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

Prof. Joshua Bennett’s newest book released today! The People Can Fly

Happy Publication Day to our colleague Joshua Bennett! 🥳 The People Can Fly examines exceptional early ability by situating it in the worlds that form it. Moving between portraits of young standouts and brief personal reckonings, he shows how singular lives illuminate...
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EBS | Profs. Joshua Bennett’s and Wiebke Denecke’s classes have been prominently featured on EBS, South Korea’s national educational broadcaster!

This segment features students discussing Prof. Joshua Bennett's lasting impact with Spring 2023's 21L.004 Reading Poetry: Social Poetics (Aarushi Mehrotra and Amanda Liu) and live footage of Prof. Wiebke Denecke's Fall 2025 courses: 21L.040 Foundations of East Asian...
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Prof. Bruno Perreau published in “Presenting the Present: Queer Memories Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” Queer Realms of Memory: Archiving LGBTQ Identities in the French National Narrative

Prof. Bruno Perreau discusses how the 10-year anniversary of gay marriage in France is both a site of memory and erasure in Chapter One of Queer Realms of Memory: Archiving LGBTQ Identities in the French National Narrative, titled “Presenting the Present: Queer...
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The New York Times | “The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026” list, featuring Prof. Joshua Bennett’s forthcoming book!

  Prof. Joshua Bennett's forthcoming book, The People Can Fly, has already attracted significant attention! In "The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026," The New York Times highlights a vibrant and ambitious literary landscape. Even ahead of its...
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Public Seminar Interview | First as Comedy, Then as Farce: A conversation with Benjamin Mangrum on the assembly of The Comedy of Computation

Public Seminar is a journal of ideas and debate published by the Public Seminar Publishing Initiative at The New School. This past week, Public Seminar writer Rayna Salam and Prof Ben Mangrum discussed the assembly process of Ben's latest book, The Comedy of...
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MIT Faculty Newsletter | Ruth Perry lecturing in China

In this Nov/Dec 2025 edition of the MIT Faculty newsletter (Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3), esteemed Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities and Emerita Professor Ruth Perry travels back to China in the late 1980s, "lecturing in six eastern cities: Beijing, Xuzhou,...
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Dec 9-11 | Professor Wiebke Denecke speaks on opening panel of AI For Global South (AI4GS): Creating a Roadmap for the Next Decade at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi

AI for the Global South (AI4GS) is a convening of researchers who work for and with Global South communities to co-define a 10-year holistic and transdisciplinary research agenda for increasing AI’s positive impact on the Global South. While artificial intelligence...
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MIT Tech | Lit Faculty featured in “SHASS professors share wide-ranging views on AI in the classroom”

Featured in the newest MIT The Tech new section is the the prescient question of AI and academia: "SHASS professors share wide-ranging views on AI in the classroom" written by Lit community student, Sabine Chu. Sabine asks SHASS professors to weigh in on the profound...
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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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Routledge Book Review | Ruth Perry’s The Ballad World of Anna Gordon, Mrs. Brown of Falkland

Ruth Perry's newest book, The Ballad World of Anna Gordon, Mrs. Brown of Falkland, serves as an indispensable reference for both seasoned scholars and newcomers to ballad studies." Lucie Duggan, the book reviewer for this "English Studies" at Routledge Taylor &...
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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.