Subjects Taught by Semester

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-HW

This course will look at literature centered on monstrous figures to think about two things. The first: how do monsters like devilish magicians, mad scientists, and any number of nameless creatures show the fears, anxieties, and problems of specific cultural moments throughout history? What are the techniques authors use to fashion their monstrous characters, and what are their implications? The second: what are we to make of the fact that, while monsters are often objects of terror, they are also frequently sympathetic figures, vibrant fictional characters whose complexity seems to protest the fear they are (supposedly) meant to inspire? Indeed, many of the monsters we will cover are, to some readers, the heroes of their stories. By reading literature in genres ranging from 16th century English drama to the 19th century Gothic novel to contemporary American horror fiction, this course will teach you to understand and write about—through close reading, historical and contextual research, and comparative analysis of texts—literature’s rich, ongoing, and ambivalent tradition of making monsters.MW

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

The central concern of this class is the relationship between the social lives of everyday people and contemporary poetics, with a special emphasis on what June Jordan once called “the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America”. How does poetry help us to know one another? And how might we better understand the role of poetry, of poetics, for those historically barred from the very practice of reading or writing, from ownership (even of one’s own body), and various generally recognized forms of belonging? For the purposes of this course, these will be some of our animating questions.

As a group, we will read and listen to the works of Toni Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Tracy K. Smith, MF DOOM, Saul Williams, and Claudia Rankine, among others. We will compose nature poems, and meditate on the affective range of classic Motown records. We will study lyric poetry on the printed page, as well as spoken word performances that find their most vivid expression in the open air. All toward the aim of elaborating a working theory of social poetics, a poetics of sociality, made to the measure of the present day.  

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

Climate crisis and COVID-19 are forceful reminders of the entangled lives of everyone and everything on the planet. This class turns to contemporary world literature to consider ways of living together that are often ignored in contemporary society. How do plant, animal, mineral, fungal, microbial, or bacterial networks think and live together? We will read novels, short stories, and poetry that place non-human characters at their centre: what does a story look like from the point of view of mushrooms, moss, trees, or a piece of plastic waste at sea? Can we learn to be kinder, more open, and more oriented to a world where we value the lives of the most vulnerable rather than the creation of wealth? We will think about these ideas through the lens of social justice, such as the profit-driven response to the current pandemic, environmental racism, and the use of Indigenous lands for nuclear mining.

This class is a CI-H subject, which means that it will provide you with a foundation in written and oral communication. Over the course of the class you will write and revise a series of short discussion board posts and essays, and share your ideas with the class through presentations. Assessment is based on consistent participation and engagement throughout the semester, rather than being heavily weighted towards a final paper.

Prereq: none
3-3-6 HASS-A, CI-H

Concentrates on close analysis and criticism of a wide range of films, including works from the early silent period, documentary and avant-garde films, European art cinema, Hong Kong cinema, and contemporary Hollywood fare. Through comparative reading of films from different eras and countries, students develop the skills to turn their in-depth formal analyses into interpretations and explore theoretical issues related to spectatorship. Syllabus varies from term to term, but usually includes such filmmakers as the Coppolas, Spielberg, Eisenstein, Keaton, Godard, Peele, Jenkins, Chan, Deren, Varda, the Wachowskis, and Wong.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

Fiction writers are masters of the art of deception. They lie all the time.  It should come as no surprise, then, that some of their most enduring (and sometimes endearing) characters are themselves liars, swindlers, adulterers, rogues and criminals. This course will introduce you to European and Latin American fiction through a selection of its most memorable lowlifes.  We will examine how novels, short stories, graphic novels, and films use these outsiders and their transgressions to comment on societal norms and problems.  Some of the works we will analyze and discuss are the Lazarillo de Tormes, Voltaire’s Candide, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Machado de Assis’s Epitaph of a Small Winner, Jorge Luis Borges’s A Universal History of Infamy, Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.  Class projects will include the opportunity for students to create—using various media—their own lowlife characters.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H

Are we free? Do we live authentically? What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to die?  This course examines the principal ideas regarding the human condition developed through existential philosophy, literature, and film. Death, absurdity, alienation, freedom, and authenticity are some of the key concepts that we will grapple with as we engage with works by foundational figures of existential thought such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus.  We will also consider films that explore and challenge existential themes by directors such as Kurosawa, Resnais, and Bergman. In addition to exploring the affinity between existential philosophy and art, students will investigate the different capacities of various media as they compare existential themes across philosophical, political, literary, and filmic texts.

Prereq: none
2-0-4 Can be repeated for credit; first half of term

​​(Ends March 24) In this course, we will examine detective fiction as both a mode of thinking (we ask questions about our lives) and as a literary genre. As a mode of thinking it’s been around since Sophocles (we read Oedipus Rex); as a literary genre it emerges in the nineteenth century (Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle), develops through classic twentieth-century and modernist and noir-ish texts (Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, Raymond Chandler) and booms through postmodern uses of the genre’s structures (Jorge Louis Borges, Patricia Highsmith, and others). We’ll end with some film examples (Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock.) We’ll also consider formal, ideological, and philosophical aspects of detective fiction, using essays by structuralist/narratology critics (Barthes, Peter Brooks) and essays by other recent critics including Jaques Lacan and Sally Munt. We’ll pay special attention to the cognitive work of “detection” and to the character of the detective: his or her social position, gender, intelligence, and wit.

Prereq: 21L.011 or permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit

When we refer to a film as a “horror movie” or a “musical”, we classify it according to genre. Typically, we don’t need to be taught these categories; we simply absorb them as we grow up. This makes them a potentially dangerous kind of knowledge, so it is important that we examine their conventions and parameters. Moreover, studying popular cycles of a genre at any given moment can tell us quite a lot about that moment in cultural history—metaphors of what audiences were scared of, what they were hoping for, and what they were anxious about. The course will also include a unit on the concept of style, in which we will determine what exactly is, and is not, Camp.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

How do we know what we know? That’s the central question that animates the philosophical field known as epistemology. It’s also a problem that creative writers regularly ponder in their poetry and prose. Reading literary and philosophical texts side by side, we will discuss the nature of empirical, scientific, and poetic ways of knowing, as well as considering what it means to achieve self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds. Ought we to conceive of knowledge as perspectival or situated? If so, how might that affect how we try to obtain it? To enrich our discussion of these and other puzzling philosophical questions, we’ll read everything from a raucous eighteenth-century comic novel to a Modernist masterpiece to pulp horror stories, children’s fiction, and contemporary poems. Meanwhile, we will ask: does literature merely illustrate philosophical ideas or does it do philosophy in its own right?

Prereq: One subject in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit

This class will examine several major works by two founders of the mystery novel. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) were friends and sometimes collaborators who became among the most famous authors of their time and their works remain exciting and compelling today. They created complex plots and immersive fictional worlds that not only kept readers guessing, but raised critical questions about identity, social values, and class, gender, and race relations.  

By Dickens, we will (most likely) read his masterpiece Bleak House, his novel of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, and his final, incomplete novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. By Collins, we will (most likely) read his fascinating “sensation” novels Armadale and The Moonstone.

The class will help students develop skills in close reading and interpretation. Students will write short response papers to help stimulate class discussion. There may be occasional short quizzes to focus attention on parts of the reading. Students will also be asked to create a final project (creative or analytical) that reflects back on topics covered in the class.

Prereq: One subject in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H

We will read major poems by the most important poets in English in the twentieth century, from the period post WWI disillusionment, through WWII internationalism and beyond. Our special focus this term will be on how the concept of “the Image” evolved during this period. The War had undercut beliefs in master-narratives of nationalism and empire and the language-systems that supported them (religious transcendence, rationalism, and formalism). Retrieving energies from the Symbolist movements of the preceding century and from turn-of-the-century technologies of vision, early twentieth-century poets began to rethink how images carry information and in what ways the visual, visionary, and verbal image can take the place of transcendent beliefs. New theories of linguistics and anthropology helped to advance this interest in the artistic/religious/social image. So did Freud. So did Charlie Chaplin. So did the invention of the snapshot. We will read poems that pay attention both to this disillusionment and to the compensatory joyous attention to the image: to ideas of the poet as language priest, aesthetic experience as displaced religious impulse, to poems as faith, ritual, and cultural form– and to poems as witness of the ordinary, the joyous, the goofy, the strange. Poets whose work we will read include: W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop. Several short papers, class presentations, no final exam. Several visiting poets, slams, readings, and performances.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

Explores the works of classical Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including stories and novels by Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin, Nabokov, Platonov, and others. Focuses on their approaches to portraying self and society, and on literary responses to fundamental ethical and philosophical questions about justice, freedom, free will, fate, love, loyalty, betrayal, and forgiveness.  Taught in English; students interested in completing some readings and a short writing project in Russian should register for 21G.618.

Prereq: Permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit

This course examines the role of race and gender in the U.S. superhero tradition through comic books, graphic novels, film, and television. How do these modern myths reflect on and challenge racism, policing, and nationalism? What acts of radical imagination become possible in the world of the impossible? How do these fantasies reimagine what it means to be (super)human?Focusing on Black, Latinx, and Indigenous characters and creators, we will read comic books and graphic novels from the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern Ages published by DC, Marvel, Milestone, and Image Comics. Authors will include N.K. Jemisin, Dwayne McDuffie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vita Ayala, Gabby Rivera, and Nnedi Okorafor. We will also analyze films such as Black Panther, Blade, Spawn, Eternals, and Shang-Chi; and television shows such as Watchmen, Batwoman, and Ms. Marvel.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

hƿæt ƿe gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon…

Those are the first words of the Old English epic Beowulf, and in this class you will learn to read them. 

Besides being the language of Rohan in the novels of Tolkien, Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is a language of long, cold, and lonely winters; of haunting beauty found in unexpected places; and of unshakable resolve in the face of insurmountable odds. It is, in short, the perfect language for MIT students.

We will read greatest hits from the epic Beowulf as well as moving laments (The Wanderer, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife’s Lament), the personified Cross’s psychedelic and poignant account of the Crucifixion (The Dream of the Rood), and riddles whose solutions range from the sacred to the obscene but are always ingenious.

Prereq: none
2-0-4

(Ends March 24) Building on 21L.609, develops the ability to read and analyze ancient Greek literary texts, both prose and poetry. Focuses on increasing fluency in reading comprehension and recognition of stylistic, generic, and grammatical features. Texts vary from term to term. May be repeated once for credit if content differs. 21L.610 and 21L.609, or two terms of 21L.610, may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H.

Prereq: 21L.611 or permission of instructor
3-0-3; second half of term

(Begins April 3) Introductory Latin subject for students with some prior knowledge of basic grammar and vocabulary. Intended to refresh and enrich ability to read ancient and/or medieval literary and historical texts. May be taken independently of Latin I with permission of instructor. Latin I and Latin II may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H.

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit

This seminar will examine three major works by the great modernist writer James Joyce (1882-1941): the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and the colossal modern (mock-) epic Ulysses (1922). Time permitting, we may also consider a brief sample of Finnegans Wake (1939). Through oral reports and other means, students will learn about the historical context in which Joyce lived and created his work, though our main focus will be the increasingly complex and marvelous texts themselves.  Student work will include oral reports, frequent short reading-response papers, and a final creative or critical project on some aspect of Ulysses.

Prereq: 21L.011, one subject in Literature or Comparative Media Studies; or permission of instructor
3-3-6 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit

This course will introduce you to the development of film theory, exploring the major questions, concepts, and movements in its history. It begins with the notion that cinema plays a profound role in modern culture, and that it continues not only to reflect, but also to shape our world. For this reason, we too must reflect upon and be confident in our methods of interpretation, theorization, and explanation. Spanning writing from the medium’s birth to the present, we will discuss such topics as cinema’s relationship to other arts, to entertainment, to reality, to politics, to nationhood, to fantasy, to philosophy, and to the construction of a range of values, beliefs, and social identities.

Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units arranged; Can be repeated for credit

What’s in a school? In this course, we will analyze various kinds of school stories, from children’s and young adult novels set in and around schools, to historical and sociological accounts of how educational practices have evolved over time, to teacher memoirs and pedagogical theory by pioneering educator-activists such as Maria Montessori, Paolo Freire, June Jordan, and Sandy Grande. In the process, we will study not just how schools function as positively transformative sites that enable emancipatory learning, but also as highly disciplinary and potentially oppressive spaces where equity issues related to class, gender, race and ethnicity, and (dis)ability often play out in disabling ways that must be recognized to be disrupted. Each week, we will meet together for seminar-style conversations that will focus not just on the fictional and nonfictional narratives about schooling we will be reading, but also on your experiences completing the required weekly lab component of this course, which offers you the opportunity to be matched up with a variety of MIT- or community-based youth outreach program, in order to work directly with young people and reflect on what that process adds to our shared understanding of what education is, what it’s for, and how it works.