History and Literature

Like all worthwhile things in life—college, employment, gun ownership—your Hist and Lit career begins with an application. It sounds intimidating at first, but once you are accepted into the fold and its cozy nook in the Barker Center, you are joining an old family (seriously old—it’s celebrating its centennial this year).

Like the Grape Nuts phenomenon, History and Literature is neither History nor Literature—at least not exclusively. Rather, it uses history to contextualize and draw conclusions about literature, and vice versa. Daily Hist and Lit work involves understanding various primary and secondary source “texts”—which can be anything from cartoons to hard-core literary theory to musicals—through the context of their historical framework.

But this friendly community of keen minds is a far cry from the Brady Bunch. It’s an Honors department with a capital H, meaning that you have to write a thesis to graduate, as well as pass an oral examination at the end of your senior year.

Graduates tell themselves that a Hist and Lit degree provides caché, though the harsh reality is that those outside Harvard’s fold will just assume that you majored in History and minored in Lit.

At least while you’re at Harvard you’ll be a hotshot, though—the department is all about academia, meaning that your professors will take you and any harebrained idea you have seriously. They’ll also throw their backs out to help you win money for research, recognize you for your accomplishments, and pull you out of Widener’s gutter when you become overwhelmed (you will). But Hist and Lit giveth and it taketh: jettisoning schoolwork for extracurricular commitments or a hot date will fly about as well as a hardback copy of Swann’s Way.

Your Hist and Lit journey begins when you select your field of study. You may study one country, two countries, or a region or group of countries within a specific time period (the Post-Colonial field is the most recent addition; post-1750 is the most popular). Your coursework must sample the history and literature of your country, as well as fulfill a foreign language requirement (mais oui, oh America-only concentrators). Limited enrollment History and Literature are offered each semester—topics have included “History and Literature of the Modern American South” and “Defining Crime and Criminality in England, 1550-1990.”

The bloody and beating heart of the department lies in its tutorials. The first weeks of sophomore tutorial are somewhat scary and exhilarating--keep a pocket dictionary handy as the “-ogys” begin to fly. Be forewarned that skipping the reading will lead to tears and humiliation, as you can’t hide behind Spark Notes in a class with two leaders and 5 students.

If you’ve got a good group, tutorial’s intimidation will soon give way to camaraderie and late night e-mail chains about how screwed you are for the paper due tomorrow. You probably never thought historiography would be such a hoot, but in all likelihood you’ll be cracking jokes about Hayden White before you pack your bags for Thanksgiving. If you don’t find epistemology intriguing by then, you should probably pack your bags for the English department, too.

Junior year heralds the celebrated one-on-one junior tutorial. It’s essential to select a tutor whose interests and personality complement your own, so interviewing candidates is a must (feels good to interview, and reject, the jerk who put your sophomore paper up for review). If you pick correctly, you’ll land a tutor who will invite you up to her flat and stuff you with crumpets, Oolong, and glorious, glorious knowledge. If you’re unlucky (or lazy) you will wind up with a disgruntled, underfed grad student who’d rather heat his apartment with your paper drafts than read them.

Senior year is when “Hist and Lit” turns into “Hell and Lit”—or a book deal, depending on the quality of your thesis. “How does one select a successful topic?” you ask. There are three questions to keep in mind. Is your topic extremely obscure? Does it have a colon in its title? Did you request and receive an obscene amount of grant money to do research and then blow most of it at a strip club in Paris? If you answered yes to these questions, then you will probably win a Hoopes prize. If not, you can always use your thesis as a doorstop.

Meanwhile, just hobnobbing with the department’s gliteratti is autograph request-inducing, though, and includes New Yorker writers Jill Lepore and Larry Summers’ pal Louis Menand. Ask, and they may even advise your thesis.

History and Literature is a program that is truly unique to Harvard, and is arguably the most personalized, student-oriented program here. There are no graduate students in Hist and Lit, which means the focus rests completely on the academic development of its undergraduates. It’s certainly not the easiest track at Harvard, but it is widely considered one of the finest.

Not to mention Conan O’Brien graduated from it. Need we say more?