This course will look at literature centered on monstrous figures to think about two things. The first: how do monsters (like devilish magicians, mad scientists, and any number of nameless creatures) show or de-monstrate the fears, anxieties, and problems of specific cultural moments throughout history? What are the techniques authors use to fashion their monstrous characters, and what are their implications? The second: what are we to make of the fact that, while monsters are often objects of terror, they are also frequently sympathetic figures, vibrant fictional characters whose complexities seem to protest the fear they are (supposedly) meant to inspire?
Indeed, many of the monsters we will cover are, to some readers, the heroes of their stories.
By reading literature in genres ranging from 16th century English drama to the 19th century Gothic novel to contemporary American horror fiction, this course will teach you to understand and write about—through close reading, historical and contextual research, and comparative analysis of texts—literature’s rich, ongoing, and ambivalent tradition of making monsters.

Complementary to 21L.001. This course offers a broad survey of foundational literary and philosophical texts that have come to represent the cultural heritage of the modern Western world. The focus will be on examining how works of art have reflected, shaped, and challenged their social and historical contexts. We will consider art’s role in transformative shifts such as the loss of a supernatural perspective on human events and the decentering of “Western Man” as the locus of human possibility. The readings will introduce students to key thinkers including Cervantes, Goethe, Wilde, Woolf, and Fanon. Students will become familiar with various critical perspectives, considering approaches based on class, race, gender and sexuality. The course will also prepare students for undergraduate work in literary and cultural studies with a focus on textual analysis and composition.

How do you read a poem?  Many people find poetry “difficult” – sometimes pleasurably and sometimes less so. But within that category of the difficult resides much that is of use and of value to us as readers and human beings.  Among the goals of the class, we will be developing and practicing some of the skills, habits, and knowledge to approach poetic texts – difficult or otherwise – so that you can judge for yourselves what they mean for you.  We’ll take a close look at the nature of evidence that can be used for thinking and talking about poetry:  the formal properties of poetic language as well the use of context. We’ll read a wide variety of poetry from 1900 through the present, with some glances further back, and we will explore a variety of tools and approaches, from the old (memorization, listening, and reading out loud) to the new (digitally enabled visualization and annotation).  Most of our reading will be in modern English, so that we can focus on how poets work with its particular properties and affordances, but any knowledge of other languages can be a valuable resource to contribute to our discussion. The last two weeks of the semester will focus on readings chosen and presented by the class.

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.

William Shakespeare didn’t go to college. If he could time-travel like Dr. Who, he would be stunned to find his words on a university syllabus. But he would not be surprised at the way we will be using those words in this class, because the study of rhetoric was essential to all education in his day. We too will focus on communication using words, with Shakespeare as a capacious model and inspiration for dialogue, self-presentation, and writing. By writing ‘with’ Shakespeare—critically, creatively, in groups, and in a variety of media—you will have ample opportunity to explore the elements and occasions that shape effective, meaningful communication. We will consider how his plays have in turn been reinterpreted across the globe: in addition to reciting famous speeches, we will analyze both text and film versions of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing and the tragedy Othello, and you will explore an online MITx module as preparation to perform dramatic scenes from what is now a ‘problem play’, The Merchant of Venice. Finally, we will look at how Shakespeare revises his stories and style in the late ‘romance’ A Winter’s Tale. In the process, you will get to ‘play’ a Shakespeare scholar, and debate the reasons for the playwright’s enduring power. Nevertheless, our aim is less to appreciate his works as an end in themselves than to draw on his remarkable drama (including its vocabulary, variety, verve, and verbal command) in order to help you improve your own writing, speaking, analytic thinking, use of resources, and understanding of media today.

Fiction writers are masters of the art of deception.  They lie all the time.  It should come as no surprise, then, that some of their most enduring (and sometimes endearing) characters are themselves liars, swindlers, adulterers, rogues and criminals. This course will introduce you to European and Latin American fiction through a selection of its most memorable lowlifes.  We will examine how novels, short stories, graphic novels and films use these outsiders and their transgressions to comment on societal norms and problems.  Some of the works we will analyze and discuss are the Lazarillo de Tormes, Voltaire’s Candide, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Machado de Assis’s Epitaph of a Small Winner, Jorge Luis Borges’s A Universal History of Infamy, Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.  Class projects will include the opportunity for students to create—using various media—their own lowlife characters.

This course offers a panoramic overview of classical Chinese literature—the world’s oldest continuous literary tradition still alive. As we read texts from a breath-taking span of three thousand years (some originally inscribed on turtle shells and bamboo strips!) we will learn how to appreciate the interventions writers made in their own time and cultural context, while also grasping their significance, comparatively, in the broader context of literary traditions from around the world.
While focusing on first-hand encounters with original works in English translation (we will examine poetry, philosophy, history, rhapsodies, drama, short stories and several great classical novels), we will ask questions such as: what distinctive role did writing and literature come to play in Chinese society over the course of China’s many dynasties? How did the genres Chinese authors developed shape the content of their works and help articulate their desires, fears, hopes, creative fancies, and their ideas about life and death, virtue and violence, love, belief and knowledge, and the human condition? What does classical Chinese literature have to offer to readers and writers in today’s global world?
As we read across three millennia, we will have the unique privilege to witness in fast-forward motion, like in a historical laboratory, how Chinese authors increasingly adapted, satirized, rewrote or resisted earlier literary themes and models as their literary tradition grew older and ever more diverse.
All texts are in translation. No language skills are required.

(Ends Oct 21) In this 6-week Samplings subject, we read texts – chiefly poems and visual images — that have come to seem “iconic” in American culture. We consider what that designation means [what is a icon for? what work does a canon do? what does it permit? what does it inhibit or prevent?], and we look at how certain texts become iconic or formative. Often, we collectively acknowledge an historical moment, and a journalist or writer documents the moment; eventually the documentation seems to represent [or to embody] the moment, so that we interpret the text formally in order to understand the historical or Ideological or psychological nuances of the original moment. Some texts directly aspire to that representative status; some artists manipulate the reality they portray; some deliberately alter or play on the received dominant narrative or on a text/image that is already recognizable.
Texts by Walt Whitman, Emma Lazarus, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Robert Frost, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edgar Allan Poe, AI [Florence Anthony], Marilyn Chin, James Weldon Johnson, others. Pictures and images by Eadward Muybridge, Lewis Hine, Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus,* Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Joe Rosenthal, Sally Mann, Carrie Mae Weems, Edward S. Curtis, and others. Film by Charlie Chaplin.
*Here’s a useful fact: The character and appearance of Bart Simpson were based on Diane Arbus’ picture “Boy with toy hand grenade in Central Park, NYC, 1962”.. consult the course poster to see if you recognize him.

(Ends Oct. 21) The “small wonders” of this class are short poems, songs, sonnets, odes, and others from a period famed for excellence in these short literary forms. The poetry produced in England in the years 1789-1820 revolutionized the themes and diction of poetry and substantially rethought the nature of poetic thinking. This subject will read ample selections of lyric writing from the major poets of English Romanticism, and will situate this poetry in relation to what William Wordsworth described as “the great national events” of his moment (political revolution, economic modernization, urbanization and industrialization, feminist and abolitionist movements, etc.). Our readings will attend chiefly to the invention of formal literary languages responsive to these contexts. Authors will include William Blake, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelley, and John Keats. The student who takes this subject can expect to gain an intimate familiarity with some of the most exhilarating, challenging, and beautiful short poems in the language.

A cultural approach to television’s evolution as a technology and system of representation. Considers television as a system of storytelling and mythmaking, and as a cultural practice studied from anthropological, literary, and cinematic perspectives. Focuses on prime-time commercial broadcasting, the medium’s technological and economic history, and theoretical perspectives. Considerable television viewing and readings in media theory and cultural interpretation are required. Previously taught topics include American Television: A Cultural History. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

The American author Octavia E. Butler once wrote: “There is nothing new under the sun; but there are new suns.” This ability to up-end what we consider possible and to allow us to imagine differently is the hallmark of Speculative Fiction. In this class we will read books that makes use of this radical capacity in order to challenge the oppressive structures of race, gender, colonialism/settler colonialism, and capitalism that we currently live under. By tackling the social injustices of the present, the writers we will read invite us to imagine our futures differently.
This intermediate-level class is focused on issues of social justice. We will read 21st- century science fiction and speculative fiction (including short stories, novels, and films), as well as theoretical and critical texts. Assessment (presentations, short written responses, and a final paper/project) is based on consistent participation and engagement throughout the semester, rather than being heavily weighted towards a final paper.

Provides a workshop environment for understanding interactive narrative (print and digital) through critical writing, narrative theory, and creative practice. Covers important multisequential books, hypertexts, and interactive fictions. Students write critically, and give presentations, about specific works; write a short multisequential fiction; and develop a digital narrative system, which involves significant writing and either programming or the structuring of text. Programming ability helpful.

This course considers how literary representations of the environment intersect with American ideas about race and national identity. We’ll ask: What does it mean to be “American”? Who belongs in the nation’s cities, deserts, farms, towns, and forests? And how does the literary representation of the environment reflect ideas about belonging?
To explore these questions, we’ll consider the work of writers such as Ann Petry, Willa Cather, Hisaye Yamamoto, and William Faulkner, among others. We’ll draw on insights from critical theories of race and the environmental humanities to examine how modern literary movements represent place and identity.

 (Ends Oct. 21) Introduces rudiments of ancient Greek – the language of Plato, Sophocles, Thucydides, and Euclid, and the basis for that of the New Testament – to students with little or no prior knowledge of the subject. Aimed at laying a foundation to begin reading ancient and/or medieval texts. Greek I and Greek II may be combined (after completion of both) to count as a single HASS-H.

(Ends Oct. 21) Read Latin literature in the original language! This year our texts will be selections from Plautus and Terence, whose plays of intrigue, deception, and problematic love were the fertile soil from which sprouted comedies from the Renaissance to the modern sitcom.  21L.613 serves as a bridge for students with one semester or more of formal Latin training (Latin 1/2, high school Latin, or equivalent) between the study of Latin grammar and vocabulary and the reading of Latin authors. 21L.614 offers more of a challenge for advanced readers. They run simultaneously and each may be repeated once for credit.

The course explores feminist literary voices in France throughout the ages. It investigates how feminist genealogies redefine the relationship between belonging and knowledge. The course examines lifestyles, family norms, political representation, social movements, and the relation to the body. Studying several generations of women writers, the course discusses the theory that the power of feminist writing lies in its ability to translate male-dominant language into a language of one’s own. Taught in French.

This course examines some of the most important conflicts and social justice issues in the Spanish-speaking world through fiction, poetry, essays, film and popular culture. We will study the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions; the military dictatorships in South America; contemporary struggles for black and indigenous rights; and feminist and LGBT movements across the region. Offered in Spanish.

What motivates a poet to set down his or her life story in verse, and how does one do so? To what extent does the aim to tell the authentic truth about an individual life come into conflict with time-honored aims of poetry, upending traditional expectations of formal regularity and decorum? The poets we will read wrote frankly about a range of personal topics not typically regarded as the stuff of poetry in their time. More broadly, they wrote with a sense that one of poetry’s highest attainments is the accurate recording of subjective experience and inward states of mind.
The course subtitle (“Apologia, Confession, Concealment”) names three possible, by no means comprehensive or mutually exclusive, modalities of self-representation in poetic life writing. Our reading will be organized around the study of two literary-historical periods each known for their innovative turn to the autobiographical mode and the precise delineation of inner life: British Romanticism (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron) and the second half of the twentieth century, with the American poets typically labeled “confessional” foremost (Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John Berryman), as well as others (Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg).

This course examines diverse Indigenous cinemas from Turtle Island (Canada & the United States) to Aotearoa (New Zealand). Students will study a wide variety of Indigenous films, including activist-based documentaries, adventure comedies, sitcoms, and animations. These films 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. The films will be considered in the larger historical, legal, and political contexts to which they respond.  Films will include: 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).