Professor Harding came to The American University of Paris (AUP) in 1987 after doing research at the University of Cambridge on the development of modernist poetry, focusing on the relations of epic and hermetic writing. In the Comparative Literature and French programs at AUP he has taught courses on European romanticisms, modern British literature, modern American poetry and poetics, theatre in Paris, contemporary French fiction, and literature and the visual arts. He also teaches in the English writing program, and formerly taught creative writing. He has lectured and written on contemporary art and contemporary poetry, having set up an international contemporary art gallery and performance space in Edinburgh.
He writes and researches in the areas of poetry and poetics, narrative and performance, both anglophone and European. His work is currently focused on practices of embodiment and dislocation in late nineteenth-century realism, on the relations between the semantics of prosody and the cultural and social limits of a 'poetics of the real', centering on the writings of Henry James. He co-founded the European Society for Jamesian Studies and is a member of the British Academy research group for the study of literary reception. He also has an interest in literary translation, which he has long practised and taught.