There have always been stories that are short, but “the short story” has been a recognized category of literature for only about 200 years. Standalone short stories emerged in magazines and newspapers of the early 19th century. In this class you’ll learn about the first century (roughly 1800-1920) of short stories as they developed across the world. You’ll develop skills for analyzing their techniques of plotting, characterization and style. In addition, the class will guide you through your own research into short stories from times and places that interest you.

This class has a global scope. You’ll read stories from the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia that continue to be influential in the English-speaking world alongside stories from countries including Brazil, China, India, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, and Sierra Leone. The class also features numerous African American writers, who haven’t been part of the standard history of the genre. All stories will be provided in English, and students with additional language skills are encouraged to read in the original language where relevant. Your major project for this class is to explore magazine and newspaper archives for a forgotten short story that interests you, and create a digital publication to reintroduce it to the world.

In her autobiographical play, To Be Young Gifted and Black (1969), the playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote: “I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting.” In our own lives—through our own verbal and body language—we alternate between deprecating and eagerly embracing what it means to be dramatic: “Oh gosh, he is so dramatic,” we accuse! “Yes, honey! I’m absolutely a drama queen,” we might hear someone proudly profess. “Dee-rahmuh!” we drawl to diagnose a scandalous story. Drama is everywhere around us asserting itself: provoking us, amusing us, challenging us, prompting us, inspiring us, catching the conscience of Kings even—effectively acting on us in some way or another. By reading plays and watching video recordings of some of them, we will attempt to understand what drama does best and uniquely as a literary genre. Toward the end of the semester, we will also consider the various forms drama can take. Where, for example, do we situate a TikTok video, a historical reenactment, a staged protest, a walk down the runway of an underground ballroom, or a flash mob in an Introduction to Drama course? Our encounters may include, but are not limited to, plays by Samuel Beckett, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Shakespeare.

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.

What and why is cinema? These questions have been repeatedly asked by inventors, artists, theorists, and historians since the first photographic reproductions of movement on celluloid were produced over 130 years ago. Cinema has been called a method for scientific study; a tool for mass manipulation; documentary evidence; and a promise for liberation, to name a few. This course acts as an introduction to the ever-expanding field of cinema and media studies. We will study not only the history of moving images since their emergence but how that history was written and rewritten as a consequence of technological, cultural, and institutional conditions. Students will learn key terms for the close analysis and interpretation of media, become conversant in contemporary theoretical debates, and have opportunities to put theory into practice through essays and creative projects. Our objects of study will range from early silent cinema and classic Hollywood to independent cinema and the networked media environments of the present.

Today we have the luxury of reading more literatures in more languages than ever before, giving us the opportunity to explore the great diversity of what is called “literature” across the time and space of world history. This course introduces you to some of the most seminal and thought-provoking texts from East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam), and is conceived as complementary to the Foundations of Western Literature course in the Literature curriculum. We persistently ask how “literature” looks different when viewed through the literary heritage of East Asia: what does poetry written in Chinese characters accomplish that alphabetic poetry cannot? How does Buddhist reincarnation change the way you tell stories and devise novels?

Why is Japan the world’s only major literature where female authors dominated certain literary genres as early as the 11th century? How did the complex interplay in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam between high-brow literature in the cosmopolitan language of Literary Chinese, and vernacular or popular literatures expand the possibilities of literary expressivity, gender figuration, and identity play? What was it that made American avantgarde writers of the Beat generation so ecstatic about classical Chinese and Japanese poetry?

Our strategic journey through East Asian literatures and cultures will take us through philosophical master texts such as Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi; Tang poetry; China’s classical novels such as Journey to the West; Japan’s female-authored tales and diaries, such as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book; Korea’s classical novel The Nine Cloud Dream, and the heart-wrenching pansori play Song of Ch’unhyang. [Pre-1900]

(Second Half Term: Begins April 1) In this course we will examine detective fictions as both a mode of thinking (we ask questions about our lives) and as a literary genre. As a mode of thinking it’s been around for millennia  (we consider Sophocles’ “Oedipus” and the T’ang Chinese Judge Dee); as a literary genre it emerges in the nineteenth century (Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle), develops through classic twentieth-century and modernist and noir writers (Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler) and booms through postmodern uses of the genre’s structures (Jorge Louis Borges, Patricia Highsmith, Walter Mosley). We’ll end with some film examples (Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock). We’ll also consider some formal, ideological and philosophical aspects of detective fiction, using essays by structuralist/narratology critics (Roland Barthes, Peter Brooks) and essays by other recent critics (Jaques Lacan, Sally Munt). We’ll pay special attention to the cognitive work of “detection” and to the character of the detective, in social position, gender, class, race, intelligence, language, and wit.  [Pre-1900]

(First Half Term: Ends March 22)
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly
stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21,
I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
— Mark Twain

We all have our landmarks, our favorite poems (and our resistances). They are often not the same choices when we are 15, 20, or 40. So what changes when they change? In this “Samplings” half-semester subject, we’ll look at what happens when we individual readers reread poems—and also, more generally, how a poem can change, in a society—so that the work the artwork does (or the intervention it makes, or the influence or ideas it represents) can change as well. Sometimes such changes significantly alter what the poem “means” or what the poem (or the poet) signifies to the society.

Poets we will read might include Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Emma Lazarus, T. S. Eliot, Dr. Seuss [Theodor Geisel], L. Frank Baum, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Marilyn Chin… and of course poems suggested by the experience of class members. We’ll also look, tangentially, at related questions: how a literary canon changes over time; how a shift in mode [from prose-fiction to film for instance] reframes the original; how translation is a “rereading” and an alteration, in the service of “repetition”; how a poem adapts when it appears alone, or in a collection, or in an anthology. Our method is as close to close-reading as we can come, while keeping this set of questions as our lens. [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.

Timeless classic, blockbuster hit, or guilty pleasure? Genre films consistently captivate audiences and drive viewership in the film industry. In this course, students will rigorously analyze the definitive films that have shaped the cinematic imaginary of classic film genres. It provides an in-depth exploration of the concept of film genre, enhancing students’ understanding of how different genres are constructed, deconstructed, and evolve over time. From Westerns to Horror, we will consider how films such as John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) establish, subvert, or transform film genres, paying particular attention to film style and the interplay between genre, ideology, and societal commentary. Students will become familiar with key theories and concepts related to film genre and deploy them in their own scholarly and/or creative work.

Nowadays, when we think about the interaction between human beings and nature, we tend to focus on environmental damage: deforestation, pollution, climate change and the catastrophes to which it has contributed. In this course, however, we will study literature that represents the interaction between humans and the natural world as joyous, sublime, revelatory, and mutually sustaining. We will traverse the Lake District with William Wordsworth, Walden Pond with Henry David Thoreau, and the Grand Canyon with Lauret Savoy. We will trace a breathtakingly long and moving tradition of writers of color crafting stories, poems, and picture books about animals and plants, space and place, from Aesop, Phillis Wheatley, and Paul Laurence Dunbar to Lucille Clifton, Thylias Moss, and Ada Limón.

Without denying that human beings have damaged the world we inhabit—and that certain groups have been systematically barred from enjoying equal access to its beauty and bounty—we will focus on the role that wonder, ease, and joy might play in helping us to envision new modes of being with ourselves and engaging with others and an ever-changing environment. To that end, each student will contribute to a collective “Local Knowledge Project” that enjoins each of you to choose a nearby natural site to visit and revisit, research and write about as winter segues into spring. By mid-May, you will have reworked these short essays into a longer piece of creative nonfiction that chronicles your personal engagement with this locale over time, in a way that makes use of rhetorical tropes and other literary techniques that we will have identified in the work of the essayists and poets whose craft we will marvel at and puzzle over during our seminar-style class discussions.

This version of 21L.449 counts toward the pre-1900 requirement for the Literature Minor and Major. It also satisfies the HASS-A GIR and serves as an approved elective for MIT’s Environment and Sustainability Minor. [Pre-1900]

From the creation of the world in Genesis to the rebuilding of the Temple in Ezra—from poetic wisdom literature to narratives of Israel’s history—the Hebrew Bible spans a vast range of genres, was written by innumerable people over many centuries, and is endlessly complex. In this course we will read substantial selections from each of the three divisions of the Bible: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. We will deploy different methods useful for the academic study of the Bible, considering it by turns as literature, as history, as data for the study of religion, as a collection of texts written, edited, and canonized over a long period of time. One conclusion of this investigation will be that the Bible is a dynamic, moving target; it means different things to different audiences over time—indeed, what for some readers is simply the Bible is, for others, the Old Testament. Accordingly, we will also explore a series of episodes in the history of reading, interpreting, and appropriating the Bible. This component of the course will involve reading and discussing exegetical and hermeneutic approaches to the Bible originating in several distinct religious and intellectual contexts from antiquity to the present.

No previous knowledge of the Bible is expected; all readings are in English. [Pre-1900]

Tracing adaptations of the great Chinese epic novel, Three Kingdoms, across diverse media, and considers what underlies the appeal of this classic narrative over the centuries. Through focus on historical events in the period 206 BC to AD 280, examines the representation of power, diplomacy, war, and strategy, and explores the tension among competing models of political authority and legitimacy. Covers basic elements of classical Chinese political and philosophical thought, and literary and cultural history. Final group project involves digital humanities tools. Readings in translation.

This course examines the relationship between race, gender, and horror in literature, film, and television 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 functions in this way, 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; films such as Candyman, Nanny, Nope, Sorry to Bother You, Blood Quantum, The Devil’s Knot, and La Llorona; and television shows like Lovecraft Country and The Changeling.

Second Half Term: Begins April 1. Read ancient Greek literature in the original language! 21L.609 serves as a bridge for students with at least one semester or more of formal Greek training (Greek I/II, high school Greek, or equivalent) between the study of Greek grammar and vocabulary and the reading of Greek authors. 21L.610 offers more of a challenge for advanced readers. They run simultaneously and each may be repeated once for credit. The topic for Spring 2024 will be Plato’s Symposium. [Pre-1900]

Deals with the vast changes in Spanish social, political and cultural life that have taken place since the death of Franco (1975). Topics include the transition to democracy, new freedom from censorship, the re-emergence of strong movements for regional autonomy (the Basque region and Catalonia), the new cinema including Almodóvar and Saura, educational reforms instituted by the socialist government, the changes in the role of the Catholic church, the emergence of one of the world’s most progressive gender environment, and new forms of fiction.  Special emphasis on the mass media as a vehicle for expression in Spain. Materials include magazines, newspapers, films, television series, fiction, and essays.  Each student chooses a research project that focuses on an issue of personal interest. Taught in Spanish

In 1790, the visual artist, poet, and printer William Blake wrote: “What is now proved, was once only imagined.” The idea that imagination extends the bounds of known reality was a defining assumption of the literary period known today as Romanticism. In an era of momentous social, political and economic transformation, Romantic writers designated imagination as the site of, and possibly the most potent means of bringing about, social and political change. To write (and to read) was to be part of a world-making enterprise – as potentially efficacious in changing the world as the contemporary events to which their writing responded.

The artists at the center of this seminar are two visionary Romantic poets, Blake and Percy Shelley. Both were figures of radicalism and rebellion, and both were committed to imagination as a vehicle of sociopolitical world-making. We will read these poets alongside other Romantic texts by radicals, philosophers, and visionaries, including Anna Barbauld, S.T. Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley’s immortal tale of the miscreative imagination, Frankenstein. Taking Romanticism not as an isolated moment of literary history but as a creative energy that reverberates through subsequent forms of radical literary and political writing, our seminar will encounter the works of this period as tools to think, contend, and create with today.

Recent years have seen an explosion of new works by women writers engaging with ancient myth. This class explores how these authors have responded to ancient epic by rethinking these stories through a feminist lens. Readings from Greek and Latin sources in translation provide background, but the focus this semester is on reading 20th and 21st century works including Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia, Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad, Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, and Madeline Miller’s Circe.