable of understanding them as responses to the cultural contexts in which they emerge.
- develop an interdisciplinary approach to reading literature that crosses borders and makes interesting connections with material and methods in other disciplines and cultures.
Haverford’s Institutional Learning Goals are available on the President’s website, at http://hav.to/learninggoals.
Curriculum
In our curriculum we seek to maintain a working balance between:
- canons of British, American and global literatures, including African American literature, Asian American literature, Postcolonial literature, South African literature, and Irish literature, and others, and
- courses inflected by particular theoretical foci, such as performance theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, trauma theory, media and visual studies, and environmental studies.
Students may receive major credit for one semester of coursework in creative writing. Students who submit a portfolio of work, no later than the end of first term of their junior year, may be admitted to the Creative Writing Concentration.
Up-to-date information about the English Department’s activities and courses, including extended course descriptions and syllabi, is available on the departmental website.
Major Requirements
Admission to the major requires completion of at least two courses, WRPR H150 or a 100-level English course and one course at the 200-level, by the end of the sophomore year..
In total the major requires eleven credits, including a .5 credit tutorial (ENGL H298J) as part of Junior Seminar. Note: ENGL H399F and ENGL H399B comprises a 1.5 credit course taken over the full senior year.
- Seven courses at the 100, 200 and 300 levels of which:
- at least two must be in literature written before 1800;
- at least two in literature written after 1800;
- at least one but no more than two courses at the 100 level, which can include WRPR H150; two to three courses at the 200-level; and at least two courses at the 300-level.
- ENGL H298 and ENGL H299, the two-semester Junior Seminar in English
- ENGL H298J, the .5 credit yearlong Junior Seminar tutorial
- ENGL H399F (fall) and ENGL H399B (spring) for a total 1.5 credit Senior Conference
Note: The department will give major credit for one semester course in a foreign literature in the original language or for Comparative Literature 200. No more than four major credits will be awarded for work done beyond the Tri- College Consortium, whether abroad or in the U.S. Courses taken in the Bryn Mawr English Department, the Swarthmore English Department, and the U. Penn English Department may also be counted towards the major at Haverford.
Senior Project
Overview
The culminating research experience for our majors is Senior Seminar, ENGL H399. The course carries 1.5 credits and involves two parts: a critical essay based on independent research and reading guided by a faculty mentor; and a comprehensive oral examination that covers the thesis and the coursework the student has done towards the major. Creative Writing concentrators produce, instead of the critical essay, a portfolio of poems or short stories, a novella, or a screenplay accompanied by a foreword or afterword that reflects on their artistic choices and offers an analytic framework within which the work may be understood.
Preparatory Work
English majors take Junior Seminar, a year-long course that considers both major works in the field and critical and theoretical materials in the discipline. This methodological focus, along with an oral exam at the end of the first semester and comprehensive assessment at the end of the second, prepares students for the extended research and oral expectations of Senior Conference. More information on Junior Seminar is available on the department’s website. Students also participate in a workshop conducted by the Writing Program during the spring preceding the senior year: this meeting encourages junior majors to draw upon the coursework they have already undertaken both to identify areas, topics, authors, and critical questions and to begin reading widely in preparation for their thesis.
Senior Conference
Fall Semester Senior Year:
Students in the Senior Conference propose research topics to faculty consultants and are assigned to a faculty advisor by the middle of the fall semester. Students mark out an area of interest focused on an author, text, genre, theme, or formal feature, familiarize themselves with the major critical voices and debates pertaining to this field, and identify a set of issues that they investigate and analyze in their essays. Students meet each week in groups before moving to individualized meetings with their thesis advisor.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| September | submission of essay topic and preferences for faculty consultant |
| October | description of project, approved by assigned faculty consultant |
| October | meeting with Reference Librarian |
| November | two-page thesis statement due with short bibliography of relevant primary and critical sources |
| December | detailed annotated bibliography |
Spring Semester Senior Year:
Students have individual tutorials as they work towards submission of a draft and final thesis. At the end of the spring semester, eight students give presentations of their work over the course of two evenings. One-hour oral examinations are administered during the following week by the thesis advisor, a second reader, and a third examiner over a three- to four-day period.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January | full outline and 4-5 draft pages of essay due |
| February | completed rough draft due |
| April | final draft of essay due |
| April | abstracts and reflective statements due |
| April | oral exam lists due |
| April | senior presentations to full department |
| May | oral comprehensive examinations with department panel |
Additional information about Senior Conference and the Senior Thesis can be found on the department’s website.
Senior Project Learning Goals
The Senior Conference will encourage students to:
- mark out productive and independent lines of intellectual inquiry.
- understand theoretical and critical works in the discipline.
- engage with primary and secondary literature.
- develop a critical writing voice for article-length work.
- prepare a bibliography of works for oral examination.
- hone oral skills of synthesis and dialogue in presentation and exams.
- reflect in writing and speech about the thesis process.
- experience scholarship as collaboration: work closely with a faculty advisor and peers on developing the project.
- define scholarship as process: work through the stages of a research project.
Senior Project Assessment
The department seeks well-written, persuasive essays that advance independent and original arguments about texts. Theses will be based on insightful close readings and deep engagement with relevant critical and background material. The creative thesis option is assayed for the imagination with which particular projects are conceived, control over the medium, inventive play with generic conventions, insight, clarity and beauty of expression, and the capacity for self-reflection as demonstrated in the critical foreword/afterword.
Students are assessed at various stages of the process, described below, both by individual advisors and department faculty as a whole. Final letter grades are decided upon by the full department in careful discussion and consideration of student performance at each stage. Students receive extensive written comments from first reader (faculty mentor) and second reader at the end of the process.
The faculty mentor provides feedback on the following elements prior to the student examination:
- Preliminary proposal
- 4-5 pages of preliminary draft
- Full draft
- Annotated bibliography
The faculty mentor and department assess the following dimensions of the project as a full group:
- Quality of Senior Essay
- Quality of Oral Examination
- Student Reflective Statement
Requirements for Honors
The department awards honors in English on the basis of performance in coursework within the Tri-College departments, the senior essay and the oral examination conducted at the end of the senior year. The department reserves honors and high honors for distinguished achievement in all three of these areas.
Creative Writing Concentration
Creative Writing courses at Haverford are open to all students. Only a handful of English majors per year, however, are accepted into the Creative Writing Concentration.
The Creative Writing Concentration entails:
- two courses in creative writing (only one of which is counted toward the major).
- writing a senior thesis composed of an original creative text (usually poetry, fiction or drama) and a rigorous critical introduction.
Admission to the Concentration:
- Students interested in completing a Creative Writing Concentration must: 1) have taken or be in the process of taking two college creative writing courses by the spring of their junior year. 2) apply for acceptance to the Concentration by submitting a portfolio of creative work to the Director of Creative Writing in March of junior year.
- Each portfolio is read closely by the departmental concentration committee.
- Admission depends on the number of applicants and the committee’s assessment of whether the work demonstrates a readiness to generate a substantial literary project.
Affiliated Faculty
Brooke BastieVisiting Assistant Professor of English
Kimberly Benston
The Francis B. Gummere Professor of English
Stephen Finley
Professor Emeritus of English
Elizabeth Kim
Assistant Professor of English
Joshua Kopin
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Maud McInerney
Professor of English; Chair of Comparative Literature
Rajeswari Mohan
Associate Professor Emeritus of English
Mike Newall
Visiting Instructor of English
Lindsay Reckson
Professor of English
Swetha Regunathan
Assistant Professor and Director of Visual Studies
Keishla Rivera-López
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Nat Rivkin
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Hannah Schultz
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Sanam Sheriff
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Asali Solomon
Bertrand K. Wilbur Endowed Chair in the Humanities; Professor and Chair of English; Director of Creative Writing
Gustavus Stadler
The William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor; Professor of English
Christina Zwarg
Professor Emeritus of English
Courses
ENGL H101 THEORIES OF THE NOVEL (1.0 Credit)
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This course introduces students to the genre of the novel in English with a focus on desire, loss, and literary form. In order to ask the questions, ‘Why and how do we read novels? What does this experience enable?” we will interrogate theories of the novel, its early formation and contemporary forms. We will also consider changing cultural representations of subjectivity, nation, race, gender, and ways of reading. How is the reader variously constructed as witness to (and participant in) desire and its demise? How do developments in narrative voice influence the idea of fiction as a didactic, pleasurable, speculative and/or imaginative space? What is the novel’s role in effecting social change across centuries and geographies? Open to majors and non-majors—no prerequisites. Limit: 20 students.
ENGL H110 READING POETRY (1.0 Credit)
Brooke Bastie
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
Introduction to the most common types of poetry in English: narrative, dramatic, lyric. The working approach is that of close reading, often word by word, in order to investigate the poetic uses of rhythm and pattern; of sound and music; of appeals to the senses; of allusion to history, art, other literature; of connotation and denotation; and of metaphor.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H111 INTRODUCTION TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Hannah Schultz
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
An introductory survey of English literature from regions that used to be part of the British Empire, focusing on topics such as the representation of first contact, the influence of western education and the English language, the effects of colonial violence, displacement, migration, and exile. Also considered will be the specific aesthetic strategies that have come to be associated with this body of literature.
ENGL H112 THEORIES OF THE REMIX (1.0 Credit)
Lindsay Reckson
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course introduces students to the study of literature through the art of borrowing, sampling, recycling, and remixing. Approaching the remix as a creative/critical practice rather than a fixed genre, we’ll read texts that foreground modes of cultural theft, refuse originality and authenticity as such, and mobilize the remix as an important source of knowledge production.
ENGL H113 PLAYING IN THE DARK: FREEDOM, SLAVERY & THE HAUNTING OF US LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Gustavus Stadler
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
According to Toni Morrison, the relentless valorization of freedom in a nation built upon the enslavement of people of African descent created a literature full of ghosts and other spectral presences. This course looks at how horror, the Gothic, and the supernatural structure U. S. narrative (mostly) fiction’s engagement with race and history, focusing on how literature disorients our understanding of the “real” when that supposed real conceals histories of violence, terror, revenge, and subversion.
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H122 PLACE AND DISPLACEMENT (1.0 Credit)
Hannah Schultz
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This introductory course will look carefully at what it is to be located in a particular place, environment, or cultural condition, from which one leaves, either by choice, necessity, or (violent) coercion. How does writing about travel, exile, and displacement force us to define, question, and rethink some of our basic cultural categories such as “familiar” and “different,” domestic and foreign, inside and outside? Possible authors include Conrad, Haggard, Forster, Rhys, Lamming, Salih, and Ghosh. Pre-requisite(s): none
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H135 INTRODUCTION TO INDIGENOUS LITERATURES: CONTEMPORARY POETRY AND PROSE (1.0 Credit)
Brooke Bastie
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course is an introduction to contemporary Indigenous literatures that will include a variety of fiction, non-fiction, and poetic texts. You will read writers such as Natalie Diaz (Mojave), Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), and Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho). In addition, we will consider key concepts in Indigenous studies and Indigenous literary theory such as those from Joanne Barker (Lenape), Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee), and Craig Womack (Creek).
ENGL H200 LITERATURE, POPULAR CULTURE, AND THE AMERICAN LEFT (1.0 Credit)
Gustavus Stadler
Division: Humanities
A study of how writers, cultural critics, filmmakers, and musicians of the 20th-century US left envisioned the relationship between art and politics in a mass-mediated culture, including attention to work by major theoreticians of the "popular. Prerequisite(s): Freshman Writing
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H205 LEGENDS OF ARTHUR (1.0 Credit)
Maud McInerney
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
An exploration of the Arthurian legend, from its earliest versions to most recent retellings. The tradition of Arthurian tales is complex and various, combining Celtic and Christian mythologies. Sometimes called the "matter of Britain" the Arthurian narrative has been critical in establishing national and ethnic identities ever since the Middle Ages. Medival notions of chivalry and courtly love also raise fascinating questions about the conflict between personal and private morality, and about the construction of both identity and gender.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H225 SHAKESPEARE: THE TRAGIC AND BEYOND (1.0 Credit)
Kimberly Benston
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
An "introductory emphasis" study of the major tragedies and related histories, comedies, and romances, with special reference to the evolution of dramatic form, poetic style, characterization, and ideology as they are shaped by Shakespeare's persistent experimentation with dramas of extravagant will, desire, tyranny, skepticism, and death. Particular attention will be paid to key scenes in an effort to assess both Shakespeare's response to contemporary literary and cultural concerns and the internal reformation of his own craft. Prerequisite(s): First Year Writing
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H226 DISABILITY AND LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
How are bodies and minds depicted as "normal" or "abnormal"? This course will address how bodily differences and impairments are given social meaning as disability, and how these disabilities are portrayed in literary genres including scripture, hagiography, poetry, drama, novels, short stories, and memoir. We study these depictions from the perspective of disability studies, a discipline that seeks to understand the cultural meanings and material realities of disability with respect to systems of oppression. Pre-requisite(s): Completion of the Writing Requirement
ENGL H229 CONTAGION NARRATIVES IN AMERICAN CULTURE (1.0 Credit)
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course will examine depictions of contagions in American literature and film including yellow fever, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and fictional outbreaks. We will focus on how these narratives illuminate the politics of infection, inoculation, quarantine, transmission, treatment, survival, and loss. How do these narratives reflect and exacerbate inequalities? How do writers and artists document collective care? How do stories shape how we remember a past crisis and influence our response to the next one? Crosslisted: HLTH, ENGL Pre-requisite(s): HLTHH115 Introduction to Health Studies
ENGL H230 POETICS OF ABOLITION (1.0 Credit)
Lindsay Reckson
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course explores the role of poetry and other forms of creative expression in the history of prison abolition and related social justice movements. Focusing on incarcerated writers and artists who theorize life worlds in and beyond racial capitalism and the carceral state, the course approaches art-making as a practice of imagining abolitionist futures. Pre-requisite(s): First year writing seminar Lottery Preference: English majors and PJHR concentrators.
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H232 THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: NARRATIVES IN LONG-FORM COMICS (1.0 Credit)
Joshua Kopin
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course will explore narrative representation in the comics medium, particularly the way graphic narratives accommodate multiple literary genres such as fiction, fantasy, memoir, biography, and history. By examining the interplay between image and text in graphic novels, it will consider the aesthetics and politics of visual literacy and multi-modality in relation to representations of history, memory, cultural difference, mental illness, gender, sexuality, political struggle, and trauma.
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H233 TOPICS IN CARIBBEAN LITERATURE: A NEW WAVE (1.0 Credit)
Keishla Rivera-López
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This course will focus on authors of the Caribbean and its diaspora, engaging fiction, theory, memoir, poetry and drama from the mid-twentieth century through the present. Core themes will include migration, class, colonialism, racial identity, gender and sexuality. Crosslisted: English, Africana Studies
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H234 A QUEER AND TRANS MIDDLE AGES (1.0 Credit)
Nat Rivkin
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
What stories about queer and trans people circulated in the medieval period, and what does this body of literature tell us about the social construction of sexuality, gender, and embodiment? In this course, we will read medieval literature featuring lesbian, gay, transgender, and asexual characters alongside documents of historical queer and trans people and contemporary queer theory and trans studies scholarship. All texts will be read in modern English translation. Crosslisted: GSST.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H235 APPROACHES TO INDIGENOUS LITERATURES: CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS AND IDEAS (1.0 Credit)
Brooke Bastie
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
The main objective for this course is to provide a variety of literary methodologies for approaching Indigenous literatures. As Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) writes, he “fundamentally believe[s] that the study of Indigenous writing offers us something different, a complementary but distinctive way of thinking about Indigenous belonging, identities, and relationships” (27). This course hopes to bring diverse perspectives together, alongside selections of poetry and prose, to lay out the critical landscape of Indigenous literatures. Pre-requisite(s): Freshman writing or a 100-level English course
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H237 CHICANX LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Jeremy Gallion
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
A survey of Chicana/o/x literature and performance, including novels, personal essays and memoirs, drama, and film. This course privileges the stories, struggles, imaginations, and accomplishments of Chicana/o/xs in the United States, through an exploration of cultural identity and production. Key topics include El Movimiento, Chicana/x feminism, labor and exploitation, expressions of pride and joy, and performative traditions. In our exploration of Chicana/o/x life and culture, we will gain insights into the history and experiences of curanderismo, agricultural labor migration and incarceration, and social reproduction across Greater Mexico and the Northern Borderlands of Atzlán. Crosslisted: SPAN, ENGL
ENGL H238 CREATIVE WRITING: NONFICTION - INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING (1.0 Credit)
Mike Newall
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
In this workshop-centered class, students will learn to generate and revise works of prose nonfiction such as memoir, long-form reporting, intellectual essays and reviews.
ENGL H243 THE PLANETARY PREMODERN (1.0 Credit)
Staff
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course will explore how poets, philosophers, and early scientists imagined the planet from antiquity to the early modern period. We will investigate medieval and early modern representations of the planet Earth, from descriptions of the natural world to representations of the planet in space. We will examine these works from the perspectives of the fields of literary studies, environmental humanities, animal and plant studies, and history of science. Pre-requisite(s): Completion of the Writing Requirement Lottery Preference: English and Environmental Studies majors
ENGL H246 BAD BUNNY POETICS: MEMORY AND WRITING IN PUERTO RICO (1.0 Credit)
Keishla Rivera-López
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World
This course examines the cultural, material, literary, and academic scholarship related to the study of Bad Bunny. Through a literary analysis of his music, which will be read as poetics of resistance and defiance, students will learn how Bad Bunny resists cultural norms and colonialism in Puerto Rico and how he has become a symbol for various Latina/o populations. His short films, performances, and concepts will be studied as current markers of Puerto Rican memory. Lottery Preference: ENGL majors
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H249 INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Elizabeth Kim
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This course will explore the diversity of Asian American experience by studying a selection of foundational and emerging works by Asian American writers. Assigned readings of various literary genres will address themes such as immigration, generational conflict, racism, assimilation, difference, and political struggle. Key lines of inquiry include: What does Asian American identity, culture, and aesthetic look like? How do writers represent them? What does the racial and literary category “Asian American” constitute? Crosslisted: ENGL. Pre-requisite(s): None
ENGL H252 ROMANTIC POETRY & CRITICISM (1.0 Credit)
Hannah Schultz
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
A reading of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, with attention to early/late works and to the interfiliation of theory and poetry.
ENGL H255 IN THE WRITERS’ ROOM: SCREENWRITING FOR TELEVISION (1.0 Credit)
Swetha Regunathan
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
In the TV world, stories are built in the “writers’ room,” where writers come together to create a successful show. In this course students will study the craft of episodic screenwriting by simulating the collaborative spirit of the writers’ room. As they learn screenplay structure and form, visual storytelling techniques, dialogue, character development, and story arc, students will produce one episode for a class anthology project and participate in a final community table read event. Crosslisted: ENGL. Lottery Preference: VIST minors, Creative Writing Concentrators, ENGL majors
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H265 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: BLACK HORROR (1.0 Credit)
Asali Solomon
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This course is an examination of literary and artistic horror by black artists. We will articulate the artistic genre of horror and its tendencies, with a particular focus on representations of racial Otherness and racism. We will also consider particular affinities between horror and modes such as black literary realism and naturalism, attentive to moments which collapse a fear of blackness and the terror associated with being black in America. We will study the work of authors and other artists, including Charles Chestnutt, Gwendolyn Brooks, Chester Himes, Edward P. Jones, Chesya Burke, Nalo Hopkinson, Tanananrive Due, The Geto Boys, Snoop Dogg, Childish Gambino and Jordan Peele. We will also consider white American literary representations of racial otherness and horror in the works of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Flannery O’Connor, as well as the 1968 George Romero film “Night of the Living Dead.”
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H267 GLOBAL SF SINCE 1945 (1.0 Credit)
Maud McInerney
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
SF—science fiction, speculative fiction—is the primary allegorical mode of the contemporary world and permits reflections upon and critiques of the world we inhabit today. This course explores the explosion of the genre in the decades since the WWII and the advent of atomic weapons. We will read classics of post-apocalyptic fiction from the ‘50s and ‘60s before turning to stories that engage queer identities, Afrofuturism and African Futurism, and the global threat of climate change. Crosslisted: ENGL. Pre-requisite(s): None
ENGL H269 THE QUEER NOVEL BEFORE STONEWALL (1.0 Credit)
Gustavus Stadler
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
An examination of non-normative sexualities and gender identifications as the guiding thematic and formal force in a series of U. S. novels.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H278 CONTEMPORARY WOMEN WRITERS (1.0 Credit)
Keishla Rivera-López
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
Readings in novels, short fiction, poetry, and some non-fictional prose by contemporary women writers. A study of the interrelations between literature written by female authors and the questions, concerns, and debates that characterize contemporary feminist theory. Readings by Elizabeth Acevedo, Kali Fajardo Anstine, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Sandra Cisneros. Julia Alvarez, Rosario Ferre, and Gabriela Garcia to reflect this semester's theme on Latina Women Writers.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H281 FICTIONS OF EMPIRE (1.0 Credit)
Keishla Rivera-López
Division: Humanities
Through the study of fiction, this course will explore how various writers negotiate questions of empire, nation, (neo)colonialism, displacement, and migration.
ENGL H284 SEX,GENDER,REPRESENTATION: INTRO.THEORIES OF SEXUALITIES (1.0 Credit)
Nat Rivkin
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H286 LITERATURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS (1.0 Credit)
Jeremy Gallion
Division: Humanities
We will examine memoirs, essays, and poetry by American writer/activists whose works illuminate the formation of -- and tensions between -- civil rights struggles, peace movements, feminist organizing, and LGBT movements. Readings include Baldwin, Rukeyser, King, Rich, Malcolm X, Lorde, Moraga and Stringfellow.
ENGL H289 CONTEMPORARY POETRY (1.0 Credit)
Brooke Bastie
Division: Humanities
This course explores contemporary American poetry from 1950 to 2001 (from Ginsberg to Rankine). The class examines how poets continue a vital inquiry to redefine poetry in relation to culture, history, politics, sound, the body, and language itself. The Beats, the New American Poetry of the 1960s, the New York School, the Black Arts Movement, Feminist poetics, Queer Poetries, Ecopoetics and the Language Poets are read.
ENGL H291 CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY I (1.0 Credit)
Sanam Sheriff
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
This is a creative writing workshop on poetry. Students will read and analyze a wide range of published poetry, write poems that respond to weekly prompts, and give feedback to classmates’ work. A final portfolio of revised poems is required. This course has an enrollment limit. Students will be admitted through lottery.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H292 CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY II (1.0 Credit)
Elizabeth Kim
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
This is an advanced poetry workshop. Students will expand their repertoire and craft by modeling their writing on various book-length works of contemporary poetry. Coursework will include reading, drafting, researching, workshopping, and revising poems toward the composition of a cohesive final portfolio. Prerequisite(s): Completion of a poetry writing course and submission of a writing sample (no more than 5 pages of poetry) to ekim1@haverford.edu before the end of the pre-registration period.
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H293 CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION I (1.0 Credit)
Asali Solomon
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
This course is an introduction to the techniques and strategies of fiction writing, with particular emphasis on the short story. Weekly reading assignments will include both anthologized stories and student-generated ones. This course has an enrollment limit. You must submit a writing sample to asolomon@haverford.edu by the end of the preregistration period. Please send no more than 10pp – prose fiction if you have it or any piece that reflects your skill as a writer. Please include your name, year and major (if declared). You will hear about your status in the course at the beginning of next semester.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H294 CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION II (1.0 Credit)
Asali Solomon
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
Students in the Advanced Fiction Workshop will not only continue to hone the basic elements of their fiction, including character development, dialogue, plot and prose style, but will focus much of their efforts on revision and the process of "finishing" a story. Prerequisite(s): One fiction writing course or instructor consent, and submission of writing sample to course professor
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H296 CREATIVE WRITING: PLAYWRITING I (1.0 Credit)
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Creative Expression
This course will introduce the craft of playwriting by with an interdisciplinary exploration of performance, design, and theatre in the generating of new work for the theatre. Coursework includes weekly writing assignments towards completing new play drafts, reading playscripts and watching recorded performances that highlight elements of writing for the stage. Class sessions center the workshopping of written text both for short-term and committed play idea assignments, as well as thedissection of noteworthy contemporary plays. Pre-requisite(s): None Lottery Preference: Course roster will be set by professor using submission of writing samples.
ENGL H298 JUNIOR SEMINAR I (1.0 Credit)
Maud McInerney
Division: Humanities
Junior seminar comprises of a two part sequence that, through class readings, discussion, and writing tutorials, engage students in a study of (1) a series of texts representing the range and diversity of the historical tradition in British and American literature, and (2) critical theory and practice as it has been influenced by hermeneutics, feminism, psychology, semiology, sociology, and the study of cultural representation, and as it reflects the methods of literary criticism. Prerequisite(s): Only open to English majors
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H298J JUNIOR SEMINAR I (0.5 Credit)
Maud McInerney
Division: Humanities
Junior seminar comprises of a two part sequence that, through class readings, discussion, and writing tutorials, engage students in a study of (1) a series of texts representing the range and diversity of the historical tradition in British and American literature, and (2) critical theory and practice as it has been influenced by hermeneutics, feminism, psychology, semiology, sociology, and the study of cultural representation, and as it reflects the methods of literary criticism.
(Offered: Fall 2026, Spring 2027)
ENGL H299 JUNIOR SEMINAR II (1.0 Credit)
Lindsay Reckson
Division: Humanities
Part II of the sequence focuses on narrative and its theorization and criticism. Readings include George Eliot's Middlemarch, stories by Henry James and Edgar Allen Poe, and James Joyce's Ulysses.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H303 SITE WORK: PLACE-MAKING AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICE (1.0 Credit)
Jeremy Gallion
Division: Humanities
A hands-on exploration of the histories and methodologies of site-specific and land-based art and performance in continental American and colonial contexts. This course engages relevant literature from performance studies and related disciplines, considering the ways in which site work functions as a form of activist art. Pre-requisite(s): one 200-level course in relevant areas, broadly construed, or consent of instructor.
ENGL H305 THE PREMODERN LIFE OF TREES: INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND LITERARY STUDY OF THE PAST (1.0 Credit)
Staff
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course seeks to examine premodern literary representations of the natural world alongside historical, scientific, and experiential ways of understanding the environment. Our case study will be the figure of the tree. In collaboration with the Haverford College Arboretum, we will study literature from the premodern world that depicts trees, forests, and gardens while cultivating botanical, artistic, and historical knowledge about the trees of Haverford. Pre-requisite(s): One English course or ENVS 101, 202, or 203 Lottery Preference: English majors
ENGL H306 TOPICS IN ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ASIAN AMERICAN HYBRIDITY (1.0 Credit)
Elizabeth Kim
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This course will study the relationship between form and content in a diverse range of experimental and multi-media works by contemporary Asian American authors to explore the ways in which they address the hybrid identity marker “Asian American.” Through examining works of various genres paired with critical texts, we will analyze how authors combine media and what this reflects about Asian American identity, experience, and survival. Lottery Preference: None
ENGL H309 AGAINST DEATH: OPPOSING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE (1.0 Credit)
Lindsay Reckson
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
Advanced inquiry into creative and critical responses to the death penalty in the United States from the 1830s to the 1970s. Our aim is to explore the relationship between art and social protest, and to examine how capital punishment has manifested U.S. histories of race, class, gender, religion, and sexuality. Readings in primary historical materials, literary and cultural analysis, and critical theory. Pre-requisite(s): Freshman writing, plus one 200-level ENG course; or freshman writing plus PEAC101 or PEAC201. Crosslisted: ENGL and PEAC
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H320 TOPICS IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE: ANTI-HEROINES: OVID TO OPHELIA (1.0 Credit)
Nat Rivkin
Division: Humanities
This course examines early modern anti-heroines, from their origins in classical antiquity to their resurgence in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama and verse. We will examine how women who want more and those who want differently––be they Renaissance poets or protagonists on stage––deploy their writing and speech to new ends, and determine what strategies our readings use to condemn, reclaim, or altogether explode unruly femininity. Prerequisite(s): two 200-level HU courses or instructor consent
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H335 TOPICS IN INDIGENOUS LITERATURES (1.0 Credit)
Brooke Bastie
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course will cover specialized topics in Indigenous studies as they are explored through Indigenous literatures. You will read creative works in a variety of genres from writers such as Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree), Deborah Miranda (Esselen/Chumash), Janet Rogers (First Nations Mohawk/Tuscarora), and Jake Skeets (Diné). These text will be accompanied by theory from scholars such as Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene), Audra Simpson (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), and Shannon Speed (Chickasaw).
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H341 LATINX SOUND STUDIES (1.0 Credit)
Jeremy Gallion
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course explores Latinx life, culture, and social movements through the field of Sound Studies. The course takes a multimedia approach to ideas of subjectivity and collectivity, political action and resistance, and forms of (self) representation and self-determination to ask how might we reconceive Latinx history, cultural production, and social justice movements through sonic concepts such as amplification, voice, gain, listening, resonance, and deafness. Crosslisted: SPAN, ENGL
ENGL H348 TOPICS IN 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Hannah Schultz
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course will cover specialized topics in 19th century (Romantic and/or Victorian) British literature, such as empire, race, class, and gender, through the study of multiple genres. These readings will be put in conversation with key critical and theoretical debates in the field of 19th-century studies.
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H361 TOPICS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT: THE NEW BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT (1.0 Credit)
Asali Solomon
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course will begin with an exploration of the literary achievement of the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, engaging with its political and cultural context. We will then move into contemporary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, theory and popular culture, articulating the relationship between mainstream artists of the late 20th and 21st century and the ideals of BAM. Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent
ENGL H365 TOPICS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ROCK, SOUL, AND CULTURAL CRITICISM (1.0 Credit)
Gustavus Stadler
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This seminar will examine the emergence of music writing in the 60s and 70s in the context of contemporaneous struggles in the politics of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will also develop their own writing on the politics of pop as a cultural form. Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or the equivalent
ENGL H371 WRITING, SOUND, AND MODERNITY (1.0 Credit)
Gustavus Stadler
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
This course is a literary, theoretical, and cultural examination of how we conceptualize sound and listening, particularly after late 19th century technologies made it possible to reproduce sound with machine technology. We’ll look at a range of writings from the past 150 or so years that explore the creative, psychological, interpersonal, political, and cultural capacities of sound. Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent
(Offered: Fall 2026)
ENGL H373 TOPICS IN BRITISH LITERATURE: MODERNIST NARRATIVES (1.0 Credit)
Hannah Schultz
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)
A study of the historical, aesthetic, and epistemological implications of literary modernism in Britain. The course explores narrative strategies writers such as Conrad, Ford, Joyce, Woolf, Bowen, West, Rhys, and Durrell devised to bring coherence and resolution to the experience of crisis and fragmentation associated with modernity.
ENGL H377 PROBLEMS IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: IMPERIAL INTIMACIES (1.0 Credit)
Hannah Schultz
Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World
This course mobilizes the concept of “imperial intimacies” to theorize the rich historical, imaginative, and political horizons of imperialism. Taking our cue from Hazel Carby’s book of the same name—and from what Lisa Lowe has influentially described as The Intimacies of Four Continents—this interdisciplinary class will study literary works (novels, memoir, poetry, film) that bring into critical focus the lasting contradictions and critical challenges of colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. Crosslisted: English, Comparative Literature Prerequisite(s): Two 200-level English courses or instructor consent
ENGL H383 TOPICS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE (1.0 Credit)
Keishla Rivera-López
Division: Humanities
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H399B SENIOR CONFERENCE (1.0 Credit)
Asali Solomon, Brooke Bastie, Gustavus Stadler, Lindsay Reckson, Maud McInerney, Staff
Division: Humanities
Students work closely with a faculty consultant over the course of their senior year in the research and writing of a 25-30 page essay or a piece of creative writing accompanied by a critical preface (for the creative writing concentration). The course culminates in an hour-long oral examination that covers the thesis and coursework done for the major. Prerequisite(s): Limited to senior English majors only
(Offered: Spring 2027)
ENGL H399F SENIOR CONFERENCE (0.5 Credit)
Asali Solomon, Brooke Bastie, Gustavus Stadler, Hannah Schultz, Lindsay Reckson, Maud McInerney
Division: Humanities
Senior Thesis work with advisor. Prerequisite(s): Limited to senior English majors
(Offered: Fall 2026)