How do you read a poem?  Many people find poetry “difficult” – sometimes pleasurably and sometimes less so. But things that are difficult may also be useful and valuable to us as readers and human beings.  This class will focus on developing and practicing the skills, habits, and knowledge to approach poetic texts – difficult or otherwise – so that you can assess their use and value for yourselves.  We’ll take a close look at the kinds of evidence that can be used for thinking and talking about poetry, with and without knowledge of context. Readings will lean towards 20th and 21st century work in English, so that we can dig into how poets work with the specific features of one contemporary language we have in common. However, you can expect some exposure to older materials as well as one or more sessions on poetry in translation, and any knowledge of other languages will be a valuable resource to contribute to our discussion. We will explore a variety of tools and approaches:  memorization, listening, reading out loud, visualization and annotation, as well as small group discussions and presentations. The last two weeks of the semester will focus on readings chosen and presented by the class.

This subject contextualizes Shakespeare’s major comedies within a broader framework that includes so-called “problem” plays as well as city comedies by one or more of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. We will ground our readings in performance and so the comedies will be paired with filmic realizations that will also allow us to consider how the plays must be changed and re-interpreted so as to travel across temporal, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Works studied include Twelfth Night (and Some Like It Hot); Taming of the Shrew (and 10 Things I Hate About You); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, and A Comedy of Errors. [Pre-1900]

This subject examines the cultural, artistic, social, and political impact of globalization across international borders in a historical context. Novels and short stories, as well as case studies on global health, human trafficking, and labor migration, illuminate the shaping influence of contemporary globalization on gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Guest lecturers visit class as we examine the impact of globalization on cultural identity, the arts, the politics of language, and the media. How has migration changed notions of cultural and racial hybridity? What can we learn from specific examples of global media and expressive culture, including popular music and film? How has globalization affected human rights? Students develop sensitivity to other cultures and the ability to read broadly across national boundaries. Furthermore, the emphasis on the historical context gives students a foundation to continue work in literature, history, and the arts from a global perspective.

Children’s creative contributions to culture are often belittled, ignored, and forgotten, rather than being judged worthy of preservation, sustained study, and critical analysis. This course therefore constitutes a bold experiment in reclamation, whereby we co-investigate the following question: What happens if we try to build a whole class around cultural artifacts that children themselves had a hand in creating?

We will begin by exploring the leading role that Native American, Jewish, and Black children (and their teachers) played in paving the way for a golden decade of youth participation in American culture that stretched from 1965 to 1975. Besides analyzing playground chants, diaries, and picture books based on children’s sayings and stories, we will also study child-crafted films, poetry, and novellas, as well as plays, TV shows, photo books, and dances co-created by children and adults. In addition, contrasting how Holocaust-era children’s artwork was received compared to contemporary Palestinian children’s art will allow us to explore why and how adults appropriate, rewrite, and sometimes even censor children’s creative efforts.

To expand and enrich our understanding of this archive, all students will be required to choose a single cultural artifact created or co-created by a child to do an in-depth oral presentation on, which you will then expand into a final essay. You might choose to dig up and scrutinize a story that you yourself wrote when you were young; or identify and analyze a particularly cool contribution to a new media trend involving children; or deepen your understanding of one of the cultural artifacts that’s already on the syllabus by doing some additional independent research that you use to contextualize and enrich your close reading of it.

Whatever type of cultural artifact we are discussing in this seminar-style class, we will grapple with the following questions: What vision of childhood emerges in this artwork? Does it differ from how childhood tends to get represented in similar material created solely by adults? How is the adult-child relationship depicted? How do power asymmetries related to age, gender, ethnicity, and class affect the creation, content, and reception of this cultural artifact? And finally, what difference does the type of media being employed make, especially in terms of what liberties and rewards, risks and dangers are being afforded to young artists?

This course will focus on the issue of resistance in French and Francophone cinemas. It will explore departures from the Golden Age of French Cinema (Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game) to the technical and technological resistance and innovation of the French New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Beyond France, films made in the wake of the New Wave, without being necessarily influenced by them, exhibit political resistance to the colonial order (Ousmane Sembène’s Le camp de Thiaroye). In nearby Québec, the split between a nascent cinema consciousness and the Canadian Film Board went hand in hand with a cultural identity crisis (Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire). Readings will include texts on the techniques of cinema and how to read a film. Films will be shown with English subtitles. Class taught in French.

Oscar Wilde seems to bridge the gaps: between Ireland and England, between imperium and colony, between the 19th and the 20th centuries, between gender-discrimination and [through a form of martyrdom] gradual acceptance/celebration, between art-as-utilitarian-social-function and art-for art’s-sake. He both wrote the [arguably] funniest play ever in English and, within a couple of years, was tried for “gross indecency” and sent to prison. He is the patron saint of gay identity [he claims to have kissed Walt Whitman… Whitman, never otherwise known for his tact, withheld comment] and was also putatively the model for the characters of Sherlock Holmes [by his friend, the Scottish writer, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Count Dracula [by his friend, the Irish writer, Bram Stoker].

We read texts by Oscar Wilde, Augusta Gregory, W.B. Yeats, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Henry James, Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, Gilbert and Sullivan, Tom Stoppard, and others. We read visual images by Wilde’s friends Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, John Singer Sargant, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, James McNeill Whistler, Edward Burne-Jones, Frances Richards, and Aubrey Beardsley. Short papers, several presentations, no final exam. [Pre-1900]

This course examines the relationship between race and horror in literature and film from the Americas. Although the genre has often relied on racist stereotypes and anxieties, horror has also proven a remarkably powerful means for writers and filmmakers of color to reflect on historical traumas and contemporary issues—from lynching and land dispossession to police brutality and gentrification—as well as imagine forms of survival and resistance. In order to understand how horror does so, we will consider its history, tropes, forms, and subgenres while also engaging with current scholarship in the fields of Black, Indigenous, Latin American, and feminist studies.

Focusing on the work of Black and Indigenous creators, we will analyze fiction by Victor LaValle, Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due, Brenda Lozano, and Stephen Graham Jones alongside films such as Sinners, Candyman, Nanny, Nope, Sorry to Bother You, Blood Quantum, The Devil’s Knot, and La Llorona.

Explores fundamental questions about equality, freedom, privacy, community, and popular accountability through representation of idealized or horrific political systems. Focuses on classic, time-tested novels paired with short pieces on real-world cases that address key themes in the fictional treatment.

In the Victorian era (1837-1901), novels provided popular entertainment but also began staking large claims to artistic seriousness and ambition. Having become a celebrity as the author of best-selling comic novels, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) turned, in his middle years, to producing novels of much more careful construction and much higher aims.

Bleak House (serialized 1852-53) is Charles Dickens’s masterpiece: one critic called it “the most audacious and significant act of the novelistic imagination … in the nineteenth century” (and that is saying something, because the 19th century is known for many excellent novels, from Jane Austen to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky).

Bleak House attempts a comprehensive representation of English culture, from high society to the lowest of the low. This was the culture of the world’s most powerful nation, holding the largest empire the world had ever seen. The novel ranges from broad comedy to scathing critique. It also features several mysteries, sustains an atmosphere of danger and suspense, and introduces one of the first detectives in modern fiction.

Depicting a complex, immersive social world, Bleak House is long and intricate. To make the task more approachable, this class will take up Bleak House in a manner resembling the way it was initially published: in serial installments. Installments of the novel will be interspersed with other readings throughout the entire semester. Those other readings will include two novels by contemporaries of Dickens’s who also helped pioneer the detective story. We will read Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), two fascinating page-turners teeming with mystery and suspense. We’ll also read selected stories by Arthur Conan Doyle about the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.

The class will help students develop skills of close reading and interpretation. Student work will include short writing exercises, quizzes, and brief oral reports. A final project will reflect on the semester’s experience. Please contact jmbuzard@mit.edu with any questions. [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.

(Taught in English) Explores the works of classical Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including stories and novels by Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin, Nabokov, Platonov, and others. Focuses on their approaches to portraying self and society, and on literary responses to fundamental ethical and philosophical questions about justice, freedom, free will, fate, love, loyalty, betrayal, and forgiveness.

Students interested in completing some readings and a short writing project in Russian should register for 21G.618.

In an age when algorithms smooth out our edges and platforms reward the predictable, how do writers craft voices that resist flattening? This course explores the unmistakable, often inimitable signature styles of authors such as Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Franz Kafka, James Baldwin, Clarice Lispector, Gabriel García Márquez, Joan Didion, and others whose voices are so distinct that we can often easily recognize them when we encounter them on the page.

We’ll study how these authors persisted in environments that pressured them to conform, and how voice becomes both craft and courage. And we’ll develop the ability to see (and articulate) what makes a sentence recognizably Morrisonian, Kafkaesque, or Baldwinian—and what makes a sentence recognizably yours.

Through close reading, style mimicry experiments (including deliberate “AI misfires” as teaching moments), and creative practice, students will investigate how voice operates not as ornament, but as identity, resistance, and persuasion. The course ultimately asks:

In a world that constantly sells us sameness, how do we author something unmistakably our own?

(First Half Term: Ends March 20) Introduction to reading ancient Greek literature in the original language. Provides a bridge between the study of Greek grammar and the reading of Greek authors. Improves knowledge of the language through careful examination of literary texts, both prose and poetry. Builds proficiency in reading Greek and develops an appreciation for basic features of style and genre. Texts vary from term to term. May be repeated once for credit if content differs. 21L.609 and 21L.610, or two terms of 21L.609, may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H. Content and format will be determined in consultation with students on the first day. [Pre-1900]

(First Half Term: Ends March 20) Introduces rudiments of Latin to students with little or no prior knowledge of the subject. Aimed at laying a foundation to begin reading ancient and/or medieval literary and historical texts. Latin I and Latin II may be combined by petition (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H. [Pre-1900]

Working outwards from the plays of two of Britain’s most respected, prolific—and seriously funny—living dramatists, this seminar will explore a wide range of knowledge in fields such as mathematics, philosophy, politics, history, genetics, and art…as well as, of course, literature and theater! To anchor our thinking and unleash your creativity, we will focus on selected texts by (Sir) Tom Stoppard and his exact but quite different contemporary, Caryl Churchill. To illuminate them, some students will report on earlier plays by Shakespeare, Wilde, and Beckett; others will explore topics ranging from the poetry of Lord Byron and A. E. Housman to the art of Dadaism and Pink Floyd, from the (financial) Big Bang to the bridges of Konigsberg, and from Czechoslovakian dissidents to feminist theater collectives.

We will uncover the societal and theatrical contexts informing these postmodern plays, and consider different critical approaches to them. In the process, we will analyze drama as performance—a distinctive art form within a rapidly changing media landscape. We will also celebrate the wit and verbal energy of these contemporary writers…not to mention, how Fermat’s theorem, futures trading, Latin translation, Wittgenstein’s language games and chaos theory can become the stuff of stage comedy. Plays will include Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Top Girls, Arcadia, Serious Money, Hapgood, A Number, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

This course examines diverse Indigenous films and television shows from Turtle Island (Canada & the United States) to Aotearoa (New Zealand). Students will study a wide variety of influential and popular Indigenous media, including activist-based documentaries, adventure comedies, sitcoms, and animations. These works challenge accepted historical and contemporary fictions that sustain settler-colonial forms of domination, offering poignant correctives to the misrepresentations of Indigenous peoples that have dominated Hollywood cinema. We will also consider the larger historical, legal, and political contexts to which these works respond. Films/television shows will include: Reservation Dogs, by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Muscogee Creek), The Mountain of SGaana, by Christopher Auchter (Haida), Hunt for the Wilderpeople, by Taika Waititi (Māori), Rhymes for Young Ghouls, by Jeff Barnaby (Mi’kmaq), Smoke Signals, by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne and Arapaho) and Maliglutit, by Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk).