It is easy to think of love as a “universal language” - but do ideas about love translate easily across history, culture, and identity? In this course, we will encounter some surprising, even disturbing ideas about love and sex from medieval writers and characters: For instance, that married people can never be in love, that the most satisfying romantic love incorporates pain and violence, and that intense erotic pleasure can be found in celibate service to God. Through Arthurian romances, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, love letters, mystical visions, and more, we will explore medieval attitudes toward marriage, sexuality, and gender roles. What can these perspectives teach us about the uniqueness of the Middle Ages—and how do medieval ideas about love continue to influence the beliefs and fantasies of our own culture?

This survey provides a general introduction to medieval European literature (from Late Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century) from the perspective of women writers from a variety of cultures, social backgrounds, and historical timeperiods. Though much of the class will be devoted to exploring the evolution of a new literary tradition by and for women from its earliest emergence in the West, wider historical and cultural movements will also be addressed: the Fall of the Roman Empire, the growth of religious communities, the shift from orality to literacy, the culture of chivalry and courtly love, the emergence of scholasticism and universities, changes in devotional practices, the persecution of heretics, the rise of nationalism and class consciousness. Authors will include some of the most famous women of the period: Hildegard of Bingen, Heloise of Paris, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Joan of Arc, Margery Kempe, along with many interesting and intriguing though lesser known figures.

The goal of this course is to offer a general introduction to 20th and 21st century literature and cultural production about Modern Mexico. Emphasis will be placed on the way intellectuals and artists have presented the changes in Mexico City’s urban life, and how these representations question themes and trends in national identity, state control, globalization, and immigration.

This course considers some of the substantial early twentieth-century poetic voices in America. Authors vary, but may include Moore, Frost, Eliot, Stevens, and Pound.
We’ll read the major poems by the most important poets in English in the 20th century, emphazinig especially the period between post-WWI disillusionment and early WW II internationalism (ca. 1918-1940). Our special focus this term will be how the concept of “the Image” evolved during this period. The War had undercut beliefs in master-narratives of nationalism and empire, and the language-systems that supported them (religious transcendence, rationalism and formalism). Retrieving energies from the Symbolist movements of the preceding century, early 20th century poets began to rethink how images carry information, and in what ways the visual, visionary, and verbal image can take the place of transcendent beliefs. New theories of linguistics and anthropology helped to advance this interest in the artistic/religious image. So did Freud. So did Charlie Chaplin films.
We’ll read poems that pay attention both to this disillusionment and to the compensatory joyous attention to the image: to ideas of the poet-as-language-priest, aesthetic-experience-as-displaced-religious impulse, to poetry as faith, ritual, and form.

This unit is based on the fourth-grade core text, Yolonda's Genius , by Carol Fenner. It intends to connect the core text to the general music curriculum and focus on responding and expressing identity through music. Students will concentrate on the responding and connecting processes from the National Core Arts Standards. Students will spend time exploring the identity of Andrew, the young boy in the novel who cannot read and barely speaks, but creates incredible music with his harmonica. Students will then create what they believe Andrew's music sounds like, and use what they learn about Andrew's creative process and the musical elements to create an original composition based on their own identity. This unit would work best if the General Music teacher works together with the fourth-grade Language Arts teacher.

At no other time in a person’s life does one search for a sense of identity, a definition of what self means on a personal level, than during adolescence. It is during the middle and high school years that we are provided meaningful opportunities to step outside of the principal parental/guardian dominated influence that shaped our identity for our first decade.

This unit explores the combined use of music and literature as a means through which youth and adolescence navigate the development of what I have defined as personal, projected and perceived identity. Lessons are organized using the three areas of scope as a guide through sequential and iterative modules designed to develop students’ lines of inquiry towards a deeper and broader understanding of how music mirrors and supports the psychological and emotional events impacting our sense of self.

This resource is a lesson plan intended to introduce minoritized freshman and sophomore college students to the study of mythology and to its universal importance as the foundation of our common cultural heritage. The module may also be modified to accomodate high school level language arts courses. This resource will represent approximately three weeks of a typical 10 to 15 week World Literature survey course. 

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught in Spring Semester 2010.

We are surrounded by materials from and references to ancient mythology: we talk about the Oedipus-complex, name spaceships Apollo and powerful detergents Ajax, have songs about Cupid drawing back his bow and associate Oedipus with Freud rather than Sophocles, Ulysses with James Joyce rather than Homer. Literature, in particular, uses ancient mythology as a rich source to describe powerful emotions, cunning politics or psychological drama.

This module will explore how selected German literary texts use motifs from Ancient mythology and how the individual authors combine the ‘old’ stories with their ‘new’ content and message. We will focus on Medea, the powerful and horrific wife of Jason who kills the sons she loves to hurt Jason whom she hates and scare Greek society that alienated her. Using Euripides ancient version as a starting point (in translation, of course,) we will look closely at how the myth is used, changed and reinvented in German texts written between 1926 and 1998.

Theoretical writings on mythology and its reception will provide us with relevant background knowledge and we will add an interdisciplinary angle to the topic by looking at the reception of the Medea myth in paintings, film, theatre and music.

Suitable for study at undergraduate level 4.

Dr Heike Bartel, School of Modern Languages and Culture.

Dr Bartel's current research focus is mythology and myth reception from 18th to 20th century with particular focus on the myth of Medea. Recent activities and publications in this field include: Co-editor (with Dr. A. Simon, University of Bristol) of book 'Unbinding Medea: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Classical Myth from Antiquity to the 21st Century' (Oxford: Legenda, 2010).

This eight-session course, designed for a mixed group of first, second, third and fourth-year medical students, uses literary narratives and poetry to study ethical issues in medicine. This methodology emphasizes the importance of context, contingency, and circumstances in recognizing, evaluating, and resolving moral problems. The seminar will focus on developing the skills of critical and reflective reading that increase effectiveness in clinical medicine. Texts will include short fiction and poetry by authors such as Woolf, Chekhov, Carver, Kafka, Hurston, Marquez and Tolstoy. The instructor will provide necessary philosophic and literary context at the beginning of each session, the balance devoted to class discussion. During the course, students will keep a reading journal that examines the meanings of illness, the moral role of the physician, and the relevance of emotions, culture, faith, values, social realities, and life histories to patient care.

The course offers an analysis of the keen interest shown by France and the French in North American cultures since the 18th century. Not only did France contribute to the construction of both Canadian and American nations, but it has also constantly delineated its identity by way of praising or criticizing North American cultures. Using materials drawn from literature, comics, TV shows, and series as well as political debates, the course will historically trace this ambivalent relation exploring various themes such as liberalism, entertainment and the media, trade and cultural goods, transatlantic intellectual encounters, and translation.
The course is taught entirely in French.
About the instructor: Bruno Perreau is the Cynthia L. Reed Associate Professor of French Studies at MIT. He is also an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for European Studies, Harvard. 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), Sphères d’injustice. Pour un universalisme minoritaire (La Découverte, 2023).

According to a 2016 study, over 60% of U.S. adults get news from a social networking site.  These numbers are even higher if you focus solely on Millennials.  Millennials are people who reached young adulthood in the early 2000’s.  A 2015 report suggests that 88% of Millennials get their news from Facebook.  This seminar will show you how to sort through the hundreds of posts you read each day to determine what is factual information that is worthy of sharing with your friends.StandardsCC.8.5.9-10.D Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social scienceCC.8.5.11-12.H Evaluate an author’s premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information.

This course is an intensive introduction to Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), the ancestor of modern English that was spoken in England ca. 600–1100. In the first half of the term, students use short prose texts to study the basics of Old English grammar. They go on to read short poems, and conclude by tackling portions of the epic Beowulf in the last third of the term. Assessment is based upon translation work, daily vocabulary quizzes, and three exams.

This free video series provides definitions of literary terms in English literature to students and teachers. It also offers examples of how these literary devices can be applied to poems, plays, novels, and short stories. We are in the process of translating the videos into Spanish and many of them now contain these subtitles.

Film study of historical fiction film, Pad Man: a fictionalized account of the quest of a real-life social entrepreneur from India who ultimately used the engineering design process to reverse-engineer series of mini-machines to manufacture affordable sanitary pads for women.

This course examines works of film in relation to thematic issues of philosophical importance that also occur in other arts, particularly literature and opera. Emphasis is put on film’s ability to represent and express feeling as well as cognition. Both written and cinematic works by Sturges, Shaw, Cocteau, Hitchcock, Joyce, and Bergman, among others, are considered. There are no tests or quizzes, however students write two major papers on media/philosophical research topics of their choosing.

This course is a seminar on the nature of love and sex, approached as topics both in philosophy and in literature. Readings from recent philosophy as well as classic myths of love that occur in works of literature and lend themselves to philosophical analysis.

R. Scott Stephenson, Vice President of Collections, Exhibitions and Programming at the museum of the American Revolution explained the life and significance of Phillis Wheatley during the time of the American Revolution. During this time, Phillis Wheatley became the first published African American poet and was well known in England and the American colonies.

This seminar addresses the inherent challenges of translating poetry from different languages, cultures, and eras. Students do some translation of their own, though accommodations are made if a student lacks even a basic knowledge of any foreign language.