• Chaucer: Past, Present, and Future
  Seminar Leader: Seth Lerer, Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities and Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Stanford University
  
  
• Forms of Life in Emily Dickinson's Poetry
  Seminar Leader: Sharon Cameron, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English, The Johns Hopkins University
  

From July 6 to 11, 2008, the National Humanities Center will offer two innovative seminars on literary understanding. Open to scholars who have received a Ph.D. within the last ten years and who teach in departments of literature or other relevant disciplines at colleges or universities in the United States, the seminars will concentrate on the detailed operations of literary texts. Each seminar will include only fourteen participants.

The National Humanities Center will cover the cost of travel, lodging, meals, and texts. Participants will receive a stipend of $1,500. Applications must be postmarked by March 7, 2008.