Spiritual, magical, and “occult” aspects of human behavior in anthropological and historical perspective: magic, ritual curing, trance, spirit possession, sorcery, and accusations of witchcraft. Material drawn from traditional nonwestern societies, medieval and early modern Europe, and colonial and contemporary North America.

At this distance Oscar Wilde seems not only to be on the threshold between centuries and between cultural-systems: in many ways he seems to be the threshold. His aesthetics look backwards to the aestheticism of Pater and the moral sensibility of Ruskin, and they look forward to Modernism. His antecedents are 18th century playwrights, and he opened a path of irony and structural self-reflexivity that leads to Beckett and Tom Stoppard. He was Irish but achieved his great successes in England. Arguably, his greatest success was his greatest public failure: in his scandalous trials he shaped 20th century attitudes toward homosexuality and toward theatricality and toward performativity. His greatest performance was the role of “Oscar Wilde”: in that sense he taught the 20th century how to be itself.

Recent decades have seen a sharp increase in critical interest in Marguerite de Navarre and her work. This society website is dedicated to the study of Marguerite, her network, and her historical and cultural influence. The main goals are to facilitate scholarly exchange, to encourage collaboration, and to make digital resources available to the wider community. The society seeks to bring together the multiple lines of inquiry which inspire our understanding and appreciation of Marguerite, and to inspire new ones.
The Marguerite de Navarre Society website is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA) International license.

This website is designed to introduce students to Marguerite de Roberval and the sixteenth-century texts she inspired. The site includes extensive bibliographies, teaching ideas, lists of modern and Renaissance versions of her story, information about Captain Roberval and his company, early exploration of Canada, images, and other media.
The Marguerite de Roberval website is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA) International license.

With Blues, Jazz, and Soul Music as a foundational backdrop, Memphis has made many other significant contributions to music.  Artists such as Maurice White, (leader/founder of the 70s/80s supergroup Earth, Wind, and Fire), Big Star, and even the most recent Band Camino all call Memphis Home.  These artists along with others continue to push the creative envelope and discover new avenues of expression for Memphis Music.     

Blues and Soul music intersect in Memphis Tennessee.  Southern Soul as it is usually called, originated in Memphis and was greatly influenced by the blues of the city and the Mississippi Delta.  

A Look at Memphis Jazz Piano before James Williams, Donald Brown, and Mulgrew Miller made their significant contributions.  In addition to the great Phineas Newborn jr., Charles Thomas and Harold Mabern also made a tremendous impact.  Live music at local venues provided informal educational opportunities for students of all ages.   

This is a look at some of the more successful jazz pianists from Memphis Tennessee.  Each artist has experienced national and international acclaim as both a pianist and composer.  What's more, they are all comtemporaries having attended the University of Memphis (then Memphis State University)at the same time.  

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.

Students whose first language is not English reflect on nature through readings, a visit to a green area, and bookmaking using the writing process and peer feedback.

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).

This resource provides lecture notes and writing assignments for the study of a novel - in this case, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. These notes and assignments, however, can be adapted and applied to practically any novel. Unless otherwise noted, this resource is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

The MIT Nuclear Weapons Education Project aims to teach individuals, particularly those who grew up after the end of the Cold War, about what nuclear weapons are and their effects on the world. The project website provides materials for lectures or discussions at introductory course levels.

This course was designed to educate students about how nuclear weapons came into being, the physics of these weapons, how they are structured, how they have evolved over the past several decades, efforts to control them and limit the threats that they represent, and what the possibilities for the future are. Many people in our country and other countries are not aware of what an existential threat nuclear weapons represent, and this lack of awareness is an important part of the overall threat. 
The course was taught by an MIT Iterdisciplinary team coordinated by Robert P. Redwine, Professor of Physics Emeritus.  The full list of instructors is listed on the course page.

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.

If you work in a university, you are almost certain to have heard the term 'open access' in the past couple of years. You may also have heard either that it is the utopian answer to all the problems of research dissemination or perhaps that it marks the beginning of an apocalyptic new era of 'pay-to-say' publishing. In this book, Martin Paul Eve sets out the histories, contexts and controversies for open access, specifically in the humanities. Broaching practical elements alongside economic histories, open licensing, monographs and funder policies, this book is a must-read for both those new to ideas about open-access scholarly communications and those with an already keen interest in the latest developments for the humanities.

The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.

The Plot Diagram is an organizational tool focusing on a pyramid or triangular shape, which is used to map the events in a story. This mapping of plot structure allows readers and writers to visualize the key features of stories.

The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into letter templates. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing, collage, and stickers.

The Principles of Digital Animation course provides students with an awareness of animation and other 3D industries, as well as preliminary hands-on experience in animation production. This is a collection of openly licensed videos created by Gregory Marlow for the Principles of Digital Animation course taught during the Fall 2019 semester. For ease of adopting and adapting, the streaming version is embedded for each video and the original video and subtitle files are available to download.