Few activities are more central to everyday experience than walking. For those who are not living with a mobility impairment, walking may even be something we do without thinking. Our class will focus on this commonplace activity as we explore the practice and cultural history of walking. Along the way, we will consider what the humble walk can reveal about the world around us, private and public life, and the rhythms of thinking. 

Our class will encounter poets, novelists, non-fiction authors, and filmmakers who make walking central to their work. We will read poems composed on the move, experiments in urban “drift,” and observe how, on a walk, one may derive pleasure, encounter peril, find love or a wilderness in one’s own neighborhood. We will explore the origins of an idea, now thoroughly absorbed into contemporary life, that walking should be undertaken daily for health (get your 10,000 steps!). And we will consider how a graphic novel and a movie separately portray a momentous act of walking in collective political protest: the civil rights marches from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery in 1965. Classes will involve walks outside campus walls as well as discussions inside them. In various extramural rambles throughout the semester, you will explore the environment of MIT and Greater Boston as well as walk in the spirit of the texts and films we encounter.

An introduction to poetry in English. We will explore poems written during several periods and in several genres (nature-poems, narratives, the epic, sonnets, odes, experimental forms). Focus will be less on names and dates than on tactics of analytic reading. Poets whose work we’ll read include William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, June Jordan, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Li-young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and others. Special course-related events (readings, lectures, film screenings) will take place on selected evenings throughout the term. Regular classroom hours will be reduced in the weeks for which a special event is scheduled.
[Pre-1900]

Climate crisis and COVID-19 are forceful reminders of the entangled lives of everyone and everything on the planet. This class turns to contemporary literature to consider ways of living together that are often ignored in contemporary American society. How do plant, animal, mineral, fungal, microbial, or bacterial networks think and live together? We will read novels, short stories, and poetry that place non-human characters at their center: what does a story look like from the point of view of mushrooms, moss, trees, or a piece of plastic waste at sea? Can we learn to be kinder, more open, and more oriented to a world where we value the lives of the most vulnerable rather than the creation of wealth? We will think about these ideas through the lens of social justice, such as the profit-driven response to the current pandemic, environmental racism, and the use of Indigenous lands for nuclear mining.

This class is a CI-H subject, which means that it will provide you with a foundation in written and oral communication. Over the course of the class you will write and revise a series of short essays and share your ideas with the class through presentations. Assessment is based on consistent participation and engagement throughout the semester, rather than being heavily weighted towards a final paper.

Interdisciplinary survey of people of African descent that draws on the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing. Connects the experiences of African-Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories, and on linguistic patterns. Includes lectures, discussions, workshops, and required field trips that involve minimal cost to students.

Films are familiar to you; this course should make them strange again.

The Film Experience serves as an introduction to film studies, concentrating on close analysis and criticism. Students will learn the technical vocabulary for analyzing cinematic narrative, framing, editing, color, sound, and lighting; develop the critical means for turning close analysis into interpretations and comparative readings of films; and explore theoretical issues related to spectatorship, reflexivity, and ideology. We will look beyond the surface pleasures of cinema to ask how films are put together; what choices are made formally, narratively, and politically in the constructions of different types of films; and how films have changed historically and in different production and national contexts. We will study a wide example of works made between 1895 and 2023 and heralding from over a dozen countries, ranging from early silent experiments, documentary and avant-garde films, and canonical European art cinema, to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong melodrama, and Iranian cinema. Directors include Ana Lily Amirpour, Maya Deren, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Greta Gerwig, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Roberto Rossellini, Quentin Tarantino, Orson Welles, and Wong Kar-wai.

Format: one required 90-minute lecture, one required evening screening, and one discussion hour per week.

(Full Term) Dante’s long narrative poem, “The Divine Comedy,” opens with the poet-narrator, midway through his life, lost in a dark wood. There, he is found by Roman poet Virgil, sent from the afterlife by a woman Dante had loved who has reached down from Heaven to set him back on the right path by showing him what waits for human beings after death. The first two parts of the “Comedy” tell the story of Dante and Virgil’s journey together through hell to the mountain of Purgatory; atop the mountain lies a lost Eden where Dante will meet Beatrice once more.

The “Comedy,” itself a kind of response to Virgil’s own epic poem the “Aeneid,” has generated a rich tradition of commentary, illustration, translation, and allusion that date back to the poem’s completion in 1320. As well as making use of this tradition, we will continue and add to it through practices of active reading. Work for the class includes reading journals, homework groups, leading discussion, and three short reflection papers. [Pre-1900]

(Second Half Term: Starts Mar 31) In this subject we’ll work with literary texts, chiefly poems. We will read theories of translation (Is it possible? Is it necessary-but-undesirable? Is it even ethical? Is it imperialistic or politically-charged? Is it more like paraphrase or transformation or musical-performance?). We will do comparisons of texts-in-their-original languages and texts-in-translation, and will try some translations and “versions” ourselves. We will consider whether transferring from one medium or genre (e.g., a poem or a novel) to another (e.g., film, opera) is a mode of “translation”—and also what to do when a text is considered sacred (what happens when we translate the Bible?) Or when a machine does the work? Or when a language is historically compromised (how does a Jewish writer use German after the Shoah?).

No other languages-competence except in English is required (we can discuss the processes and theories of “translating” texts from languages one doesn’t know); students who do know other languages, however, are welcome.

Theorists include Walter Benjamin, Benjamin Whorf, Nancy Chodorow, George Steiner, Jon Felstiner, William Gass. Artists whose work we’ll read include Basho, Li Bai, Ezra Pound, Xu Zhimo, Lam Thi My Da, Ngo Tu Lap, Cesar Vallejo, Robert Frost, Dante, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Paul Celan, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Aimé Césaire, Samuel Beckett, Constantine Cavafy, Robert Lowell, Charlie Chaplin… and probably others. [Pre-1900]

“Rap Theory & Practice,” is a dynamic and immersive course designed for aspiring rap artists and enthusiasts. This class offers a unique blend of in-class and field activities, fostering both individual creativity and group collaboration. Inside the classroom, students engage in ideation, writing, and recording sessions, enabling them to work on solo projects as well as group compositions. The course also takes a novel approach to in situ rap creation by incorporating field activities, known as “GHOTIING,” where students get the opportunity to brainstorm, write, and record in various outdoor settings, expanding their creative horizons.

Another focus of the course is preparing students for the prestigious global MC competition, End Of The Weak (EODUB), offering them intensive training in various performance modalities to hone their skills. Additionally, the course includes weekly in class freestyle training sessions, designed to enhance students’ improvisational abilities and lyrical agility. Outside of class, students are expected to create a full song weekly, pushing their creative boundaries and building a robust portfolio. The culmination of this course is a rap-based final project, allowing students to showcase their learned skills and artistic growth.

Students are expected to take part in class discussion, readings, lecture and presentations from guest speakers. Students must have an iPad or Laptop with either Logic Pro or GarageBand recording software to take this course. Also students must have Inner Ear Monitors or “IEM” style headphones. Microphones and all other relevant equipment will be provided. This course promises a comprehensive, rigorous hands-on experience in the art and practice of rap, optimal for those looking to dive deep into this music genre.

“Black Paris” will focus on the histories and contemporary lives of people of African descent in the French capital city. The course will explore the reasons and manner of migration of these populations to France from the United States, the Caribbean, and the continent of Africa, and it will examine in detail the status and impact of these populations on contemporary Paris. Issues to be discussed include immigration, assimilation, integration, and citizenship. Taught in French.

Students will investigate other aspects of Paris to gain a deeper understanding of the city, such as the characteristics of each of the 20 districts. They will be encouraged to pursue research related to their interests such as the role Paris plays in science, commerce, industry, culture, and entertainment. They may also research the biographies of influential figures such as Josephine Baker, Léopold Sédar Senghor, or Maryse Condé, or conduct a comparative study between Paris and a major American city such as New York.

Before it comes to an end, how shall I spend the life I have? What makes it worthwhile? What should I strive for? This course looks to art, philosophy, and popular culture to examine the question—what is the good life? Students will grapple with diverse perspectives on the good life. We will consider the philosophers, from Aristotle to bell hooks, who have explicitly addressed these questions, works of art that have sought to reimagine them, and examples of popular culture that presuppose a consensus regarding them. Students will write, reflect, and create, as they learn to consider the role of rationality, morality, absurdity, economics, politics, class, and identity in constructing an idea of the good life. Sample films and television shows include: Bridgerton, The Good Place, The Office, Do The Right Thing, and La Dolce Vita.

Explores the memoir genre through a feminist intersectional lens, looking at the ways in which feminist writers ground personal experience within a complex understanding of race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, immigration status/nationality, and dis/ablity. Gives particular attention to the relationships between the personal and the political; form and content; fact, truth, and imagination; self and community; trauma and healing; coming to voice and breaking silence. Readings include books by Audre Lorde, Janet Mock, Daisy Hernandez, Jessica Valenti, and Ariel Gore, and shorter pieces by Meena Alexander and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Drawing on lessons taken from these works, students write a short memoir of their own.

Develops critical understanding of queer theory through foundational and contemporary texts and other media forms. Examines relationships between queer theory and other social and cultural theories that probe and critique power, privilege, and normativity including critical race theory, transgender studies, feminist theory, and disability theory. Topics may include social movements, queer of color critiques, transnational activisms, and transgender politics.

Introduction to two millennia of Korean literature and culture. Discusses texts, artifacts, and films in their cultural context and from a comparative global perspective. Explores poetry; historiography, story-telling, drama and fiction; philosophical and religious texts and practices; and visual materials. Includes creative exercises to help students develop their own Korean wave and K-drama passions with a critically informed eye. [Pre-1900]

Surveys the nature, history, and distinctive features of Japanese literature and cultural history from the beginnings through the threshold of modernity. Examines various genres of poetry, historiography and mythological lore, prose tales and fiction, diaries, essays, Noh and puppet plays, short stories and novels; and helps students appreciate the texts’ relevance in the historical and cultural context in which authors wrote them, but also in the broader context of literary traditions from around the world, and for the humanistic and aesthetic powers, which makes them poignant to us today. Showcases how authors increasingly enjoyed adapting, redoing, and satirizing earlier models, while constantly developing new expressive forms suited to the urgent needs of their time. Includes an eco-literature lab, a creative writing lab, and a history-writing lab for collaborative experimentation. As “virtual fieldwork” includes several sessions taught from Tokyo virtually, with Japanese students joining. [Pre-1900]

This is a class on autobiography and in it we will play the hits: Douglass, Ellison, Didion, Jordan, Thoreau, Clifton. Stanley Cavell’s The Pitch of Philosophy, with its elegant dance between life-writing and the major disciplinary debates of the day; the James Baldwin classic, No Name in The Street, and its instructive opening image: Baldwin’s mother saying, “That’s a good idea” in reference to a yard of black velvet, and for months the boy thinks that ideas are pieces of fabric; Harriet Jacobs’s 19th-century narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in which she writes letters from a crawlspace to deceive those intent on her capture, using the written word to transport herself many miles beyond her current surroundings.

Each week, these texts will help us compose ourselves anew on the page. Always, though, there will be a set of questions about craft following us as we study: Where to start? How to begin the story of our beginnings? [Pre-1900]

(Second Half Term: Starts Mar 31) Building on 21L.609, develops the ability to read and analyze ancient Greek literary texts, both prose and poetry. Focuses on increasing fluency in reading comprehension and recognition of stylistic, generic, and grammatical features. Texts vary from term to term. May be repeated once for credit if content differs. 21L.610 and 21L.609, or two terms of 21L.610, may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H. [Pre-1900]

(Second Half Term: Starts Mar 31) Introductory Latin subject for students with some prior knowledge of basic grammar and vocabulary. Intended to refresh and enrich ability to read ancient and/or medieval literary and historical texts. May be taken independently of Latin I with permission of instructor. Latin I and Latin II may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H. [Pre-1900]

From Akira Kurosawa to Tom Stoppard, from Giuseppi Verdi to Julie Taymor and a legion of meme makers and gamers, creative artists around the world have remade Shakespeare’s plays in new media and cultural contexts: they are doing so right now. Why this enduring fascination? How have the stories been transformed by their movement across time and space? And why is Shakespeare’s fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe—the true wild child of the Elizabethan Renaissance—lurking in the background?  We will study the texts and remaking of Shakespeare as modes of modern cultural and artistic collaboration—including our own!  Working with old and new media, students will gain a deeper understanding of theatrical and screen performance, literary analysis, cross-media adaptation and online research tools—as well as the fun of “Shakeshifting.”  Source texts to include Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Edward II, and The Massacre at Paris; Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest; plus a modern “field” that defies definition. [Pre-1900]

This course surveys Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier’s oeuvre as a medium for engaging cinema’s capacity to provoke reflection on history, culture, and the very medium itself. Producing television and movies ranging from musical, horror, drama, comedy, and science-fiction, Lars von Trier has been called a sadist, genius, and—interchangeably—a provocateur. Born in Denmark in 1956, von Trier straddles the generations of Euro-American ‘children of World War II’ and those generations whose distance from that global catastrophe opened the way for reflection on historical complicity. History and tradition are key points of interrogation for von Trier’s works, which probe the Second World War in Europe; racism and chattel slavery; sex and gender politics; and religious fundamentalism, alongside the conventions and traditions of cinematic form. We will discuss and debate these issues through pairings of von Trier’s work with cinematic and cultural theory as well as historical documents. Students will have the opportunity to produce analytical essays, artistic manifestos, and their own provocative cinematic works. 21L.011 Intro to Film or a previous film/media course is recommended; introductory materials can be recommended by the instructor.