Following the showing, Chasin' Gus' Ghost's director Todd Kwait will answer questions from the audience, and introduce a live jug band concert featuring Outrageous Fortune.

C'mon in for some foot-stompin' fun! People are invited to stay and jam after Outrageous Fortune finishes their set.

For more information, please contact Jamie Graham at jamiecg@mit.edu or call the Literature Section at 617-253-3581.

Directions to the Little Kresge Theatre may be found here.

The promotional poster may be found here.

Information on the film, filmmaker, and jug band may be found here:
Chasin' Gus' Ghost
Outrageous Fortune   ]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/09/chasin_gus_ghost.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/09/chasin_gus_ghost.php Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:58:03 -0500  

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 ]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/09/night_and_the_soul.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/09/night_and_the_soul.php Events Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:42:20 -0500 Volume 2, Spring 2009]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/06/litnews_1.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/06/litnews_1.php Newsletter Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:57:07 -0500   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 5:00 pm - MIT Room 14E-304 (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. ]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/04/keats_and_the_elgin_marbles_a.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/04/keats_and_the_elgin_marbles_a.php Events Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:22:46 -0500 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 6:30 pm - MIT Room 66-110 (Gillard Auditorium) (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.   ]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/04/readings_from_an_inbetween_spa_1.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/04/readings_from_an_inbetween_spa_1.php Events Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:20:55 -0500 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)]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/01/iap_event_mobile_milton_marath.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2009/01/iap_event_mobile_milton_marath.php Events Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:21:09 -0500 Volume 1, Fall 2008]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/12/litnews.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/12/litnews.php Newsletter Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:15:15 -0500

Mary Fuller	Remembering the Early Modern Voyage: English Narratives in the Age of European Expansion Palgrave Macmillan May 2008
Noel Jackson	Science and Sensation in Romantic Poetry Cambridge University Press March 2008
Diana Henderson	Alternative Shakespeares 3 Routledge January 2008

Wyn Kelley	Herman Melville: An Introduction Blackwell Publishing January 2008
Sarah Brouillette	Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace Palgrave 2007

]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/05/book_releases_spring_2008.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/05/book_releases_spring_2008.php Faculty Work Tue, 13 May 2008 21:34:04 -0500 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 7:00 pm - MIT Room 32-123 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA (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 "There is nothing accidental about her success; her plots are as elegantly constructed as a fine proof in mathematics." -- The New York Times Book Review "She has talent -- magical, sly, cumulative -- that most writers would kill for." -- Guardian (UK)   Click here to view poster.]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/03/an_evening_with_jhumpa_lahiri_1.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/03/an_evening_with_jhumpa_lahiri_1.php Events Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:02:30 -0500 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 ]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/02/literature_tea_time.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2008/02/literature_tea_time.php Events Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0500 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  

]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/10/an_evening_with_vikram_chandra.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/10/an_evening_with_vikram_chandra.php Events Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:44:40 -0500 Professor David Thorburn recently published his poem Lise in the October 2007 issue of The Atlantic.

To read the poem, click here [PDF].  
October 2007 issue ]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/09/thorburns_poetry_in_the_atlant_1.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/09/thorburns_poetry_in_the_atlant_1.php Faculty Work Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:20:18 -0500 James Buzard

Victorian Prism: Refractions of the Crystal Palace
University of Virginia Press, 2007
Co-editor  

]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/08/book_releases_fall_2007.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/08/book_releases_fall_2007.php Faculty Work Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:31:28 -0500 Diana Henderson

Collaborations with the Past: Reshaping Shakespeare across Time and Media
Cornell University Press   Wyn Kelley

A Companion to Herman Melville
Blackwell Publishing Editor Herman Melville's Benito Cereno
Bedford/St. Martin's
Editor   Henry Jenkins

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
New York University Press Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture
New York University Press The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture
New York University Press

]]> http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/05/book_releases_spring_2007.php http://lit.mit.edu/spotlight/2007/05/book_releases_spring_2007.php Faculty Work Tue, 22 May 2007 21:16:46 -0500