[Lyric] Introduction to Poetry Genius (Lit Genius)

Welcome to Poetry Genius! We are so excited to be working with Professor Laura Nasrallah and HarvardX on this "New Testament: Letters of Paul" course.The mission of Poetry Genius is to break down the meaning of the literary canon, from Homer to Jane Austen to Junot Díaz, through social reading and annotation. You are now part of this mission! Thousands of you from around the world will be collaboratively annotating Paul's letters through this social network and producing a work of public humanities scholarship like none before it.

All the assigned readings for this course can be found on Poetry Genius for your convenience. We welcome you to read here, and to share your thoughts on the texts through annotation.

Throughout this course, Prof. Nasrallah will also be assigning annotation exercises for specific texts, like the one below on Paul's prescripts. You'll see these assignments in the edX platform, but can also find the prompts in the sidebar of the relevant text.On Poetry Genius, you'll not only be engaging texts in new ways—annotating them using multimedia resources—you'll be engaging each other in new ways as well. Through the notes you make on course readings, you'll be starting conversations that can continue through our site's notification system and personal messaging service, making the world of online learning a little more like a traditional classroom.

Both during and after the course, we hope that you'll explore Poetry Genius beyond Paul's letters. Anyone interested in online learning opportunities like edX will find a welcoming home within our vibrant intellectual community.