MANAN KAPOOR
Undergraduate Courses
________________________Travel, Travelers, Travelogues: A Global Perspective
Junior Tutorial, Harvard University, Spring 2026
From epic voyages across oceans to quiet poems about self-discovery, travel has long been a powerful force in global literature. But how have travelers and travel writing shaped culture and the stories we tell? This course explores the dynamic relationship between travel writing, race, nationalism, postcolonialism and globalization by examining travel writing across time. We will read the writings of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Ibn Battuta, Matsuo Basho, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Mandeville, Chris Marker, V.S. Naipaul, Claude-Lévi Strauss, and Anthony Bourdain. Through a diverse range of texts including travelogues, novels, journals, memoirs, films and documentaries, we will examine how people have written about the world—past, present, and imagined. Some of the critical debates that will inform our discussions include world/global literary studies, cosmopolitanism, globalization and postcolonial theory.
Graduate Student Instructor
____________________________Reading for Fiction Writers (HUM 9)
Course Instructors: Prof. Neel Mukherjee and Laura van den Berg, Harvard University, Fall 2025
Milton’s Paradise Lost (English 131P)
Course Instructor: Prof. Gordon Teskey, Harvard Univeristy, Spring 2025.
Literature Today (English 131)
Course Instructor: Prof. Stephanie Burt, Harvard Univeristy, Fall 2024.
Workshops and Lectures
________________________A Harmonious Order: Form and Feeling
Poetry Workshop, James Merrill House, May 2025
Guest Lecture on Agha Shahid Ali’s Rooms are Never Finished,
English 10: Literature Today, taught by Stephanie Burt, Harvard University, November 2024
Guest Lecture on Agha Shahid Ali’s A Nostalgist’s Map of America,
English 181A: Asian American Literature, taught by Ju Yon Kim, Harvard Univesity, October 2022.
Writing Fellow/Instructor
Alekhya Writer’s Retreat, April 2019