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

Congratulations Dr. Alfailakawi! Literature Predoctoral Fellow Danah Alfailakawi is Assistant Teaching Professor at University of Colorado Boulder!

Danah Alfailakawi joined the Literature Section in the summer of 2023 as a Diversity Predoctoral Fellow. We recently received news that Danah is now the Assistant Teaching Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department of the University of Colorado Boulder!...

SHASS Alumni Gallery Spotlight | Guadalupe Hayes-Mota earned undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Literature, and grad degrees from MIT

“I currently serve as the Director of the Bioethics Program at Santa Clara University,” he says, “where I help students navigate moral questions shaping medicine and technology.” Hayes-Mota, an entrepreneur who is also a Senior Lecturer in biotechnology and AI ethics...

MIT News | Arthur Bahr named head of MIT’s Literature Section!

A faculty member since 2007, the scholar of medieval literature explores how different parts of physical manuscripts combine to create interest and meaning. Written by Benjamin Daniel, SHASS Communications Officer Professor Arthur Bahr has been named head of the...

Cité du Genre Podcast from the Civil Society Center | “Pas mon genre” Episode 4 with Prof. Bruno Perreau

For episode number 4 of "Pas Mon Genre", the podcast interviewed Prof. Bruno Perreau, Visiting professor at Sciences Po and specialist in queer theory. Bruno spoke about his trajectory and his recent fascinating research work on issues dealing with universalism, the...

Screenshot of a literary journal article by Prof. Ben Mangrum. There is a bright orange bar on top of the page, with the title of the journal "American Literature".

Duke University Press: American Literature | Research article, “Race Conditions” by Prof. Ben Mangrum

This June, Duke University Press published "Race Conditions," a research article by Prof. Ben Mangrum, in their preeminent American Literature literary journal. Abstract: A technical phenomenon in programming and electronic circuitry serves as an explanatory image for...

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun Highlights Prof. Wiebke Denecke’s Reflections on the Self, AI, and Value Plurality at the Kyoto–Oxford Symposium

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, one of the country’s most influential national newspapers, featured Professor Wiebke Denecke, Faculty Lead of MIT Global Humanities (GHI), and her opening lecture at the Kyoto–Oxford Symposium, “Self, Identity, and Value Plurality,” held...

MITHIC News | Inside MITHIC: Artificial Shakespeares with Prof. Shankar Raman

Prof. Shankar Raman, professor of Literature, is leading a new MITHIC project, “Futures of the Digital Past: Artificial Shakespeares.” The project is funded through MITHIC’s Humanities Cultivation Fund. In this Q&A, Raman discusses his motivation for pursuing this...

AOC | Prof. Bruno discusses LGBT+ in America: Revocation of Citizenship

Written by Prof. Bruno Perreau L’administration Trump vient de révéler son projet de budget pour 2027 : le FBI devrait recevoir 166 millions de dollars pour lutter contre le « terrorisme intérieur ». Sa feuille de route est établie depuis plus d’un an : fichage des...

New Books Network | High Theory: A “Generic” Podcast Interview with Prof. Mangrum,

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks to Prof. Ben Mangrum about Generic. A curious term that denotes both the conventions and rules of genre, and the impersonal or nameless quality of things like generic drugs or generic...

Critical Inquiry | New review of Prof. Mangrum’s book, The Comedy of Computation

Written by Kate Marshall, Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs College Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, where she also serves as Associate Dean for Research and is Director of the Franco Institute. She is the author, most recently, of Novels by Aliens:...

EVENTS

24 - 25

September

Sept 24-25 | SHASS 75th Anniversary Symposium

Date Sep 24 - 25, 2026Time All Day EventVenue MIT Thomas Tull Concert Hall, Edward & Joyce Linde Music Building, W18

The SHASS 75th Anniversary Symposium is a two-day celebration Sept. 24-25, 2026 in the Thomas Tull Concert Hall in MIT’s Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building. The symposium will feature faculty panel thematic sessions (including with Literature faculty), student performances, and alumni talks. ...

28

September

Global France Seminar: The Suicide Archive

Date September 28, 2026Time 5:15 pmVenue MIT Building 14E-304

Reading across literature, film, oral history, archival documents, legal history, and scientific texts, The Suicide Archive (2024) shows how aesthetic forms (literature, film, visual art, performance) preserve powerful histories of resistance and loss.

06

October

Ancient & Medieval Studies Colloquium presents, David S. Bachrach “Knighthood and the Realities of War in Medieval Germany”

Ancient & Medieval Studies Colloquium presents, David S. Bachrach "Knighthood and the Realities of War in Medieval Germany"

Date October 6, 2026Time 5:15 pm - 6:30 pmVenue MIT Building E51-275

Military history as a subfield within medieval studies has suffered considerably from the fact that both medieval authors and modern scholars have seen warfare as a nasty element of the human experience, that is better condemned or even ignored than studied. As a consequence, the examination of warf...

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.