The Poetry in America PBS LearningMedia collection features 12 lessons based on the Season One episodes of the Poetry in America public television series. PBS LearningMedia content is available to teachers and students at no cost! You can ask students to watch the short episode excerpts we’ve made available on PBS LearningMedia, or you can stream or purchase the full episodes for use in class (click here for more information about our TV series). You can access the Poetry in America PBS LearningMedia collection here.
Led by Harvard Professor Elisa New, this free, not-for-credit online Poetry in America series offered through HarvardX surveys nearly 400 years of American poetry. Through video lectures, archival images and texts, expeditions to historic sites, interpretive seminars with large and small groups, interviews with poets and scholars, and conversations about poems with distinguished Americans, Poetry in America takes learners on a journey through the literature of a nation. Along the way, distinguished guests–including Elena Kagan, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Eve Ensler, John McCain, Andrea Mitchell, Michael Pollan, Drew Faust, Tony Kushner, Billy Collins, and Nas, among others–bring fresh perspectives to the study of American poetry.
Course Modules:
These courses are not currently available. Keep an eye on the HarvardX catalog for updates.
Inspire your students with thousands of free teaching resources including videos, lesson plans, and games aligned to state and national standards.
HarvardX is a University-wide strategic initiative, overseen by the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, to enable faculty to build and create open online learning experiences for residential and online use, and to enable groundbreaking research in online pedagogies.
Driven by the goals and values of its flagship project, Poetry in America, Verse Video Education develops video and accompanying curricular materials in the arts and humanities and beyond, creating a body of educational content capable of reaching a very broad community of learners: formal and informal, online and residential, young and old, American and international. By producing its own projects and creating thoughtfully-constructed and thought-provoking multimedia content for other organizations, Verse Video Education aims to enhance educational experiences, both within and outside of the classroom.
