Subjects Taught by Semester

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-HW
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Is Writing-Intensive, Studies Adaptations or Translations, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

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 or de-monstrate 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 complexities seem 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.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Works with Archives

How do you read a poem?  Many people find poetry “difficult” – sometimes pleasurably and sometimes less so. But within that category of the difficult resides much that is of use and of value to us as readers and human beings.  Among the goals of the class, we will be developing and practicing some of the skills, habits, and knowledge to approach poetic texts – difficult or otherwise – so that you can judge for yourselves what they mean for you.  We’ll take a close look at the nature of evidence that can be used for thinking and talking about poetry:  the formal properties of poetic language as well the use of context. We’ll read a wide variety of poetry from 1900 through the present, with some glances further back, and we will explore a variety of tools and approaches, from the old (memorization, listening, and reading out loud) to the new (digitally enabled visualization and annotation).  Most of our reading will be in modern English, so that we can focus on how poets work with its particular properties and affordances, but any knowledge of other languages can be a valuable resource to contribute to our discussion. The last two weeks of the semester will focus on readings chosen and presented by the class.

Prereq: none
3-3-6 HASS-A, CI-H
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Critical Theory, Includes Hands-on Projects or Making, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Works with Archives, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

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, and contemporary Hollywood fare. Through comparative reading films from different eras and countries, students develop the skills to turn their in-depth analyses into interpretations and explore theoretical issues related to spectatorship. Syllabus varies from term to term, but usually includes such directors as Coppola, Eisenstein, Fellini, Godard, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Tarantino, Welles, Wiseman, and Zhang

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

This course is about the pleasures and powers of reading. From the Sumerian clay tablets of more than four millennia ago through to the spectacular emergence of the electronic text, the written word – in all its forms – has captivated the human mind, embodied our insights into the world around us, and made enduring our most profound artistic creations and scientific discoveries. This semester we journey into the history of the book by means of some of its most resonant artifacts, past and present. Readings include literary works by authors such as Miguel Cervantes, Emily Dickinson, and Italo Calvino and theoretical writing by scholars including Marshall McLuhan and Roland Barthes. Regular hands-on sessions in MIT Libraries lead to capstone research projects on objects in MIT Distinctive Collections. Students present on their readings and research in a variety of forms.

Prereq: none
2-0-4 Can be repeated for credit; first half of term
Topics: Studies Adaptations or Translations

(Ends March 18) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), a long-time bestseller, is often read as a quintessential portrayal of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby, a white working-class outsider, adopts the persona of a wealthy aristocrat in Jazz Age New York. Black authors in the last century have engaged with Fitzgerald’s book or its themes, refreshing its impact in intriguing ways. As we will see in this class, the protagonist of Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), like Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, aspires to the world of wealthy socialites. Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992), takes place in the same period as Fitzgerald’s novel and views the Jazz Age within the context of the Great Migration and Jim Crow. Stephanie Powell Watts’s No One Is Coming to Save Us (2017) situates Gatsby’s story in a declining North Carolina town, where JJ Ferguson, a wealthy Black entrepreneur, builds an impressive mansion. Reading Fitzgerald’s novel in dialogue with African American history and literary culture suggests how The Great Gatsby has grown and changed over the last century. 

Prereq: none
2-0-4 Can be repeated for credit; second half of term
Topics: Studies Adaptations or Translations, Teaches Digital Methods and Tools, Works with Archives, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

(Begins March 28) Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno,” a nineteenth-century story of mutiny at sea, is a duplicitous text. Somewhat in the manner of a detective story, Melville’s narrative raises questions about its design and its designs upon a reader. This class seeks to understand the text’s perils and pleasures by applying digital tools to the reading process. We will explore methods for deepening the reading experience, using a wide range of approaches:

1. Reading and annotating the text in MIT’s Annotation Studio
2. Fluid-text analysis: exploring and collating different versions—magazine and book publication, as well as different editions and formats
3. Comparison with source text, Amasa Delano’s A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, and other literary and historical sources
4. Marginalia: Melville’s manuscript annotations as critical tool
5. Text analysis using Voyant Tools to locate significant patterns
6. Digital research in MIT Libraries databases

Students will read and discuss texts intensively in class; practice using different digital platforms; post questions and responses in a class discussion forum; present an in-class report; and keep a portfolio of materials to submit at the end of the term. No technical expertise required.

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

A cultural approach to television’s evolution as a technology and system of representation. Considers television as a system of storytelling and mythmaking, and as a cultural practice studied from anthropological, literary, and cinematic perspectives. Focuses on prime-time commercial broadcasting, the medium’s technological and economic history, and theoretical perspectives. Considerable television viewing and readings in media theory and cultural interpretation are required. Previously taught topics include American Television: A Cultural History. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Critical Theory, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Thinks about Social Justice Issues

The American author Octavia E. Butler once wrote: “There is nothing new under the sun; but there are new suns.” This ability to up-end what we consider possible and to allow us to imagine differently is the hallmark of Speculative Fiction. In this class we will read books that makes use of this radical capacity in order to challenge the oppressive structures of race, gender, colonialism/settler colonialism, and capitalism that we currently live under. By tackling the social injustices of the present, the writers we will read invite us to imagine our futures differently.

This intermediate-level class is focused on issues of social justice. We will read 21st- century science fiction and speculative fiction (including short stories, novels, and films), as well as theoretical and critical texts. Assessment (presentations, short written responses, and a final paper/project) is based on consistent participation and engagement throughout the semester, rather than being heavily weighted towards a final paper.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 HASS-H

This subject examines the ways in which we read. It introduces some of the different strategies of reading, comprehending and engaging with literary texts developed in the twentieth century, paying especial attention to poststructuralist theories and their legacy. The course is organised around specific theoretical paradigms. In general, we will: (1) work through the selected reading in order to see how it determines or defines the task of literary interpretation; (2) locate the limits of each particular approach; and (3) trace the emergence of subsequent theoretical paradigms as responses to the achievements and limitations of what came before. The literary texts and films accompanying the theoretical material will serve as concrete cases that allow us to see theory in action. For the most part, each week will pair a text or film with a particular interpretative approach, using the former to explore the latter. Rather than attempting a definitive or full analysis of the literary or filmic work, we will exploit it (unashamedly – and indeed sometimes reductively) to understand better the theoretical reading it accompanies.

Prereq: none
3-0-9 H
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Studies Adaptations or Translations, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Social Justice Issues

Beginning with an overview of the narrative arc and major themes of the Hebrew Bible, this course will introduce students to the New Testament as a collection of historical documents from the 1st and 2nd centuries, including biographies, history, letters, and an apocalyptic vision. We will study its historical and cultural context, address issues resulting from the translation of Hebrew into Greek, imagine how the various writings might have been understood by their earliest readers, and draw upon a range of methodologies and the interpretive practices of different traditions. Note: There are no prerequisites for this class; students may register without having taken The Hebrew Bible (21L.456).

Prereq: One subject in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class

Tradition and innovation in a representative sampling of novels and shorter fiction by the great English and European modernists – Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, Kafka, and others. Recurring topics will include the role of the artist in the modern period, the representation of sexual and psychological experience, shifting attitudes toward gender roles and social class, and the aggressively experimental character of so many modern texts. Early classes stress modern literature’s connection to social and cultural forces especially the great Impressionist painters and their followers.

Prereq: One subject in Literature, permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit
Topics: Improves Oral Communication, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Thinks about Social Justice Issues, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

What do writers who are mostly famous for their works of prose fiction have to say and how do they necessarily speak their minds differently when they’re writing essays instead of novels? What can this kind of ambidexterity teach us about why some thoughts need to be novels while other thoughts really just need to be essays? Do the essays of novelists have a certain “je ne sais quoi” that the essays of those who, perhaps, have never written a novel seem to lack? Can a novel begin as an essay? What essay has a writer’s own novel inspired that writer to pen after the novel’s publication? What can these essays teach us about experimenting, thinking, assembling, preparing, and organizing our way toward clearheaded and ethical actions in the real world? These are some of the questions that we’ll answer throughout the course of the semester as we read essays by James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, and others.

Prereq: none
2-0-4
Topics: Studies Adaptations or Translations

(Ends March 18th) Introduction to reading ancient Greek literature in the original language. Provides a bridge between the study of Greek grammar and the reading of Greek authors. Improves knowledge of the language through careful examination of literary texts, both prose and poetry. Builds proficiency in reading Greek and develops appreciation for basic features of style and genre. Texts vary from term to term. May be repeated once for credit if content differs. 21L.609 and 21L.610, or two terms of 21L.609, may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H.

Prereq: none
3-0-3; first half of term
Topics: Improves Close Reading

(Ends March 18) Latin I offers an introduction for those who do not know the language, or a review for those who would like to refresh the Latin that they have previously learned. In this half-semester intensive course, students will learn the rudiments of Latin vocabulary and grammar, including basic vocabulary, word forms, and simple sentence structure. This is the equivalent of a full first semester of college-level Latin.

Prereq: One intermediate subject in Spanish or permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS-H
Topics: Is Taught in Spanish, Thinks about Social Justice Issues, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

Deals with the vast changes in Spanish social, political and cultural life that have taken place since the death of Franco (1975). Topics include the transition to democracy, new freedom from censorship, the re-emergence of strong movements for regional autonomy (the Basque region and Catalonia), the new cinema including Almodóvar and Saura, educational reforms instituted by the socialist government, the changes in the role of the Catholic church, the emergence of one of the world’s most progressive gender environment, and new forms of fiction.  Special emphasis on the mass media as a vehicle for expression in Spain. Materials include magazines, newspapers, films, television series, fiction, and essays.  Each student chooses a research project that focuses on an issue of personal interest. Taught in Spanish.

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit
Topics: Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Race or Class, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

Is this the only possible world? Or are there ones free of white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and ecological devastation? What might it mean not just to imagine other possibilities but to listen for the other worlds that already exist alongside our own? In this course, we will examine how Afrofuturism, magical realism, and other forms of the fantastic in North and Latin America not only envision alternatives to the current order but also identify existing ways of being otherwise in the world. In addition to analyzing texts and films, we will incorporate theoretical insights from black studies, latinx studies, queer studies, and feminism into our discussions. Some of the authors we will read include Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Samuel Delany, Gabriel García Márquez, José María Arguedas, and Alejo Carpentier; films we will watch include Candyman, Space is the Place, The Devil’s Knot, and Embrace of the Serpent; and pop culture narratives we will study include Beyoncé’s Black is King, Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad, Disney’s Encanto and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda.

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Hands-on Projects or Making, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Works with Archives

After the medieval legends of King Arthur, and before modern fantasy novels and role-playing games, lies Spenser’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene. FQ – written by a contemporary of Shakespeare’s – weaves together quests, moral allegory, political argument, apocalyptic vision, gender play and comedy into a sequence of multi-layered stories loosely connected by the youthful Arthur’s search for the Faerie Queene. Each of its major characters seeks to complete a series of tasks and ordeals linked to one of the qualities a perfect man should have. At least, that’s the job the poet initially sets out to do…

Work for the class will include visual plot summaries, short research presentations on student-originated topics, close reading, some instruction focused on Spenser’s language, and a major project with multiple options.

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature or permission of instructor
3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Social Justice Issues

Cookbooks can tell us how to bake a really good chocolate cake, but what is it we find when we read between the lines? Not only sources of recipes, cookbooks are also windows into the worlds that produced them, revealing what foods were available (and to whom), what technologies were used, who cooked (and for whom), and what food meant to the people who produced, transported, processed, cooked, and ate it. In this class we will give the same care and attention to American cookbooks and food blogs that are often given more traditional forms of writing. We will focus on women’s contributions because historically it was through domestic manuals, recipes, and cookery books that women expressed themselves. Even today, with so many avenues open to them, women continue to dominate both cookbook publishing and the culinary blogosphere.