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LitShop presents, Jessica Ruffin “Sublime Encounters and Amphibious Imaginings”

14E-304 160 MEMORIAL DR, CAMBRIDGE, MA, United States

Litshop is by invitation only. Presented by: Jessica Ruffin Assistant Professor of Literature, Literature Section at MIT Abstract: The sublime, as figured by Immanuel Kant, is constituted by reason’s capacity to overcome an encounter with the unrepresentable and incalculable through a movement of abstraction. For rational subjects of Enlightenment, this movement of abstraction becomes a universal ground for an imagined community, attended by the pleasure of belonging. For those lacking Enlightenment, according to Kant, what would be sublime is only experienced as terror. This paper explores the legacy of Kant’s figuring of the sublime in white supremacist aesthetics and white epistemologies of race, space, and time. Carrying David Marriot’s concept of the abyssal into the sedimented coastlines of the Black Belt, this paper performs a media archaeology— interrogating the question of overcoming for the inassimilable subject of the infinite, ever-present terrors of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Bio: Jessica Ruffin is a critical philosopher, media historian, and moving-image enthusiast. Her research focuses on white supremacist aesthetics in post-Enlightenment German-language media and philosophy, as well as their legacies in popular culture, US film, and media theory. She has particular interest in how Arthur Schopenhauer’s and Friedrich Nietzsche’s engagements with counter-Enlightenment methods share poetic and temporal […]

Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

MIT Global France Seminar presents, Jean-Pierre Bekelo “The Transformative Power of Afrofuturist Cinema”

14E-304 160 MEMORIAL DR, CAMBRIDGE, MA, United States

How does Afrofuturist cinema, by showcasing alternative African futures, contribute to the evolution of the cinematic art form and postcolonial narratives?  Filmmaker Jean Pierre Bekolo will present his book Cinema as a Transformative Tool for the Therapeutic Intellectual: Putting Postcolonial Theories in Motion. Drawing on his practice and theoretical work, Bekolo will show that cinema is a platform for intellectual exploration, rooted in the probing question of "What if?" often found in science fiction." Inspired by Giordano Bruno's philosophy, Bekolo likes speculating with images, combining "motion telling" and "motion thinking." A pivotal question thus emerges: Are filmmakers "therapeutic" intellectuals capable of not only fostering understanding but also transforming Africa and the world? When applying this cinematic framework to Africa, a continent entangled in the collision with the West, Bekolo advocates for reintroducing motion into a narrative that has stagnated, impeding the progress of its history and clouding the way forward. The pivotal question emerges: How can Afrofuturist cinema, supported by "therapeutic" intellectuals, inject motion – analogous to a "coup" – disrupt its static post-colonial narrative, and recommence the march of history after a prolonged hiatus? Bekolo envisions this approach as a dynamic framework capable of not only fostering understanding but also […]

Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

Litshop presents, Milan Terlunen “Plot Twist! Reading, Narrative and the Art of Surprise”

The Nexus, 14S-130 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, United States

Abstract: A woman is courted by a charming man, only to discover that all along he was engaged to another woman. Another woman loses her friend's diamond necklace and takes on ruinous debt to secretly replace it, only to discover that all along the necklace was cheap costume jewelry. A man tries to help a young boy haunted by ghosts, only to discover that he himself was a ghost all along. Whether or not you recognize these scenarios as Jane Austen's novel Emma, Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" and M. Night Shyamalan's movie The Sixth Sense, twist narratives are so widespread that you no doubt recognize the device. The plot twist is a particularly artful surprise which retroactively transforms our understanding of what came before ("all along...!"). As such, the plot twist complicates standard scholarly ways of understanding reading, knowledge and time. For this LitShop I'd like to take you on a whirlwind tour of my work on the history and theory of plot twists. The project began life as my dissertation, and I'm now intending to transform it into a scholarly monograph, an accessible short book for non-academic readers and perhaps a podcast series. I'd value everyone's thoughts on […]

Last Spring 2024 Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

Event Series Lit Tea

Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

Event Series Lit Tea

Lit Tea

14N-417

When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14N-417 Come by for snacks, and tea with Literature Section friends, instructors, students, etc. What are you reading? What 21L classes are you taking or hoping to take? This event is specifically geared towards undergrads; but open to friends of the community that engage in the literary and humanities at MIT.

Literature Section
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue 14N-407
Cambridge, MA 02139
tel: (617) 253-3581