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The People’s Poetry Archive presents, John Murillo

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

John Murillo is an associate professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Wesleyan University. He is the author of the poetry collections Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher, 2010; Four Way Books 2020), which was a finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Pen Open Book Award, and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way, 2020); the winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Poetry Society of Virginia’s North American Book Award; and a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, Believer Poetry Award, Maya Angelou Book Award, Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award, and the NAACP Image Award. The People’s Poetry Archive is a 2023-24 Mellon Faculty Grant Project by Professor Joshua Bennett. It is a public humanities project setting out to digitally preserve canonical and contemporary poems from across the African diaspora, as well as historically under-theorized works in the realm of spoken word performance. Inspired by the Black feminist poet and educator June Jordan’s vision of “a people’s poetry”—a term she traces to the democratic imaginings of Walt Whitman—the creation of the archive represents an opportunity to address modern questions about the vitality and utility of poetry through sustained cross-pollination between institutions and social scenes. The project is an opportunity for […]

Litshop & AMS presents, Arthur Bahr “Toward a Speculative Expansion of Pearl, line 735”

14E-304 160 Memorial Drive, Building 14, Cambridge, MA, United States

Abstract: Conjectural emendation is one long-established method of last resort by which editors deal with nonsensical or missing portions of ancient and medieval texts. It is often controversial even as a last resort because it relies upon conjecture—the editor’s subjective sense of the text or author in question—rather than the empiricism by which textual editing has tended to define itself. This talk uses a single contested word in line 735 of the medieval poem Pearl to propose ’speculative expansion’ as an alternative to conjectural emendation. I ground this proposal in theories of speculation as developed by medieval philosophers and theologians, for whom it served as a midpoint between cognition and contemplation, subtended by both thought and feeling. I propose expansion rather than emendation so as to respect the inherent multiplicity of literary and aesthetic meaning, which Pearl in particular performs with exquisite beauty. With the audience’s help, I also hope to think through the practical ramifications of such theories upon readers today. Bio: Arthur Bahr is the author of Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight (Chicago, 2024) and Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London (Chicago, 2013). With Alexandra Gillespie, he co-edited a special issue of The Chaucer Review (47.4, 2013) on “Medieval English Manuscripts: Form, Aesthetics, and the Literary Text.” […]

MIT Mysterious Book Exchange

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

Join the MIT Community for a (Mysterious) Book Exchange! Statement of Purpose: Strengthen Community Relationships and Foster a Love of Reading. If you could pick one book to recommend to someone at MIT, what would you choose? For the second time we are asking MIT community members this question and collecting hundreds of recommended favorite books for the second MIT (Mysterious) Book Exchange! This event, launched by an MIT graduate student, aims to strengthen community relationships and foster a love of reading. But there’s a twist: All the books will be wrapped and organized by genre, with only the recommendations written by community members printed and shown on the books.  Attendees will select books based solely on the genre and recommendation.  Attendees will walk away with a mysterious new treasure to brighten your day! We invite you to recommend a book on our Google Form that you would like to share with the MIT community, and write a short blurb that describes it without giving away the title or author! We welcome as many recommendations as you have to give. We also invite you to rejoin us later in the year to pick up one of these cherished books that was recommended by […]

Lit Tea

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

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.

AMS presents, Eric Driscoll “Hellenism, Apocalypse, Archaeology”

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

Tuesday, November 7th @ 5:00pm Building 14, Room 14E-304 (map)   Presented by: Eric Driscoll, Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval Studies Literature & History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology   Abstract: This talk offers a reading of Kostas Vrettakos’s 1980 documentary short, The Layer of Destruction, in the context of the modern Greek archaeological and folkloric imaginaries. In the 1970s, Greece constructed a dam across the Mornos river, near the southern end of the Pindus Mountains, to create a reservoir that would supply Athens with drinking water. Today, below the waters of this artificial lake lie the remains of an ancient city, Kallipolis or Kallion. In Layer of Destruction, Vrettakos creates a lyrical memorial for Kallion by depicting his visits to the excavations conducted in the late 1970s as the reservoir’s rising waters threatened and eventually covered the site. In the Greek national narrative, archaeological excavation is conceived as an additive process that recovers what Yannis Hamilakis calls “fragments of national memory” and thereby restitutes missing fragments of a collective history. But in Vrettakos’s film, archaeology emerges instead as a form of destruction, a force that—in the language of Jacob Taubes—reinserts time into eternity and suggests that “the order of the world is gripped by […]

Lit Tea

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.

The Making of a Norton Anthology

Virtual

Date: Wednesday, November 15 Time: 10 a.m. Pacific / 1 p.m. Eastern Location: Join Us Virtually from Anywhere Join editors Stephen Greenblatt and Courtney Weiss Smith (The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 11E) with Martin Puchner and Wiebke Denecke (The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 5E) in conversation with the Norton literature team. The editors will share their experiences editing the latest editions, discuss some new features and selections, and talk about how they have updated the anthologies for today’s students and classrooms.All are invited to attend, and there will be time for an audience Q&A.All registrants will receive a recording of the event, so please register even if you cannot attend live. Register Today

Lit Tea

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

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.

AMS presents, Eric Goldberg “Warfare, Rapine, and the Decline of the Carolingian Empire”

E51-275 134 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, United States

Abstract: Historians have long debated the forces that led to the collapse of the Frankish empire under Charlemagne’s descendants around the year AD 900. Various arguments have been offered: dynastic conflict, incompetent kings, succession crisis, Viking invasions, the proliferation of castles, “Feudal Revolution,” even “Feudal Mutation.” I offer a different explanation based on the neglected topics of warfare and military logistics. I argue that the Carolingian military underwent a profound yet largely overlooked transformation during the ninth century that created growing challenges for the supplying and garrisoning of soldiers and their horses. These logistical problems increasingly led to illegal requisitions and violence committed by Frankish soldiers against the common people, a phenomenon that chroniclers and royal laws described as “rapine.” This growing problem of rapine committed by Frankish armies undermined the legitimacy of the Carolingian dynasty in the eyes of the Church and facilitated the breakup of their empire in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Bio: Eric Goldberg is a professor of medieval history at MIT. His research explores the vibrant politics and culture of early medieval Europe under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. Image: ”Le comte Eudes défend Paris contre des Normands, 885-886 (Count Eudes defends Paris)" by Jean Victor Schnetz, 1834-37

Lit Tea

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