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 novels, poems, plays, films, visual art, and other media make imaginative and critical sense of history and the present.

QUICK LINKS

For Students

About LIT@MIT

Faculty

Fall 2023 Subjects

Upcoming Events

I WANT TO FIND A SUBJECT

Introductory

Samplings

Intermediate

Seminars

RECENT NEWS

In new French class with Prof Bruno Perreau, MIT students serve as jury members of US Goncourt Prize

MIT’s French+ Initiative was recently designated as a “Center of Excellence in French Studies” by the Embassy of France, during a 2022 campus visit by Philippe Etienne, then-ambassador of France to the United States. The French+ Initiative gathers scholars working...

Wyn Kelley, Senior Lecturer of Literature and founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant

Wyn Kelley is co-director for the NEH grant award-winning “Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and the World of Whaling in the Digital Age." The Summer Institute that will take place from June 23-28 and July 7-19, 2024 and will build on the respective strengths and successes...

Prof Joshua Bennett among the researchers awarded the Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) grant!

The MIT Jameel World Education Lab has awarded $917,526 in Education Innovation Grants to support 14 research projects exploring a range of topics, including electrical engineering, extended reality, physical movement, and ecological sustainability. The grants will...

MIT Mysterious Book Exchange: Recommend

Join the MIT Community for a (Mysterious) Book Exchange! We invite you to recommend a book on our Google Form that you would like to share with the MIT community, and write a short blurb that describes it without giving away the title or author! We welcome as many...

Prof Wyn Kelley awarded NEH Grant for “Moby-Dick and the World of Whaling in the Digital Age”

NEH Announces $41.3 Million for 280 Humanities Projects Nationwide Grant awards support new NEH American Tapestry projects related to climate change and technology, as well as collaborative and individual humanities research, books, exhibitions, documentaries, and...

WIRED: Hip Hop 2073 & AI with Grammy Award-Winning Artist, Prof Lupe Fiasco

To honor the genre’s 50th anniversary, WIRED contributor C. Brandon Ogbunu and Grammy-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco paint two scenes of how the duality of AI will shape the art form in five decades. Mere hours after the arrival of “Heart on My Sleeve,” the AI-generated...

MIT News: A voyage through history with Prof Mary Fuller’s new book!

“Lines Drawn across the Globe,” a new book by MIT Professor Mary Fuller, looks at the worldwide vision of English exploration proponent Richard Hakluyt. In the 1550s, a series of English sailing expeditions went searching for a supposed “Northeast Passage” to China,...

Prof Mary Fuller’s newest book released this July 2023, “Lines Drawn Across the Globe: Reading Richard Hakluyt’s ‘Principal Navigations'”

Around 1600, the English geographer and cleric Richard Hakluyt sought to honour his nation by publishing a compilation of every document he could find relating to its voyages and trade beyond the boundaries of Europe. The resulting collection of travel narratives,...

MIT News: Literature Minor, Andrea Lo’21, discusses work in environmental sustainability

Written by Lillian Eden With a minor in literature and environmental sustainability, the biology alumna considers perspectives from Charles Darwin to Annie Dillard. Growing up in Los Angeles about 10 minutes away from the Ballona Wetlands, Andrea Lo ’21 has long been...

WNYC: “All of It” features Prof Joshua Bennett & Jesse McCarthy’s book “Minor Notes, Volume 1”

WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820 are New York's flagship public radio stations, broadcasting the finest programs from NPR, American Public Media, Public Radio Exchange and the BBC World Service, as well as a wide range of award-winning local programming. All Of It with Alison...

EVENTS

25

September

Lit Tea

Date September 25, 2023Time 4:15 pm - 5:45 pmCategory Tea Time

26

September

21L.592[J] Brazil: Race, Place, and Modernity in the Americas

Date September 26, 2023Time All Day Event

26

September

21L.591 Literary London Info Session

Date September 26, 2023Time 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

FUN FACTS

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

Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She won the Pulitzer in 1988 and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Literature minors can choose to focus their studies on specific literary complexes as well as film, ancient & medieval studies, and more!

Emily Dickinson was also known for her botany, herbarium, and garden. Only ten of her poems were published during her lifetime and often submitted anonymously.