It's alive!! Page-to-stage Theatre Adaptation Workshop
Thursday, November 19
7pm-9pm
Kresge Rehearsal Room B
Come see literary texts brought vividly to the stage in a lively, interactive workshop on the creative process. Ricardo Pitts- Wiley, Martin Luther King Visiting Scholar in Literature and Creative Director of Mixed Magic Theatre, will present scenes from his collection, which includes Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Moby-Dick, and historical plays on Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King.
Mr. Pitts-Wiley will then open up discussion on how he creates theater from books to build diverse communities through the arts.
This workshop promises to be a true adventure in literature and performance. Senior Lecturer Wyn Kelley will introduce Ricardo Pitts-Wiley; then his actors will present scenes. You will be enchanted! Student, staff and faculty are all welcome.
Night and the Soul
 |
Songs and Poems by
Music by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley and Robert Schleeter Saturday, October 17th 7:30-9:30 PM A discussion with Mr. Pitts-Wiley will follow the performance. |
Since 1979, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley has written the script and lyrics for 8 musicals. Most often his co-composer for the music has been his longtime collaborator Robert Schleeter, a guitarist and music teacher at the prestigious Marin Academy in San Rafael, California.
Over the past 30 years Ricardo Pitts-Wiley has developed a non-traditional style to create music that has resulted in over 200 songs that range in style from rhythm and blues and gospel to country, rock, Broadway and jazz.
For this concert much of the first part of the evening will focus on poems and songs from "Night Voices." The 18-member ensemble will also perform songs from other shows by Pitts-Wiley including Sara's Juke Box, The Spirit Warrior's Dream, The Well of Woman and A Kwanzaa Song. The full-choir will perform a selection of songs from their recent The Greatness of Gospel Concert.
The Mixed Magic Theatre Exult Choir was formed by Pitts-Wiley in 2007 with the goal of bringing together some of the best talent in Rhode Island to preserve and celebrate gospel music. This truly American art form combines African rhythms, Negro spirituals, work songs and rhythm and blues to create a unique musical experience. This experience can convey the sorrow of the downtrodden and enslaved as well as the exhilaration of the faithful and the free.
For more information, please contact Jamie Graham at jamiecg@mit.edu or call the Literature Section at 617-253-3581. The promotional poster may be found here.
For directions, go to: Killian Hall at MIT
Keats and the Elgin Marbles: A Talk with Nicholas Roe
 |
Nicholas Roe: Everyone has read John Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and the famous lines about the 'heifer lowing at the skies' depicted by the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. Now subject to fierce controversy about cultural ownership, for Keats the Elgin Marbles embodied seemingly irreconcilable qualities of nature and ideal beauty. The experience of seeing the sculptures proved crucial for Keats's development as a poet, in ways that have not yet been adequately explored. This talk will begin such an exploration by asking a simple question: what exactly did Keats see when he visited the Elgin Marbles in March 1817? It certainly was not what a modern visitor to
the British Museum sees...
Tuesday, April 28 (For directions, go to: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg) Free and open to the public - no tickets/reservations required. For information call 617-253-3581. |
Readings from an In-Between Space - Visiting Author M. G. Vassanji
| M. G. Vassanji: On April 30 at 6:30 in the Gillard Auditorium (66-110), M. G. Vassanji will read from his new books 'A Place Within' and 'The Assassin's Song.' Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1950 and raised in Tanzania, at age 19 Vassanji won a scholarship to MIT, where he studied physics. He went on to complete a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, before immigrating to Canada, where he became a full-time writer. His award-winning books, which include The Gunny Sack, The Book of Secrets, and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, have been honored for their treatment of migrant Indian communities in East Africa, Europe, and North America, and for their reflections on how complex histories of cultural exchange and conflict affect present generations.
Thursday, April 30 (For directions, go to: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg) Free and open to the public - no tickets/reservations required. For information call 617-253-3581. |  |
IAP Event: Mobile Milton Marathon
Through M3@MIT, we will take on the appropriately epic task of reading (and performing?) the entirety of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" in one extraordinary day. All listeners and volunteer readers will be welcome to come and go as they must, as we wend our way across appropriate spaces at MIT to share this masterpiece of English Literature with new audiences and old friends. The occasion marks the 400th year since the birth of John Milton (December 9, 1608 - but back then, the New Year began with the spring) and unlike other such readings across the nation, ours is peripatetic and invites multimedia collaborations!
9am: 14E-304
10am: East Campus Talbot Lounge
11am: The Bush Room
1-2pm: Break
2pm: Classroom AVT (7-431)
3:30pm: Lobby 7 balcony
4:10pm: The Bush Room
5pm: 16-440
6:10pm: Bexley Basement
7:30pm: McCormick Brown Lounge (tentative)
An Evening with Jhumpa Lahiri
| MIT Writers Series presents
Jhumpa Lahiri: winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her debut story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri's first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003 and a film version was released in 2007. Her new book of short stories, entitled Unaccustomed Earth, will be published in 2008. Tuesday - March 4, 2008 (for directions go to: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg) Free and open to the public - no tickets/reservations required. For information call 617-253-7894. Sponsored by the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, the Literature Section and Foreign Languages and Literatures
"She has talent -- magical, sly, cumulative -- that most writers would kill for." | 
Click here to view poster. |
Literature Tea Time
Please note: Teas will resume on Monday, February 11th.
Every Monday except holidays
4:30 - 6:00pm in 14N-417
In our ongoing efforts to provide more occasions for the Literature community at MIT to have fun, provide support, and be visible to each other, we are initiating a weekly Monday "afternoon tea" (with coffee and cookies too).
All with an affection for Literature are welcome -- students, concentrators, minors, majors, staff and faculty! Drop by, make it a time to catch up with a friend or confer about classes with a fellow student or a faculty or staff person, to consult about minor or major issues in a less formal context, to hatch great plans for the future, etc.
questions: lit@mit.edu or 253-3581
An Evening with Vikram Chandra
|
Acclaimed writer Vikram Chandra will give a public reading from his latest book, Sacred Games, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), on Monday November 5 at 6:30pm in room 6-120. This event is free and no tickets or reservations are required. The reading is sponsored by the MIT Literature Faculty with assistance from the MIT Council for the Arts, MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures Section, and the Cultural Council of the Indian Diaspora. Born and raised in New Delhi, Chandra attended Film School at Columbia University in New York, where he was inspired to write his first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain; it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize. He has also written the short story collection Love and Longing in Bombay, for which he won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize. His most recent book, the celebrated Sacred Games, has been called "a great novel, perhaps the greatest book on Bombay ever written" (Hindustan Times). His work has been translated into 15 languages. Chandra splits his time between Berkeley, where he teaches Creative Writing at the University of California, and Mumbai. For additional information please contact Joli Divon Saraf at joli@mit.edu or the MIT Literature Section at (617) 258-5629 |
 |
Literature Special Reading with Jamaica Kincaid
Date: Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
Time: 6:30p - 8:00p
Location: 10-250, Note: room changed to 10-250
Jamaica Kincaid is a celebrated Caribbean-American author whose work is noted for its simple elegant prose that carries the weight of her controversial subjects.
Kincaid is an accomplished novelist and essayist who began as a columnist for the New Yorker and has since published five novels, a collection of short stories, two essay collections, and the long essay "A Small Place," which is one of the most outspoken critiques of British colonization in Anglophone literature.
Her subject matter includes the love and hatred between a mother and daughter, her brother's death from HIV/AIDS, the process of becoming a writer from a black woman's perspective, and the pleasures and politics of gardening.
Jamaica Kincaid is currently a visiting professor at Harvard University where she teaches courses on creative writing, autobiography and Anglophone Caribbean women writers.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Literature Section, With assistance from the MIT Council for the Arts, and the Program in Women's Studies
For more information, contact:
Joli Divon Saraf
617/253-3581
joli@mit.edu
MIT Literary Society
Founded in the spring of 2006, the MIT Literary Society is an undergraduate reading group that focuses on literary discussion outside of the classroom. The purpose of the MIT Literary Society is to complement the often rigorous and technical MIT education by creating a forum that encourages discussions on the current literary climate. The group is designed to encourage the exploration of various genres and interpretations, and also to develop one's leadership skills by coordinating discussions.
Visit http://web.mit.edu/litsociety/www/ for more information.
