[Problems in Cultural Interpretation]
T 7:00 - 10:00pm CI-M
Instructor: Stephen Tapscott, Marja Roholl

This class studies verbal and visual texts with which North American readers will be familiar but about which readers will differ in interpretation; these texts belong to the 'canon' of 19th and 20th century texts and images that define or shape the culture. We'll read the texts and will consider questions about what work a 'canon' does in a culture, what constitutes an 'icon,' and what work an icon does. For each image or text, we'll consider what the work formally seems to be of and for itself; the historical circumstances of its production; and finally a history of its reception. Works include: James M. Whistler's "Arrangement...." [aka 'Whistler's Mother']; Grant Wood's "American Gothic"; Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times; Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother"; John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath [along with John Ford's film]; James Agee and Walker Percy's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Diane Arbus' "Boy in Central Park, Holding Hand Grenade"; Robert Mapplethorpe's "Self-Portrait"; Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's "Vitameatavegemin" episode from I Love Lucy; Andy Warhol's silkscreen "Marilyn Monroe"; and Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems.

 

[Studies in Fiction]
TR 3:30 - 5:00 CI-M
Instructor: James Buzard

This version of the class will be concerned less with Joyce's legacy than with Joyce's challenging and powerful major works themselves, which we will study intensively in relation to their literary and cultural contexts. We will read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses, along with selections from Joyce's letters and other published and unpublished works.

 

[Studies in Drama]
MW 3:30 - 5:00 CI-M
Instructor: Anne Fleche

In American drama, “race” has always been an important factor, from stories about plantation life, miscegenation and upward mobility to dramatic structures and stereotypes like the minstrel and the tragic mulatto. In this seminar, we will look at the work of contemporary black playwrights and examine their response to the history of race representation in American drama, paying particular attention to the way race and gender intersect in performance. Writers will include August Wilson, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deavere Smith, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Students will engage with their classmates via weekly questions, as well as lively discussions, play reviews, presentations and performances.

 

[Studies in Poetry]
TR 2:30 - 4:00 CI-M
Instructor: John Hildebidle

Since the early 20th century, the figure of W.B. Yeats has provided a formative (and deformative) paradigm for Irish poetry. The highest compliment that can be paid to an Irish poet is "The best since Yeats." To resist and to adapt that paradigm is often the work of the younger poet. We will explore some of the efforts, by writers from Patrick Kavanagh to Seamus Heaney and Rita Ann Higgins, to create a distinct, non- (or even anti-) Yeatsian poetic voice.

 

[Major Authors]
MW 2:30 - 4:00 CI-M
Instructor: Mary Fuller

In 1667, John Milton published what he intended both as the crowning achievement of a poetic career and a justification of God's ways to man: an epic poem that retold and re-imagined the Biblical story of creation, temptation, and original sin. Even in a hostile political climate, Paradise Lost was almost immediately recognized as a classic, and one fate of a classic is to be rewritten, both by admirers and by antagonists. In this seminar, we will read Paradise Lost alongside works of 20th century fantasy and science fiction that rethink both Milton's text and its source. Students should come to the seminar having read Paradise Lost straight through at least once; this can be accomplished by taking the IAP subject, Reading "Paradise Lost" (21L.995), or independently. Twentieth century authors will include C.S. Lewis (Perelandra, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), as well as assorted criticism. Each week, one class meeting will focus on Milton, and the other on one of the modern novels.

 

[Studies in Film]
T 7:00- 10:00pm CI-M
Instructor: Peter Donaldson

The seminar will focus on intensive work on adaptations and spin-offs of Shakespeare plays. Tentative film list: Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1944); Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, 1989); Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996); Shakespeare in Love (1998); Stage Beauty (John Madden, 2004); Hamlet (Michael Almereyda, 2000); Richard III (Richard Loncraine, 1996); Looking for Richard (Al Pacino, 1996); Titus (Julie Taymor, 1999); King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985); Prospero's Books (Peter Greenaway, 1992); Ten Things I Hate About You (Jill Junger, 1999). In addition to intensive discussion, students will also present on-line multimedia essays using MIT XMAS (Cross Media Annotation Software). Previous Shakespeare course or equivalent expected. No technical experience required.

 

[Media in Cultural Context]
W 7:00 - 10:00pm
Instructor: William Uricchio

The course will explore and help to construct a little known story: media at MIT. During the last 100 years, MIT's researchers have made countless interventions into media theory, technology and application. From Shannon's information theory to Weiner's cybernetics, from Bush's memex to Russel/Kotok/Graetz's Spacewar!, from the work of CAVS to the Media Lab, from De Sola Pool's technologies of freedom to Turkle's life on the screen, from Negroponte's being digital to Chomsky's manufacturing consent, these and many more achievements attest to the formative work carried out at the Institute. The course will explore these developments in terms of MIT's culture as well as the larger historical moment of which they were a part. Research-based and multi-disciplinary in orientation, the course will assess various ways of supporting and telling the story of media at MIT. Students will be taught to carry out independent archival and bibliographic research.