Bias is a universal human condition. It is not a personal defect, but it is important to recognize your biases and manage them. We cannot cure unconscious bias, but we can address it. This lesson will provide you the opportunity to identify your personal biases. You have them, even if you think you don’t! You are encouraged to try this lesson so you can be more aware of your personal biases and take the necessary steps to reduce their impact on your life.StandardsCC.8.5.11-12.G Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

Earl Ubell is a pioneer among science and health writers in America. After a long, distinguished career at The New York Herald Tribune from 1943 to 1966, he went on to work at both CBS and NBC News. Prominent in the emerging scientific writing community in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a recipient of the Lasker Medical Journalism Award 1957. Milton Stanley Livingston was a leading physicist in the field of magnetic resonance accelerators. Working first with professor Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Livingston was instrumental in the development of the Berkeley cyclotron. Moving to Cornell in 1938, Livingston was part of the core group who established nuclear physics as a field of study. Choosing to stay with the Cornell cyclotron rather than follow colleagues onto the Manhattan Project, Livingston was involved in the production of radioisotopes for medical purposes. At the time of this interview, Livingston was director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a joint project of Harvard University and MIT.In this program segment Louis Lyons quizzes Earl Ubell about the lack of public knowledge and the perception of the nuclear bomb, while pressing Professor Livingston to explain exactly what nuclear fallout is, and the danger it presents.

This collection uses primary sources to explore Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This sample assignment contains learning objectives and assignments having to do with a unit on indigenous literature. 

You're in a movie theater, watching the new horror flick. The audience knows something that the main character does not. The audience sees the character's actions are not in his best interest. What's that feeling -- the one that makes you want to shout at the screen? Christopher Warner identifies this storytelling device as dramatic irony.

Funded by the University System of Georgia’s “Affordable Learning Georgia” initiative, An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution corrects, expands, and celebrates the presence of the African Diaspora in the study of British Literature, undoing some of the anti-Black history of British studies.

This course studies representative twentieth and twenty-first-century texts and films from Hispanic America and Spain. Emphasis is on developing strategies for analyzing the genres of the novel, the short story, the poem, the fictional film, and the theatrical script. The novels read this semester are Magali García Ramis’s Felices días, Tío Sergio (1986, Puerto Rico) and Javier Cercas’s Soldados de Salamina (2001, Spain). We will study Lorca’s play “La casa de Bernarda Alba” (1936, Spain), films from Spain, México, and Cuba, poems by Darío (Nicaragua), Machado (Spain), Lorca (Spain), Hernández (Spain), Vallejo (Perú), Cernuda (Spain), and Luis Palés Matos (Puerto Rico), and short stories from México (by an exiled Spanish writer), Chile, Argentina, and Cuba. Thematic emphasis is on the Spanish Civil War, changing attitudes toward gender, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and the history of race in the Americas.

This course studies important twentieth century texts from Spain and Latin America. The readings include short stories, theatre, the novel and poetry. This subject is conducted in Spanish and all reading and writing for the course is also done in Spanish.

This subject serves as a broad introduction to the field of European and Latin American fiction. It is designed to help students acquire a general understanding of major fictional modes. We will pay attention not only to the literary movements these works represent, but also to the subtle interplay of history, geography, language and cultural norms that gave rise to specific literary forms. The books we read in this course are compelling, and film versions of five of the works we read give variety to the course and time to think about the interplay of film and print.

This course investigates the uses and boundaries of fiction in a range of novels and narrative styles–traditional and innovative, western and nonwestern–and raises questions about the pleasures and meanings of verbal texts in different cultures, times, and forms. Toward the end of the term, we will be particularly concerned with the relationship between art and war in a diverse selection of works.

This course investigates the uses and boundaries of fiction in a range of novels and narrative styles, traditional and innovative, western and non-western, and raises questions about the pleasures and meanings of verbal texts in different cultures, times, and forms.

This course is a study of major French literary genres and an introduction to methods of literary analysis. This semester, students will serve on the jury for the Goncourt Prize USA. “Le Goncourt” is the most prestigious literary prize in France. Students will study and rank books on the Goncourt shortlist. They will elect a representative to present their selection at the Villa Albertine in New York and choose the winner along with students from Princeton, Duke, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, the other students will prepare a press article to present their experience as a jury! 
Special attention is devoted to the improvement of French language skills. The course is taught in French.
About the instructor: Bruno Perreau is the Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies at MIT and Director of MIT’s Center of Excellence in French Studies. He is also an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University.
Perreau recently published The Politics of Adoption: Gender and the Making of French Citizenship (MIT Press, 2014), Queer Theory: The French Response (Stanford University Press, 2016), Les Défis de la République (ed. with Joan W. Scott, Presses de Sciences Po, 2017), Qui a peur de la théorie queer ? (Presses de Sciences Po, 2018), and Sphères d’injustice. Pour un universalisme minoritaire (La Découverte, 2023).

This subject examines the ways in which we read. It introduces some important strategies for engaging with literary texts developed in the twentieth century, paying special attention to poststructuralist theories and their legacy. The course is organized around specific theoretical paradigms. In general, we will: (1) work through the selected readings in order to see how they construe what literary interpretation is; (2) locate the limits of each particular approach; and (3) trace the emergence of subsequent theoretical paradigms as responses to what came before.

Introduction to Literature: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, and How They Shape Us introduces college students to the study of literature through a focus on texts that, generally, they already know, or think they know, and how those texts aim to shape audiences to be compliant members of their culture.

Introduction to Media Studies is designed for students who have grown up in a rapidly changing global multimedia environment and want to become more literate and critical consumers and producers of culture. Through an interdisciplinary comparative and historical lens, the course defines “media” broadly as including oral, print, theatrical, photographic, broadcast, cinematic, and digital cultural forms and practices. The course looks at the nature of mediated communication, the functions of media, the history of transformations in media and the institutions that help define media’s place in society.
Over the course of the semester we explore different theoretical perspectives on the role and power of media in society in influencing our social values, political beliefs, identities and behaviors. Students also have the opportunity to analyze specific media texts (such as films and television shows) and explore the meaning of the changes that occur when a particular narrative is adapted into different media forms. We look at the ways in which the politics of class, gender and race influence both the production and reception of media. To represent different perspectives on media, several guest speakers also present lectures. Through the readings, lectures, and discussions as well as their own writing and oral presentations, students have multiple opportunities to engage with critical debates in the field as well as explore the role of media in their own lives.

Offers an overview of the social, cultural, political, and economic impact of mediated communication on modern culture. Combines critical discussions with hands-on "experiments" working with different media. Media covered include radio, television, film, the printed word, and digital technologies. Topics include the nature and function of media, core media institutions, and media in transition.

This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?

This anthology offers links to short fiction pieces by living authors whose lived experiences have been marginalized due to race ethnicity, gender or ability. This book is intended as a starting point for future collaboration in celebrating and sharing voices and stories that need to be shared.

In this video from the American Masters film Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, scholars discuss the author’s ideas about jazz music. Ellison recognized jazz as an art form that represented the complexity of America’s multicultural democratic society. This resource may be used alongside Ellison’s Invisible Man, but is also well suited for use in a lesson, unit, or course on African American literature.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.

Learn about the legendary life of Joseph Medicine Crow and his contributions to the world of literature.