Every day, 11th and 12th grade students sit down at the Harkness Table to discuss literature.
“I like both of the classes I took a lot,” Noelle Petersohn ‘26, who took Behind Bars and Beyond the Binary, said.
During junior and senior year, students move away from the year-long English courses, and instead, they take semester-long topic based seminars.
The shift to seminars allows juniors and seniors to explore specific topics that pique their interest, rather than taking a generalized course for an entire grade.
Further, there are many seminars to choose from. With classes covering topics of dystopian literature to masculinity, it is ensured that there is something for everyone.
For this school year, some of the English seminars included Fairy Tales, Happiness in Literature, The Victorian Gothic, Career Choices and Identity, Film Studies, Journalism, Climate Events, Behind Bars (Honors), and Madmen and Geniuses (Honors). Some of these courses, such as Behind Bars, explore difficult topics and concepts.
“The issues covered in Behind Bars, such as incarceration and the prison system, are really important and something that normally wouldn’t be covered,” Ashley Wang ‘26 said. “I thought the topics of the course were super niche, and that made it even more interesting.”
The topics covered in the English seminars seem to be relevant and important to the lives of GA students; many people agree that they enjoy the targeted scope of the seminars when compared to a general all-grade English class.
“I enjoyed Behind Bars and Imaginary Worlds because they explored topics in an English class that wouldn’t normally be covered,” Vincent Zhou ‘26 said.
Although there are a lot of English seminars offered, only a few are honors level.
“For the honors classes there aren’t a lot of options, but most of them are interesting,” Petersohn said.
The second semester English seminars proved equally popular to those offered in the first semester.
“It’s the same for Madmen and Geniuses,” Wang said. “That course made me think about psychiatry in a way I never would have before.”
Since students are required to take English seminars both their junior and senior year, the seminars are on a two-year rotation. This means that the seminars offered for the 2025-2026 school year will be different from the seminars taken this school year.
“Next year, I’m looking forward to diving even further into the English curriculum,” Wang said. “I really want to take Shakespeare because it seems like something really different and fun to close out my high school career.”
In these English seminars, students learn to efficiently analyze literature while explaining their points clearly through writing. Additionally, students practice verbal discussion in a “Harkness table” setting.
Not only do the English seminars provide an avenue for exploring niche interests, but they also prepare students for a rigorous English college curriculum.