Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester
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.
Presented by Annabel Kim Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University Abstract: Readers and critics have too long overlooked excrement’s vital role in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century French canon. In a stark challenge to the tendency to view this literature through sanitizing abstractions, in my book Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French Literature, I take fecal matter and its place in literature seriously to argue for feces as a figure of radical equality, both a literary object and a reflection on literature itself, without which literary studies is impoverished and sterile. The shit in the canon expresses a call to democratize literature, making literature for all, just as shit is for (or of) all. Shit’s presence in this prized element of French identity is a continually uttered desire to manifest the universality France aspires to—as encapsulated by the slogan Liberté, égalité, fraternité—but fails to realize. In shit there is a concrete universalism that traverses bodies with disregard for embodied differences. Literature, and the ideas to be found therein, cannot be separated from the corporeal envelopes that create and receive them. In reminding us of this fact, Cacaphonies reveals the aesthetic, political, and ethical potential of shit and its capacity […]
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His new collection of essays, Inciting Joy, was released by Algonquin in October of 2022.
Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester
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.
Presented by Erik Dempsey Senior Lecturer at the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas, University of Texas at Austin Abstract: Why did St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian, think it was so important to study philosophy? Why was he so committed to it that he continued to study and teach the writings of Aristotle, even in the face of condemnation? And why was there such a controversy about studying Aristotle in the 13th century Catholic university? In brief, the central issue was that the god described by Aristotle was thought to be different from God as described in the Bible. This talk will seek to show how Thomas sought to reconcile those two notions of the divine, and will ask whether his reconciliation was successful. The discussion will rely largely on Thomas's remarks in his two Summas and Maimonides's treatment of similar issues in a text that Thomas studied closely, the Guide of the Perplexed.
The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University & the Literature Section at MIT's School for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences announce a symposium organized in honor of MIT's Professor Ruth Perry's retirement, centering on "The Radical Eighteenth Century." Harvard University is situated on the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Massachusett people. As scholars of the eighteenth century, the period that saw the intensification of European colonization culminating in genocide and territorial dispossession, we recognize our responsibility to understand the legacies of this history, and to continue to make our field a site where Indigenous scholars and knowledges can thrive. The idea of this symposium on "The Radical Eighteenth Century" is to retrieve and coax back to life the radical ideas of the eighteenth century. Can we bring to light the dimensions of the radical eighteenth century? What are the Enlightenment ideas that would improve our present-day world? What do we need to excavate and re-learn from the century that we all have been studying for years? There will be two roundtables. The first is "Critiques of Capitalism" and the second "Thinking Through the Community." Each scholar will speak briefly and then we have some back-and-forth among the roundtable speakers […]
Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester
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.
When: Every Monday (except Holidays) during the semester Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm Where: Room 14E-304* *Due to capacity, the last Lit Tea will be in 14E-304! This will be an especially bittersweet event as we will be awarding one of our graduating Literature majors with the Peter S. Donaldson Literature Award!
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.
21L.590 The Spanish Incubator Priority registration only to students who attend one of the following Info Sessions: Sunday, Sept. 17th at 12:00PM in Building 1-190 -OR- Friday, Sept. 22 @ 5:15 PM in Building 1-190 Taught in English. From its role as the crucible of the international avant-garde, to its genesis of political art and writing, to its Civil War that ignited the artistic passion of authors around the world, to the exuberant liberation after 40 years of dictatorship, Spain deeply influenced our understanding of contemporary culture. Films, readings, field trips to museums, and visits to Spanish cultural sites will enable students to understand the full context in which today’s vibrant Spanish democracy and internationally acclaimed artistic production emerged. Students live in homestays with Spanish families. Classes are held at the Instituto Internacional (above), a vibrant, historical, American/Spanish cultural and university center in the heart of Madrid with an excellent library, café, garden and wifi. An evening reception with the MIT alums who live in Spain provides great conversation and invaluable networking. Several long weekends give students the opportunity to travel. This 9-unit subject (3-3-3) will count for HASS credit and the Literature concentration, minor or major. It also counts as a course in […]
Info Sessions: September 18 and 26th @ TBA Based in São Paulo, this course examines the relationship between race and place in the formation of modern Brazil and the U.S. through comparative analysis and interdisciplinary study of literature, film, visual art, music, and performance. We will visit key cultural and historical sites; interact with archives and museum collections; and, most importantly, engage in dialogue with local scholars, religious leaders, community organizers, and activists. Issues explored in the course materials and on-site activities include the legacy of transatlantic slavery, indigenous dispossession, urban segregation, environmental racism, and reparations. Focusing on the work of Black and Indigenous people, particularly women, the course places a strong emphasis on the ways in which art and cultural activism can have an impact on racial justice issues. Taught in English. Need-based scholarships available For more information, email Professor Joaquín Terrones.
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
