Embrace an ExpansIve Vision of Literary Study

With a faculty composed of renowned scholars and dedicated teachers, the MIT Literature section offers a wide range of courses across time periods, international cultures, and languages. Literature courses at MIT examine how novels, poems, plays, films, visual art, and other media make imaginative and critical sense of history and the present.

QUICK LINKS

For Students

About LIT@MIT

Faculty

Spring 2024 Subjects

Upcoming Events

I WANT TO FIND A SUBJECT

Introductory

directory white

Samplings

Samplings

Intermediate

Intermediate icon

Seminars

Seminars icon

RECENT NEWS

Alexander Forte, recently a Lecturer in Literature and History (AMS) at MIT, has just accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Classics at NYU!

Alexander Forte, recently a Lecturer in Literature and History (Ancient & Medieval Studies) at MIT, has just accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Classics at New York University!

March 18th @ 6pm | MIT Press presents, Kimberly Juanita Brown: Mortevivum, with a moderated Q+A by Prof Sandy Alexandre & Hector Membreno-Canales

MIT Press Event: https://act.mit.edu/event/kimberly-juanita-brown-mortevivum/ A powerful examination of the unsettling history of photography and its fraught relationship to global antiblackness. Part of the Spring 2024 Lecture Series. In collaboration with MIT Press....

Prof Mary Fuller Finalist for the Association of American Publishers 2024 PROSE Awards!

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today unveiled the 118 finalists and 41 Category Winners for the 48th Annual PROSE Awards honoring scholarly works published in 2023. Featured is Prof Mary Fuller's Lines Drawn across the Globe: Reading Richard Hakluyt’s...

Lit Minor Sadhana Lolla named 2024 Gates Cambridge Scholar!

MIT senior Sadhana Lolla has won the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which offers students an opportunity to pursue graduate study in the field of their choice at Cambridge University in the U.K. Established in 2000, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship offers...

March 1st! IGCS Spring 2024 Colloquium Series presents, Jessica Ruffin “Swimming in Ressentiment”

Friday, March 1, 2024 at 2:30pm to 4:30pm Klarman Hall, 155 232 East Ave, Ithaca, NY 14853 The next Institute for German Cultural Studies' Colloquium in the Spring 2024 series will be given by Jessica Ruffin this upcoming Friday. All participants are encouraged to...

Congrats to the thirty-five outstanding MIT students selected as Burchard Scholars for 2024!

MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has announced that 35 MIT undergraduate sophomores and juniors have been named Burchard Scholars for 2024. Elected by the Burchard Committee from a large pool of impressive applicants, all students chosen...

Congratulations to Ben Mangrum whose promotion to Associate Professor (AWOT)!!

Congratulations to Ben Mangrum whose promotion to Associate Professor (AWOT) has been approved effective July 1st, 2024!

MIT Open Learning: Measuring the impact of humanities on STEM-focused education with Prof Wiebke Denecke

MIT Integrated Learning Initiative grantees research how STEM and humanities complement each other. Wiebke Denecke (魏樸和) is professor of East Asian Literatures. She was trained in sinology, Japanology, Korean studies, philosophy, and medicine in her native Germany, in...

Concordia University, Department of English presents, Prof Eugenie Brinkema “Drabness and Ethics | Formalism and Violence”

Please join us for two events with Eugenie Brinkema, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On Monday January 22, from 4:00-6:00pm, Professor Brinkema will present a public lecture in LB 646, Sponsored by the...

Sandberg Instituut Critical Studies Programme presents, Prof Eugenie Brinkema “Drabness and Ethics”

Drabness and Ethics Friday, January 12th @ 2–4pm Eugenie Brinkema is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently a fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. Her research in film and media...

EVENTS

FUN FACTS

The Literature concentration takes about three approved subjects to complete! Lit concentrators often go on to minoring or majoring in Literature!

Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She won the Pulitzer in 1988 and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Literature minors can choose to focus their studies on specific literary complexes as well as film, ancient & medieval studies, and more!

Frank Stella’s “Loohooloo” (1995) conference room located at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning references Herman Melville’s novel, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Sea.