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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.

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RECENT NEWS

Dec 5th @ 4PM – Triple Celebration: Peach Blossom Fan, translator Wai-Yee Li, and celebration of Prof Denecke’s The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature at Harvard

We are delighted to invite you to a roundtable marking a triple celebration: Celebrating the greatest historical play in Chinese history, Kong Shangren’s Peach Blossom Fan Celebrating the poignant new translator by Wai-Yee Li (Harvard University)! Celebrating its...

Dec 4th @ Wellesley | A Special Panel Celebrating Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature, with Prof. Wiebke Denecke

A Special Panel Celebrating Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature, with Prof. Wiebke Denecke at Wellesley! Come celebrate Han Kang, Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, with Prof. Wiebke Denecke at a panel at Wellesley hosted by the Consulate General of the...

Nov 11 | Princeton University: German Department presents, Prof Jessica Ruffin “‘What can I hope?’: Race, Abyssal Aesthetics, and the Failure of Beauty”

Princeton University: German Department, Fall 2024 Lecture Series “What can I hope?”: Race, Abyssal Aesthetics, and the Failure of Beauty November 11, 2024 Monday 4:30 – 6:00 pm 205 East Pyne This talk addresses the function of the beautiful in accounts of...

New! Shakespeare Studies: Volume 52 – Edited by Prof Diana E. Henderson & James R. Siemon, assisted by Megan J. Bowman

NEW! from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press: Shakespeare Studies, Volume 52 Edited by James R. Siemon and Diana E. Henderson, assisted by Megan J. Bowman Volume 52 includes a Forum devoted the "Second Acts" of Shakespeare scholars with contributions from Mary...

Oct 25th @ University of Minnesota (College of Liberal Arts) | Prof Eugenie Brinkema presents, “Drabness & Ethics (on the Value of Formalism)

October 25th, 3-5PM 215 Pillsbury Dr SE (Room 135) Minneapolis, MN 55455 This talk takes as a starting point an aesthetic evaluation that greets the arrival of brutal death squads in Wes Anderson’s 2014 film, The Grand Budapest Hotel: “I find these black uniforms very...

Hayden Library | By & About MIT: African American Poetry Anthologies curated by Prof Joshua Bennett

This current display at Hayden Library highlights anthologies of African American poetry curated by Professor Joshua Bennett! "The collection invites the reader to think about archiving as a cultural practice, how art, like poetry, is preserved for future generations...

Russian Translation of Professor Denecke’s Book Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons is published!

Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons Ever since Karl Jaspers's "axial age" paradigm, there have been a number of influential studies comparing ancient East Asian and Greco-Roman history and culture. However, to date there has been no...

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, acclaimed biographer and longtime MIT professor, dies at 87

Some of you may have known her personally. Others of you, like Prof Alexandre, may have known her only through her scholarship, including her well-known biographies of Emily Dickinson and Edith Wharton. Either way, we extend our deepest and sincerest condolences to...

Celebrating the Launch of the Hsu-Tang Library with Prof Wiebke Denecke!

We recently celebrated the launch of The Hsu-Tang Library at The University of Oxford China Centre, where Prof Wiebke Denecke, Founding Editor-in-Chief, and Lucas Klein, Associate Editor, were joined by Professor Tian Yuan Tan, Shaw Professor of Chinese, to discuss...

Prof Joshua Bennett spotlight on the homepage of MIT with MIT News!

Joshua Bennett’s scholarship, poetry, and teaching help students address core questions about values and meaning in life. “They see it as an opportunity, and they’ve explicitly told me this, to talk about being human,” he says. The Study and Practice of Being Human...

January

Pleasures of Poetry 2025

Date January 6, 2025Time 1:00 pm - 2:00 pmVenue 14E-304

FUN FACTS

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

During a 1998 talk at MIT titled, “Devil Girl From Mars’: Why I Write Science Fiction” Octavia Butler explained how media inspired her to start writing.

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.