DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM:
Professor Anselm Haverkamp, Department of English

CODIRECTORS OF THE PROGRAM:
Associate Professor Michèle Lowrie, Department of Classics
Associate Professor Martin Harries, Department of English

The Program in Poetics and Theory is a transdisciplinary advanced certificate program that provides an institutional framework for diverse theoretical initiatives and practices at New York University. By offering an integrated approach to theoretical concerns in the humanities, it responds to frequently voiced desires for a theory initiative across the disciplines. Rather than pure theorizing, the program focuses on sharing theoretical approaches and fosters interdisciplinary and international collaboration.

The program traces a historical progression from the ancient practices of poetics and rhetoric to their modern theoretical heirs. The intimate but vexed relations between aesthetics and hermeneutics, philosophy and literature, and social institutions and the work of art form the core of study.

The transdisciplinary orientation of the certificate program complements disciplinary study and sharpens students’ career profiles.

Faculty

Martin Harries, Associate Professor, English. Ph.D. 1995 (comparative literature), Yale; B.A. 1987, Columbia.
Modern drama; film; Shakespeare; theory; spectatorship.

Anselm Haverkamp, Professor, English; Director, Program in Poetics and Theory. Dr.Phil.Habil. 1983 (German and comparative literature), Konstanz; Dr.Phil. 1975 (medieval literature and literary theory), Heidelberg; M.A. 1968 (literature, history, and philosophy), Konstanz.
Critical theory; literature of the 16th through the 18th centuries.

Michèle Lowrie, Associate Professor, Classics. Ph.D. 1990 (classics), Harvard; B.A. 1984 (classics), Yale.
Latin literature; Augustan poetry; Greek and Latin lyric poetry.

In addition to the directors of the program, a wide range of faculty from all of the ancient and modern literature departments and the Departments of Cinema Studies, Performance Studies, and Philosophy participate in the program.