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 multiple expressive forms, such as novels, poems, plays, films, and visual art, not only make imaginative and critical sense of history and the present but also project us into a range of possible futures.

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RECENT NEWS

MIT News | Ruth Perry Q&A: How folk ballads explain the world

Featured this month in the MIT News, Literature's Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities, Emerita Ruth Perry discusses her new book profiling Anna Gordon, a Scotswoman who preserved and transmitted precious popular ballads, and with them, national traditions....
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Congratulations! Lit@MIT’s Senior Lecturer Emerita, Wyn Kelley, elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society!

Congratulations Wyn Kelley, Lit@MIT's Senior Lecturer Emerita, has been elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in recognition of her expert scholarship on Herman Melville and U.S. and transatlantic literature.   Wyn joins an esteemed group of...
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Oct 25 | French Voices at the Boston Book Festival (featuring Bruno Perreau) in Partnership with the French Library/Villa Albertine

Saturday, October 25, 2025 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM @ The French Library Join us for a day of engaging conversations, thought-provoking ideas, and book signings with some of today’s most celebrated French authors and thinkers. This special event will feature three talks,...
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The Nikkei and Asahi Shinbun feature Wiebke Denecke’s call for Social Renewal through the Humanities and Arts and Reflections on AI at the First Kyoto Conference

Japan’s Nikkei, the world’s largest financial newspaper, prominently quoted Professor Wiebke Denecke, faculty lead of the MIT Global Humanities Initiative (GHI), for her stirring call for “social renewal through the humanities and arts” during the First Kyoto...
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Oct 16 | French Library presents, Sphères d’injustice with Bruno Perreau Book Talk

Thursday, October 16, 2025 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM @ The French Library How can the fight against discrimination serve everyone? In his latest book, Professor Perreau argues that minority issues concern us all and that solidarity, rather than competition,  our political and...
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Théorie politique; Théories féministes; and L’Interdiction des thérapies de conversion sexuelle published with Bruno Perreau this Fall 2025

  Professor Bruno Perreau has published two book chapters earlier this September 2025: “Théories queer,” with Antoine Idier, in Benjamin Boudou and Aurélia Bardon (eds.) in in Théorie politique, Bruxelles: Bruylant (pp. 833-860); and “Le tournant queer” and...
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Nov 4 | University of California Santa Barbara’s Interdiscplinary Humanities Center presents, “On Fire Talk: Spheres of Injustice: Minority Politics Today” with Bruno Perreau

November 4, 2025 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm (PDT) McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA 93106 How can we revitalize minority politics while making the fight against discrimination beneficial for all? Bruno Perreau proposes thinking about minority experiences...
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Recall This Book Podcast | Ben Mangrum’s Comical Computation

 When does comedy become more than a laugh? Ben Mangrum of MIT joins RtB to discuss his new book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford University Press, 2025), which in some ways is organized around “the...
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Sept 30 | Harvard Mahindra Center presents, “The Novel in the Age of AI: A Roundtable with Elyse Graham, Benjamin Mangrum, and Tom Comitta”

NOVEL THEORY SPEAKERS: Elyse Graham (Stonybrook University); Benjamin Mangrum (MIT); Tom Comitta   Literature as thinking, or, why AI can't nail metaphors - Elyse Graham This paper explores why large language models (LLMs), for all their superficial fluency with...
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MIT News | An adaptable evaluation of justice and interest groups with Prof Bruno Perreau

In his newest published book, Professor Bruno Perreau explores the resonances between minority experiences –what he calls intrasectionality– and how they contribute to improving democratic systems and expanding legal protections for all. For so doing, Bruno...
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EVENTS

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!

William Carlos Williams was an American poet, writer, and physician of pediatrics and general medicine.