# Courses ## expand\_more ## Spring 2026 [### FRENCH 077 - The Bad Place: Dystopia à la Française ](/class/french-077-bad-place-dystopia-la-francaise) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 The French novelist Stendhal once described the novel as “un miroir qu’on promène le long d’un chemin,” a mirror we carry along the road. This course examines dystopian French novels (and some films) in order to explore what sort of reflection of reality such narratives of... [### FRENCH 089 - Ghosts, spirits and freaks of the Creole world: Bolom soungas ek soucouyants ](/class/french-089-ghosts-spirits-and-freaks-creole-world-bolom-soungas-ek-soucouyants) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Reading novels, plays, tales and stories from the Creole world (Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Louisiana), we will explore the inhuman in all its manifestations: the preternatural such as spirits, ghosts and zombies, and the aberrant such as human-animal hybrids and “freaks”... [### FRENCH 159 - Sex Work: Epistemology of the Prostitute ](/class/french-159-sex-work-epistemology-prostitute) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Beginning in the nineteenth century, prostitution became a central theme in canonical French literature and a central target of social scientific inquiry. Knowledge about the world seemed to flow through the figure and the body of the “prostitute.” In this course, we will... [### FRENCH 218 - Plantations, Gardens, Forests: De/Colonial Ecologies ](/class/french-218-plantations-gardens-forests-decolonial-ecologies) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 In this course, we will explore the imbrication of colonialism and environmentalism by focusing on “green” spaces such as plantations; botanical gardens where plants were studied to be mass produced for empire’s profit; and green spaces such as safaris and nature reserves... [### FYSMR 66G - Paris ](/class/fysmr-66g-paris) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, drawing millions of visitors annually. What are they drawn by? Images and imaginings of the city—in art, literature, music, film, journalism, architecture, city planning, and more— have built the reputation of Paris as a... [### ITALIAN 076 - The Sonnet ](/class/italian-076-sonnet) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 This course offers a concise yet complete survey of the most transformative poetic forms in Italian and Western literature, the sonnet. We will trace its evolution chronologically and thematically, using an anthology of approximately 70 sonnets to understand how this... [### ITALIAN 111 - Italian Cinema: 10 Masterpieces ](/class/italian-111-italian-cinema-10-masterpieces) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 An introduction to ten most inspiring and much-discussed Italian films from Neorealism to today. [### ITALIAN 201R - De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies ](/class/italian-201r-de-bosis-colloquium-italian-studies) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Current scholars in the field of Italian Studies present their books on literature, philosophy, art and architecture, music, history, politics, and the social sciences. Students also learn how to conduct video interviews and write book reviews. Course conducted in Italian... [### ITALIAN 238 - Alchemy and Literature ](/class/italian-238-alchemy-and-literature) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Matter—pure potency, pure capacity for being—has consistently eluded humanity’s intellectual and experimental efforts. From the shores of Ningbo to the deserts of Los Alamos, though its names have changed, its essence remains the same. It is Hesiod’s chaos, the tehom of... [### PORTUGUESE 077 - Laughter and Disaster ](/class/portuguese-077-laughter-and-disaster) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 This course engages the twin lenses of the comic and the disastrous as modes of studying Portuguese and Brazilian cultures. We will consider how reactions to disastrous events and how creating comic scenarios in written texts and performance are especially significant in... [### PORTUGUESE 184 - Literature of Colonial Brazil ](/class/portuguese-184-literature-colonial-brazil) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 This course studies the literature of colonial Brazil. We will consider how texts and writing participate in empire and colonialism, and explore a range of primary texts that engage with the lands, resources, peoples, and legends of Brazil. We will also scrutinize the... [### ROMANCE STUDIES 166 - Calvino and Computation ](/class/romance-studies-166-calvino-and-computation) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 The seminar is built around a sequence of fundamental questions regarding the literary disciplines and media studies, their history and epistemology. Discussions are instigated by readings in philology, stylistics, the history of ideas, semiotics, structuralism... [### ROMANCE STUDIES 97 - Sophomore Tutorial: Poetics, Practice, and Politics in Romance Societies ](/class/romance-studies-97-sophomore-tutorial-poetics-practice-and-politics-romance-societies) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 This course introduces students to a range of analytical and theoretical approaches to “reading” fiction, poetry, film, and essays. We will pair critical writings and creative texts of importance to the Romance world to help students develop their own voice and analytical... [### SPANISH 070B - Hispanic Literature of the Golden Age ](/class/spanish-070b-hispanic-literature-golden-age) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Introduction to the genres of poetry, drama and narrative prose (fiction and non-fiction) of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. Close reading of representative texts with attention to the emerging literary languages of this period of national consolidation, global... [### SPANISH 080TS - Translating Boundaries in Modern Spain ](/class/spanish-080ts-translating-boundaries-modern-spain) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 A follow-up course to Span 80T, Span 80TS continues our historical, social, cultural, literary, and linguistic journey through modern Spain by focusing on texts that foreground territorial and national debates. Through close readings and translations centering mainly on 20th... [### SPANISH 122 - Spanish Film from Buñuel to Almodóvar ](/class/spanish-122-spanish-film-bunuel-almodovar) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 This course will examine a wide range of core Spanish films from directors such as Almodóvar, Amenábar, Berlanga, Bollaín, Buñuel, Coixet, Erice, and León de Aranoa, among others. It will include analyses of prominent genres (drama, comedy, terror, fantasy, meta-cinema, sci... [### SPANISH 163 - Foundational Fiction and Film ](/class/spanish-163-foundational-fiction-and-film) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 Through novels that helped to consolidate nation-states in Latin America, explores modernity as personal and public lessons in laissez-faire. Sequels in film, telenovelas, performances show tenacity of genre. Links between creativity and citizenship. Theorists include... [### SPANISH 185 - Eloquent Instruments of God: Catholic Intellectuals in Latin America ](/class/spanish-185-eloquent-instruments-god-catholic-intellectuals-latin-america) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 In the course of five hundred years, the region now referred to as Latin America went from being the target of one of the most comprehensive evangelizing projects ever attempted, to becoming the Catholic Church’s strongest bastion. Far from static or monolithic, the richness... [### SPANISH 270 - The Warning in its Music: Politics of the Poem in 20th Century Spain ](/class/spanish-270-warning-its-music-politics-poem-20th-century-spain) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2026 An exploration of the fraught connection between political engagement and textual innovation in poetry written in and about 20th Century Spain. Discussion of key texts by Aub, Castro, Cernuda, Conde, Darío, Lorca, Machado, Neruda, Vallejo, among others. Focus on topics such... --- ## Fall 2026 [### FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR 035E - What Is Beauty? ](/class/first-year-seminar-035e-what-beauty) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-224655/2026/fall/19475) Beauty does not lie in the eye of the beholder, nor is it an inherent property of things; it is a tool for understanding that individuality and objectivity are not the only realities, and that more important than both is the social and distinctly human capacity to develop a... [### FRENCH 072 - Forms of Desire: Pre-Modern French Voices ](/class/french-072-forms-desire-pre-modern-french-voices) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-224501/2026/fall/17369) What voices can we hear in pre-modern literature? How did literary forms (the novel, tragic drama, lyric poetry) emerge or evolve over the course of several centuries? In this class, we will examine a wide range of texts from the 12th to the 18th centuries, from a diverse... [### FRENCH 088 - Comic Relief: The Power of Humor in Social Fiction ](/class/french-088-comic-relief-power-humor-social-fiction) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-207932/2026/fall/17368) Comic Relief focuses on fictional works in French which use humor to dorer la pilule , or make more palatable, the social ills and political dangers they reveal. With naïfs and rebellious women as protagonists, these coming-of-age stories raise questions about the... [### FRENCH 227 - (Dark) Ecologies in French Literature, Thought, and Film ](/class/french-227-dark-ecologies-french-literature-thought-and-film) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-224500/2026/fall/17370) What is the place of the human within nature? How are cultural concepts of what is ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’ reflected in and shaped by texts from different periods? Where do our ideas about ecology and climate today have their roots? How can a text, or a film, be... [### ITALIAN 077 - The Italian Constitution: Foundations of a Republic (art. 1-12) ](/class/italian-077-italian-constitution-foundations-republic-art-1-12) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233150/2026/fall/18618) This seminar examines the fundamental principles of the Italian Constitution (Articles 1-12), dedicating one article per week to an in-depth study. Students will memorize these articles by semester’s end, mastering their text and significance. Each week, lectures and... [### ITALIAN 116 - Italian Renaissance ](/class/italian-116-italian-renaissance) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-121110/2026/fall/18612) The course studies the historical period that, on the one hand, invented modern politics, art, and science and, on the other, an awareness of origins and respect for traditions. Was it better for a prince to be loved or feared? What did a young woman have to do to become a... [### ITALIAN 138 - The Cosmos of the Divine Comedy ](/class/italian-138-cosmos-divine-comedy) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-207950/2026/fall/18616) Dante's Commedia is the story of a journey back from personal and societal Hell, through self-knowledge and friendship. The book itself is an act of friendship. It never disappoints. It teaches itself. It has been engineered to improve design thinking and emotional... [### PORTUGUESE 185 - Sea Theory ](/class/portuguese-185-sea-theory-0) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-226266/2026/fall/14441) This course explores the sea as a principle of literature, culture, and history in medieval and early modern Portugal and Brazil. It covers a broad range of textual genres and cultures of writing to understand how the sea, the oceanic, and the aquatic functioned as the basis... [### ROMANCE LANGUAGES 205 - Pedagogies of Liberation: Race, Gender, and Class(rooms) ](/class/romance-languages-205-pedagogies-liberation-race-gender-and-classrooms) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-226306/2026/fall/14483) "Pedagogies of Liberation" is preparation and accompaniment for new teachers who teach (anything!). We read selected works by exemplary pedagogues: Friedrich Schiller, María Montessori, John Dewey, W.B. Du Bois, R. Tagore, Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, José Vasconcelos... [### ROMANCE LANGUAGES 210 - Language Pedagogy: Theories, Approaches, and Practices ](/class/romance-languages-210-language-pedagogy-theories-approaches-and-practices) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-136717/2026/fall/12488) This course is designed for TFs and TAs in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures who are teaching a Romance language at Harvard for the first time, or those who are interested in foreign language learning and teaching. It introduces TAs and TFs to theories of... [### SPANISH 070C - Tales of Two Spains: A Survey of Spanish Modern Literature and Culture (18th to 21st centuries) ](/class/spanish-070c-tales-two-spains-survey-spanish-modern-literature-and-culture-18th-21st) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-119441/2026/fall/17766) This course presents a diverse set of literary and cultural materials that will help understand Spain’s frequently contested Modernity. The guiding topic of discussion will be the conflicting definitions of Spanish national identity from the 18th to the 21stcenturies... [### SPANISH 080T - Words of Which History is Made: Translation Workshop on 20th-Century Spain ](/class/spanish-080t-words-which-history-made-translation-workshop-20th-century-spain-0) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-126860/2026/fall/14438) Through close readings and translations centering on 20th-century Spanish history and society, students hone their linguistic, grammatical, and stylistic skills, and acquire the interpretive skills required to comprehend and analyze increasingly complex literary and cultural... [### SPANISH 132 - Latin American Gothic: Literature and Film ](/class/spanish-132-latin-american-gothic-literature-and-film) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233128/2026/fall/17777) The Gothic has become an inescapable and proliferating presence in contemporary culture. The global expansion of the term, its rather astonishing plasticity, has led experts to distinguish between categories such as Urban Gothic, Rural Gothic, Eco Gothic, War Gothic... [### SPANISH 194 - The Borges Machine ](/class/spanish-194-borges-machine) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-108752/2026/fall/17769) Between 1923 and 1970, Jorge Luis Borges wrote some of the most original poems, short stories, essays and film scripts in Latin America and anywhere in the world, and he redefined the meaning and scope of literature. In this course, we will examine the signifying power of... [### SPANISH 201 - Historia de la Lengua Española ](/class/spanish-201-historia-de-la-lengua-espanola) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-116500/2026/fall/17768) Introducción a la historia de la lengua española desde sus orígenes hasta el presente. Escarceos en lingüística histórica en el marco de la historia literaria y el estudio comparado de las lenguas románicas. Acercamiento interdisciplinario. [### SPANISH 224 - Tears, Laughter, and Love: Affect and Popular Culture in Latin America ](/class/spanish-224-tears-laughter-and-love-affect-and-popular-culture-latin-america) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233127/2026/fall/17776) “What is love (baby don’t hurt me)?” pop culture keeps asking; in Latin America, one answer has long come in the form of tears, melodrama, and serialized romance. In the 1960s, the romance‑comic series Lágrimas, risas y amor promised its readers an education in how to suffer... --- ## Spring 2027 [### FRENCH 074 - Moving Images: Global Narratives in Cinema and Graphic Novels ](/class/french-074-moving-images-global-narratives-cinema-and-graphic-novels) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-222822/2026/spring/16248) We will consider issues related to race, gender, class and ecology as well as aesthetics at the intersection of the written and visual by reading contemporary graphic novels, children’s books and films as both works of art and documentation. This course will include work... [### FRENCH 123 - Colonizing the Early Modern Body ](/class/french-123-colonizing-early-modern-body) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233124/2026/spring/16246) How do early modern texts, images, and maps contribute to — or resist — colonization and extractivism? How are notions of ’nature’ and the ‘wild’ or ’savage’ mobilised in justifying the exploitation of land and indigenous peoples, and what symbolic and rhetorical strategies... [### FRENCH 160 - The Laboratory Island ](/class/french-160-laboratory-island) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-222823/2026/spring/16247) Islands, because of their size, boundedness by the sea and supposed isolation, have served and continue to serve as laboratories for experiments including military, nuclear, touristic, scientific and ecological ones, as well as for forms of forced labor and migrations... [### FRENCH 80BB - Beyond the Binary: Sex, Gender, and Nature in Premodern French Writing ](/class/french-80bb-beyond-binary-sex-gender-and-nature-premodern-french-writing) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233123/2026/spring/16245) How do early modern French texts produce, reinforce, or destabilise binaries? This course explores how, in the period around the ‘fixing’ of the French language by the Académie française into the regulated forms we are familiar with today, grammatical and material-social... [### ITALIAN 154 - Speech Crimes: Satire and the Limits of Expression in Italian History ](/class/italian-154-speech-crimes-satire-and-limits-expression-italian-history) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233149/2026/spring/17006) [### ITALIAN 162 - The Meaning of Time ](/class/italian-162-meaning-time) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-108772/2026/spring/17000) A course about the meaning of time, not just as a measurement of change, but also as the social and intellectual prerequisite for knowledge, morality, and political action. With examples drawn mostly from Italian culture—readings include Machiavelli, Galileo, Vico... [### ITALIAN 201R - De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies ](/class/italian-201r-de-bosis-colloquium-italian-studies-0) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-123829/2026/spring/13421) Current scholars in the field of Italian Studies present their books on literature, philosophy, art and architecture, music, history, politics, and the social sciences. Students also learn how to conduct video interviews and write book reviews. [### ROMANCE STUDIES 097 - Sophomore Tutorial: Poetics, Practice, and Politics in Romance Societies ](/class/romance-studies-097-sophomore-tutorial-poetics-practice-and-politics-romance-societies) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-114941/2026/spring/11392) This course introduces students to a range of analytical and theoretical approaches to “reading” fiction, poetry, film, and essays. We will pair critical writings and creative texts of importance to the Romance world to help students develop their own voice and analytical... [### ROMANCE STUDIES 135 - Writing and Urban Life ](/class/romance-studies-135-writing-and-urban-life) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-223973/2026/spring/16250) In this seminar we will study representations of urban experience, and how the evolution of cities has been shaped by writing. Each week will pair literary and planning texts from the 1860s onward. We will discuss shared aspirations and tense relations among various urban... [### ROMANCE STUDIES 182 - Iberian and Latin American Sexualities ](/class/romance-studies-182-iberian-and-latin-american-sexualities) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233125/2026/spring/17502) This course studies expressions of alternate sexualities in Iberia and Latin America. It includes a wide variety of literary genres over a chronological span that ranges from the Middle Ages to the present and engages with current discussions in gender and LGBTQ+ studies... [### SPANISH 070 - Introduction to Latin American Studies: Aesthetics, Politics, and Anxieties ](/class/spanish-070-introduction-latin-american-studies-aesthetics-politics-and-anxieties-0) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-116263/2026/spring/16252) The photographic installations of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the debates sparked by the farcical intervention in images of national heroes like Emiliano Zapata, or even the hyper-aestheticization of narco culture on social media, in films, and series, all serve as... [### SPANISH 109 - Displacing Spain: Translating Transatlantic Poetry on 20th- and 21st-Century Spain ](/class/spanish-109-displacing-spain-translating-transatlantic-poetry-20th-and-21st-century-spain) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-127556/2026/spring/16251) We will read, listen to, and play with poems dealing with transatlantic perspectives on and from modern Spain. Close attention paid to the relation between poetry and identity, motherland, exile, and nomadism in Spanish and Latin American poets such as Bolaño, Cernuda, Darío... [### SPANISH 129 - Los Judíos y el Judaísmo en la Literatura Medieval Iberorromance ](/class/spanish-129-los-judios-y-el-judaismo-en-la-literatura-medieval-iberorromance) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233177/2026/spring/17281) Los judíos de Sefarad alcanzaron cotas virtuosistas de creatividad cultural en todos los ámbitos de la vida intelectual en el Medioevo: unos logros recogidos en los archivos literarios del hebreo, el judeo-árabe, el arameo, e incluso en los vernáculos iberorromances (el...