Subjects Taught by Semester

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

Masterpieces of European literature read with an emphasis on understanding the roots of an expansive classical tradition stemming from ancient Greece and Rome. Core texts will be Vergil’s Aeneid, the Homeric Odyssey, and Dante’s Inferno. We meet heroes and monsters, gods and demons, and read deeply into three of the foundational texts of Western literature. We ask what it means to be “a classic” and explore the ways in which literary authority comes into being in the context of history and society.

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

An introduction to poetry in English, chiefly by British and American poets. We will explore Renaissance, eighteenth-century, Romantic, and Modernist poetry in particular detail. Though the organization of the subject is chronological, our focus will be less on names and dates than on cultivating skills in careful reading and effective writing. Poets to be read may include Shakespeare, Sidney, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, and Elizabeth Bishop.

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

Literature has always reached across borders, hemispheres and oceans in order to explore the conflicts and connections between cultures. In this course, we will discuss contemporary novels, short stories and graphic novels by non-Western authors in order to analyze how they intervene in the current global cultural landscape. We will study the ways in which these works of fiction reflect and refract the political, economic, and religious forces shaping the world, as well as the specific national contexts in which they were written.

Authors studied will include:
Chimamanda Adichie (Nigeria), Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique), Mia Couto (Mozambique), Santiago Gamboa (Colombia), Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan), Yuri Herrera (Mexico), Adriana Lisboa (Brazil), Haruki Murakami (Japan), Arundhati Roy (India), Marjane Satrapi (Iran) and Kyung-Sook Shin (South Korea).

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

This term, Shakespeare (21L.009) approaches some of the playwright’s most enduring works through close reading of the text(s) and through their vibrant and varied afterlife in performance and on film, including scenes from productions from across the world in the MIT Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive. In addition to several papers, work for the subject will include class discussion, notes on each play, short student presentations, and plays will include Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Merchant of Venice. We may also attend one or more theatrical performances, depending on what is available in the Boston area during the semester.

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

This course is an introductory survey of classic films. Emphasis falls equally on cultural and on artistic matters: on films as anthropological and historical artifacts that articulate the values and assumptions of particular societies and eras and on films as works of art. The course aims to sharpen students’ analytic skills, to give them a sense of the history and cultural significance of movies, and to improve their writing. The course is organized in three segments: the silent era (films by such directors as Chaplin, Keaton and Murnau); Hollywood genres (Capra, Ford, Huston, Hitchcock, Fosse); international masters (Renoir, DeSica, Kurosawa, Wong Kar-wai).
Format: two lectures, one recitation section, one three-hour screening each week.

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

This class examines popular novels that trouble the boundaries between nations or states. In books by bestselling authors like Louise Erdrich, Edwidge Danticat, Art Spiegelman, Mohsin Hamid, and Ruth Ozeki, we will encounter stories of global migration and itinerancy, questions about identity, family, and the past, and narratives of a search for home. At the same time, these works break out of established or familiar boundaries, engaging with terror and risk at the borders of self, nation, and literary form.

Prereq: Permission of instructor
2-0-4 Can be repeated for credit; first half of term

Begin to read ancient Greek literature in the original language. Our text this semester is Lucian’s True Story, considered one of the first examples of science fiction in the Western tradition. This course provides a bridge for students with one semester or more of formal Greek training (Greek 1/2, high school Greek, or equivalent) between the study of Greek grammar and vocabulary and the reading of Greek authors. May be repeated for credit if the content differs.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit

This course takes a deep look at a big subject. We ask where Fairy Tales come from, surveying the work of the famous Brothers Grimm, before moving on to historic fairy belief in traditional Celtic societies. We look at the structure of Fairy Tales, and how they are conditioned by oral transmission, and inherited story-telling techniques.

We ask what Fairy Tales mean, considering a range of Freudian and Jungian interpretations, and the claims made for them as a key psychological tool.

There follow two case studies of the abuse of Fairy Tales, firstly by the Nazis in 1930s Germany for the purposes of political indoctrination, and, secondly, by Walt Disney in the famous series of animated movies starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We consider the filmic techniques involved, and the charges of sexism and political conservatism frequently laid at Disney’s door.

We end with a close study of modern literary Fairy Tales from writers including Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens, L. Frank Baum, Margaret Atwood, and Angela Carter.
The goal of the class is to teach students how to approach cultural history in a broad-based multi-disciplinary manner, using a blend of folklore, history, psychology and film and textual studies. The student will gain a detailed appreciation of the links between oral tradition and print, and the means by which culture is transmitted down the centuries via a wide range of media.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

Nowadays, when we think about the interaction between human beings and nature, we tend to focus on environmental damage: deforestation, pollution, climate change and the catastrophes to which it has contributed. In this course, however, we will be reading Anglo-American literature that represents the interaction between humans and the natural world as joyous, sublime, revelatory, and mutually sustaining. We will traverse the Alps with William Wordsworth, immerse ourselves in Walden Pond with Henry David Thoreau, and rove the Yorkshire moors with Frances Hodgson Burnett. We will listen to African-American poets and Jewish tunesmiths “sing America” and read breathtakingly beautiful short stories and nature writing about plants and animals, hiking and fishing, the earth, the ocean, and the sky. Without denying that human beings have damaged the world we inhabit, and that certain groups of people have been systematically barred from enjoying equal access to its beauties and bounty, we will focus on the role that pleasure, resilience, wonder, and hope might play in helping us to envision new modes of engagement with each other and an ever-changing environment.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

Explores the works of classical Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including stories and novels by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin, Nabokov, Platonov, Solzhenitsyn and others. Focuses on their approaches to portraying self and society. Examines how writers responded to pivotal events in Russian history, including revolutions, wars, years of the Soviet regime, and the collapse of the communist system. Taught in English with a project that requires research in Russian.

For more information about this subject, contact Global Studies and Languages.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-A

In this subject we’ll work with literary texts, chiefly poems. We’ll read theories of translation (Is it possible? Is it necessary-but-undesirable? Is it even ethical? Is it imperialistic or politically-charged? Is it more like paraphrase or transformation or musical-performance?), will do comparisons of texts-in-their-original-languages and texts-in-translation, and will try some translations and “versions” ourselves. We’ll consider whether transferring from one medium or genre (e.g., a poem or a novel) to another (e.g., film, opera) is a mode of “translation”—and also what to do when a text is considered sacred (what happens when we translate the Bible?) Or when a machine does the work? O r when a language is historically compromised (how does a Jewish writer use German after the Shoah?).

No other languages-competence except in English is required (we can discuss the processes and theories of “translating” texts from languages one doesn’t know); students who do know other languages, however, are welcome.

Theorists include Walter Benjamin, Benjamin Whorf, Nancy Chodorow, George Steiner, Jon Felstiner, William Gass. Artists whose work we’ll read include Basho, Li Bai, Ezra Pound, Xu Zhimo, Lam Thi My Da, Ngo Tu Lap, Cesar Vallejo, Robert Frost, Dante, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Paul Celan, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Aimé Césaire, Samuel Beckett, Constantine Cavafy, Robert Lowell, Charlie Chaplin… and probably others.

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 a host of riddles whose solutions range from the sacred to the obscene but are always ingenious. We will also try our hand at composing our own sentences—and maybe even poems—in Old English.

Prereq: none
2-0-4 HASS-H

Begin to read Latin literature in the original language. Our text this semester is Pliny the Younger’s Letters, some of the most immediate and intimate documents of Roman life under Emperor Trajan. This course provides a bridge for students with one semester or more of formal Latin training (Latin 1/2, high school Latin, or equivalent) between the study of Latin grammar and vocabulary and the reading of Latin authors. May be repeated for credit.

Prereq: One intermediate subject in Spanish or permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS-H

What do we actually mean by “Latin America”? Is it possible to talk meaningfully about a common identity in a region with such enormous racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity? We will tackle these questions by studying contemporary film, literature, popular music, television, and visual art. In particular, we will focus on cultural exchanges between Latin America and the rest of the world. How do Latin Americans consume (or resist) foreign goods, ideas, and influences? How do Latin American writers, directors, and artists create work that speaks to both local and international audiences? Course materials include readings by Roberto Bolaño, Valeria Luiselli, Eduardo Galeano, Rita Indiana, and Yuri Herrera; films such as The Motorcycle Diaries, Miss Bala, 7 Boxes, and Wild Tales; and the work of visual and musical artists including Frida Kahlo, Fernando Botero, Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz, and Calle 13. Taught in Spanish.

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

With a focus on women authors in the United States—considering, among others, Fanny Fern, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Nella Larsen, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel—we will examine novels as productions of women’s labor. Studying a history of artistic achievements, we will also read women’s literary work as an index of artistic, political, and social change. Writing during periods of intense conflict, these authors turned to and reshaped the novel, and, in different and surprising ways, profess their commitment to literary work in a society where writers often struggle. Issues will include the role of unpaid domestic labor in women’s lives, urbanization and social conflict, autonomy and self-expression, and authorship among other professions like commerce, business or the law.

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

In this course we will read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a narrative and poetic collection that is variously stately, bawdy, moving, disturbing, and hilarious. It is also almost always thought-provoking and beautiful. We will read about drunken millers, man-hungry serial monogamists, alchemists who can’t stop blowing things up, glad-handing social climbers, bitter provincial bureaucrats, and cooks with disturbingly lax standards of personal hygiene (and more). These pilgrims will in turn tell stories of how nerdy scholars can get the girl while simultaneously humiliating thuggish rivals, why crows are black and can no longer speak, what one thing all mortal women most desire, and whether you can seek out Death without dying yourself (and more). No background in medieval literature or Middle English is expected; enthusiasm for challenging but rewarding material very much is, and will be repaid with interest.