Taught by the Max Kade Visiting Professor. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, the poet’s task is to speak not of things that have happened (ta genomena) but of the sort of things that might happen and are possible (dunata). But how does the literary work come into being—in other words, how is it possible as a locus of possibilities? Since the late 18th century, authors have increasingly focused on their manuscripts as the space of poetic potential and have engaged in different ways with the gestural, technical, and pictorial dynamics of writing. In this course, we will look at these material practices and how they shape notions of poetic possibility. Authors to include Hölderlin, Nietzsche among others. The class will also consider the theorry of poetic writing in the Paris school of critique génétique.

• Days/Times: Th 4:00PM - 6:00PM
• Instructor: Christen, Felix J; Pahl, Katrin
• Room: Gilman 479
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/10
• PosTag(s): MLL-GERM

The Holocaust appears in scholarship as a figure or catalyst of analysis as often as it does as a historical event. It has prompted debates about historiography, about aesthetics, and about modernity across the humanistic disciplines, yet many of these debates and analyses have relied on a small number of sources, primarily literary texts. This course will assess some of the major areas of critical and scholarly inquiry regarding the Holocaust, but in relation to a different corpus of works, written by victims and survivors, that has been mostly overlooked. These works, many in Yiddish, many written during or in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, afford an opportunity to reassess the degree and the kind of challenge the Holocaust posed to the various aesthetic, memorial, and social formations of modernity. Taught in English; all readings available in English translation.

• Days/Times: W 1:00PM - 3:00PM
• Instructor: Spinner, Samuel Jacob
• Room: Gilman 406
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/6
• PosTag(s): n/a

At a time when racial, economic, social, cultural, religious, and political divides seem more irreconcilable then ever, the very fabric of democracy shows its vulnerability in the United States as well as at the global scale. This seminar aims to study how different thinkers, in different historical periods, addressed the challenges, betrayals, and fragile hope of the American Dream and how their voices resonate with contemporary authors and problems inside and outside the United States.

• Days/Times: F 10:00AM - 12:30PM
• Instructor: Marrati, Paola
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course will consist of a close reading of the eleven texts collected in Heidegger’s 1954 volume “Vorträge und Aufsätze,” including such seminal pieces as “The Question Concerning Technology,” “What is Called Thinking?,” “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” “… poetically man dwells…,” and “Aletheia.” Discussions in English; reading knowledge of German required.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Lisi, Leonardo
• Room: Gilman 10
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Celebrated and reviled alike, Kierkegaard’s 1843 Either/Or has been viewed as both the culmination of the Enlightenment project and the birth of existentialism, a playful work of romantic literature and a piece of late-Hegelian philosophy, a vindication of the secular everyday and the articulation of a modern faith in a transcendent God. In this course we read the work closely and in its entirety and pay particular attention to the relation between its philosophical arguments and literary forms of presentation.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Lisi, Leonardo
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 6/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Presentations by faculty, students, and invited speakers.

• Days/Times: W 10:30AM - 12:00PM
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane; Taylor, Chris Ross
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Graduate student having directed work with a specific faculty.

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

Graduate student having directed work with a specific faculty.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ong, Yi-Ping
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Graduate student having directed work with a specific faculty.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ong, Yi-Ping
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 8/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Siraganian, Lisa
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 8/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Directed Readings

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

Graduate Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 12/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Teaching assistants are required to register for this course. See handbook for details.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 1/6
• PosTag(s): n/a

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

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

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

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

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Marrati, Paola
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 20/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Siraganian, Lisa
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 18/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Lisi, Leonardo
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 19/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Hashimoto, Satoru
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 19/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ong, Yi-Ping
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 18/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 17/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Schmelz, Peter John
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/4
• PosTag(s): n/a

Summer Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: El Guabli, Brahim
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/4
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course, we will examine the evolution of the modern hermeneutic tradition, from textual hermeneutics to philosophical hermeneutics, in relation to a range of posthermeneutic approaches to the study of literature, concerning questions of media, materiality, affect, and presence. We will consider how “post”-hermeneutics is not simply anti- or non-hermeneutic, but rather in complex dialog with hermeneutics, and is inscribed into the modern hermeneutic tradition since the late 18th century. Throughout the semester, we will return to a selection of literary works that serve as case studies with which to apply the theoretical and philosophical frameworks examined. Readings may include works by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Susan Sontag, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Friedrich Kittler, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and Brian Massumi, among others.

• Days/Times: M 3:30PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Frey, Christiane; Haubenreich, Jacob
• Room: Gilman 443
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course explores the link between the transgression of the symbolic order in psychosis and the transcendence of discrete mental acts in transcendental philosophy to arrive at thought’s foundation. We will begin the course with the analysis of selected texts by Aristotle, Hegel, Husserl, Freud and Lacan with attention to the parallels between the psychoanalytic account of bliss in transgression and the idealist account of freedom in thinking. The remainder of the course will be devoted to the examination of literary works by Virginia Woolfe, Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Daniel Paul Schreber.

• Days/Times: Th 4:00PM - 6:00PM
• Instructor: Frey, Christiane; Tobias, Rochelle
• Room: Gilman 443
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Ants, bees, beetles, fleas and flies, caterpillars and butterflies: as the earth’s most abundant animals, insects are arguably the most important player in our interactive environment. In this seminar, we will explore the diverse world of insects and other arthropods in philosophy, literature, and the sciences in order to gain a new perspective on current trends in animal and environmental studies in the US and Europe. Reading our way from John Donne’s “The Flea” and Robert Hooke’s “Micrographia” to Bernard Mandeville’s “The Fable of the Bees,” Barthold Heinrich Brockes insect-poems, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s infamous novel “The Flea,” to Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” Heidegger’s contentious bee-example, Uexküll’s biosemiotics, Deleuze and Guattari’s “A Thousand Plateaus” (they characterize our industrial time as “the age of insects”) and Donna Haraway’s “tentacular thinking,” we will ask how concepts and stories of insects and the insectile reflect and shape the ways we imagine our cultural as well as ecological milieus. We will look more closely at how entomological imaginaries evolved over time and shed light on different forms of interaction with the environment, politics, and (cultural, biological) diversity. This course covers a wide range of sources from different European languages (made available in English translations) and gives a survey of major junctures in the history of literary forms, scientific practices, and philosophical concepts.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 3:30PM
• Instructor: Frey, Christiane
• Room: Gilman 443
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

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

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

The academic profession is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. However, in many cases, graduate training has yet to fully adapt to this shift. Beyond the changing nature of knowledge production, which now requires scholars to engage with fields of expertise that might not have been necessary in the past, institutions—especially liberal arts colleges—are seeking candidates who can work across disciplines to fill gaps in their curricula and foster collaborative scholarly synergies with colleagues in other fields. Moreover, academia is shaped by both continuities and interruptions, and interdisciplinary scholarship, with its venture-friendly approaches, offers a way for students to revisit old questions and explore new ones by endeavoring to explore uncharted paths. Hence, students in the humanities will benefit from both the opportunities and the challenges that come with engagement with interdisciplinary critical approaches. This year-long seminar draws on the experience of a broad pool of interdisciplinary scholars at Johns Hopkins University. It seeks to introduce students to a variety of conceptual, epistemic, experiential, experimental, and methodological approaches that JHU faculty members have used to produce interdisciplinary knowledge. Students will have the opportunity to hear directly from these faculty members, read their work, and discuss the processes and methodological choices they made—or chose not to make—in their interdisciplinary work. By revisiting old questions and raising new ones from an interdisciplinary perspective, this seminar will help incoming graduate students in the humanities develop a deeper appreciation for interdisciplinary scholarship and gain insight into the professional opportunities that can arise from proactively embracing approaches that span multiple disciplines. The students will also have opportunities to collaborate with each other throughout the year.

• Days/Times: W 8:30AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: El Guabli, Brahim
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 9/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

It is not uncommon to hear two closely related concerns in discussions of our present social predicament. On the one hand is the sense that humanity is facing a series of unprecedented threats, including climate change, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the rise of AI, and growing economic and social inequalities. These challenges and the solutions they require are extraordinarily complex. On the other hand, there is increasing concern that our capacity to pay attention to such complex issues is being eroded by a culture that values and foments distraction and superficiality. The internet, social media, gaming, dopamine addiction, commodification, and the entertainment industry have all been said to be responsible for a reductive political discourse interested more in ratings and outrage than substantive debate and solutions. This course examines the merits of these concerns and asks what alternatives may be available. In the first part, we will look at academic and popular accounts of our attention economy and the dangers it entails. In the second part we will examine one of the most powerful tools the humanities offer against superficiality and distraction: the practice of close reading as a way of attending to the world.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Lisi, Leonardo
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 12/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

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

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Siraganian, Lisa
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

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

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

Presentations by faculty, students, and invited speakers.

• Days/Times: W 10:30AM - 12:00PM
• Instructor: Hashimoto, Satoru
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 6/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this semester-long independent research course for graduate students on Forms of Moral Community, students will have one-on-one assignments and check-in's with the designated faculty throughout the term.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ong, Yi-Ping
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/1
• PosTag(s): n/a

Research on classical Arabic text reading about and within North Africa.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: El Guabli, Brahim
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/1
• PosTag(s): n/a

Graduate student having directed work with a specific faculty.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ong, Yi-Ping
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 8/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Siraganian, Lisa
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 8/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Schmelz, Peter John
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/2
• PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation research and discussion of progress. Limited to students writing dissertations.

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

Graduate Research

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 15/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Teaching assistants are required to register for this course. See handbook for details.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bennett, Jane
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/6
• PosTag(s): n/a

An interdisciplinary seminar on Latin America’s role in wider cultural, economic, and political processes, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. In Fall 2025, we will turn our attention to the Caribbean, past and present, and across disciplines.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Edwards, Zophia; Johnson, Jessica Marie
• Room:  
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 12/12
• PosTag(s): n/a