This graduate seminar traces a literary genealogy of texts about nothing, with readings stretching from Parmenides to Fred Moten via Pseudo-Dionysius, William Langland, Julian of Norwich, Simone Weil, Samuel Beckett, and others. We will ask: why nothing? What can nothing do that something can’t? How might we understand nothing’s complex (non-)affiliations with abstraction, being, everything, form, kenosis, poetry, politics, race, reification, religion, queerness, secularity, sex, suffering, time, transcendence, the universe?