Undergraduate Subjects
Introductory
21W.730 Writing on Contemporary Issues
This subject focuses on forms of exposition, including narration, critique, argument, and persuasion, to develop students' ability to write clear and effective prose. Students write frequently, give and receive feedback on work in progress, improve their work by revising, read the work of accomplished writers, and participate actively in class discussions and workshops. Short oral presentations are also required. All sections emphasize writing with an awareness of audience and purpose. Readings and assignments vary by section and focus on themes such as contemporary social problems, the culture of food, forms of popular culture, and others. The subject is open to students at all class levels. Enrollment limited to 18.
Social and Ethical Issues - Andrea Walsh
This course provides the opportunity for students-- as readers, viewers, writers and speakers ---to engage with social and ethical issues that they care deeply about. Over the course of the semester, through discussing the writing of authors such as Marian Wright Edelman, Charles Dickens, Alan Dershowitz, Susan Faludi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jonathan Kozol and Susanna Kaysen, we will explore different perspectives on a range of social issues such as the responsibilities of citizens, freedom of expression, poverty, homelessness, hunger, mental illness, capital punishment and racial and gender inequality. In addition, we will analyze selected photographs, as well as documentary and feature films (Girl, Interrupted and Dead Man Walking) that represent or dramatize social problems or issues. In assigned essays, students will have the opportunity to write about social and ethical issues of their own choice. This course aims to help students to grow significantly in their ability to understand and compare arguments, to integrate secondary print and visual sources and to craft vibrant, well-reasoned and elegant essays and grant proposals. Students will also keep a reading journal and give oral presentations. In class we will discuss assigned texts, explore strategies for successful academic writing, freewrite and respond to one another's essays.
21W.731 Writing and Experience
This subject focuses on the ways writers transform experience into finished and polished writing in the forms of essay, memoir, and autobiography. Students write frequently, give and receive response to work in progress, improve their writing by revising, read the work of accomplished writers, and participate actively in class discussions and workshops. Short oral presentations are also required. All sections emphasize writing with an awareness of audience and purpose. Readings and specific writing assignments vary by section. The subject is open to students at all class levels. Enrollment limited to 18.
Crossing Borders - Rebecca Faery
In this era of globalization, many of us have multi- or bi-cultural, multilingual or bilingual backgrounds, and even if we don’t have such a background, we need urgently to understand the experiences of people who do. You will very likely work outside the United States at some point in your future; you will almost certainly work with people who speak more than one language, whose ancestry or origins are in a country other than the U.S., who have crossed borders of nation, language, culture, to amalgamate into the large and diverse culture that is America. In this class we will read the personal narratives of bilingual and bicultural writers, some of whom have struggled to assimilate, others of whom have celebrated their own contributions to a culture of diversity. You will write four personal essays of your own for the class, each of which will receive workshop discussion in class and response from me; you will then revise the essays to polish them for possible publication. One of your essays will be an investigative one, where you will focus on a subject of your choice, investigate it thoroughly, and then write with authority about it. The process of the class will encourage you to both improve your writing significantly and gain a greater understanding of experiences of people who are in some way like you as well as those who are in some way different.
Friends - Karen Boiko
Is to “friend” someone different than to befriend them? Can your mom be your friend? Can your cat? Can you really be “bff”? What does it mean to be a buddy, a pal, a mate? In this class we will explore the notion of friendship. We’ll read essays by Montaigne, Emerson, and contemporary writers; stories, poems, and exchanges of letters; and recent social science, to notice how friendship has been understood in a variety of times, places, and contexts. We’ll also consider pop culture such as songs, TV shows and, yes, Facebook. Your four assigned essays will grow out of memories, experience and reflection, and the texts we read; they will include personal narrative as well as essays that incorporate research and the ideas of other writers. Revision of essays and workshop review of writing in progress are an important part of the class. Each student will make one oral presentation in this class.
21W.732 Science Writing and New Media
This subject focuses on writing about science and new media and emphasizes developing students' ability to write clear and effective prose for a range of media. Individual sections focus on technical and scientific writing, writing about science for a public audience, the environment, digital media, and others. Students in all sections write frequently, give and receive feedback on work in progress, improve their writing by revising, read the work of accomplished writers, and participate actively in class discussions and workshops. Short oral presentations are also required. Readings and specific assignments vary by section. The subject is open to students at all class levels. Enrollment limited to 18.
Perspectives on Medicine and Public Health - Cynthia Taft
Like other scientists, medical researchers and clinicians must be capable of presenting their work to an audience of professional peers. Unlike many scientists, however, physicians must routinely translate their sophisticated knowledge into lay terms for their own patients and for the education of the public at large. A surprising number of physicians write for less utilitarian reasons as well, choosing the narrative essay as a means of exploring the non-technical issues that emerge in their clinical practice. Over the course of the semester we will explore the full range of writings by physicians and other health practitioners. Some of the writer/physicians that we encounter will be Atul Gawande, Danielle Ofri, Jerome Groopman, Rafael Campo, and William Carlos Williams. Students need have no special training, only a general interest in medicine or in public health issues such as AIDS, asthma, malaria control, and obesity. The writing assignments, like the readings, will invite students to consider the distinctive needs of different audiences. Assignments will include a critical review of two articles from the New England Journal of Medicine or another similar journal, a literature review geared toward an audience of health professionals, a report suitable for general publication, two oral presentations, an autobiographical narrative, a resume, and a job application letter. Students will learn to respond constructively to the work of others and to revise their own work in the light of comments from the instructor and from their peers.
Explorations in Communicating about Science and Technology - Janis Melvold
Skill in communicating about science and technology comes from both knowledge and practice, and this course emphasizes both. Through a variety of reading and writing assignments, we will examine general principles of good writing, as well as principles associated specifically with scientific and technical writing. We will also explore the effects of new media as avenues for communicating about science. To help you become more proficient in assessing, revising, and editing your writing, the course emphasizes the importance of the writing process. Class time will involve discussions of scientific articles and essays, as well as small group workshops in which students offer feedback on each other’s writing. Assignments will include, for example, a critical review, a science essay for the general public, and a research or service project proposal. The topics you write on will be of your own choosing, reflecting your background and interests. While the primary emphasis will be on writing, oral communication will also be important. You will have the opportunity to practice oral communication skills in class discussions, as well as through formal and informal presentations.
21W.734J (21l.000J) Writing about Literature
Intensive focus on the reading and writing skills used to analyze literary texts such as poems by Emily Dickson, Shakespeare or Langston Hughes; short stories by Chekov, Joyce, or Alice Walker; and a short novel by Melville or Toni Morrison. Designed not only to prepare students for further work in writing and literary and media study, but also to provide increased confidence and pleasure in their reading, writing and analytical skills. Students write or revise essays weekly. See below for sections. Enrollment limited.
Crossing Borders - Kate Delaney
This class offers limited enrollment with a strong emphasis on class discussion, frequent writing and revision, in-class student reports, and writing workshops. Readings will be drawn from a variety of literary forms and will focus on the theme of crossing borders: travel writing as well as literature of exile, expatriation, and immigration. We will study short and long fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, and the graphic novel. We will also consider film treatments of some of these works to investigate the effects of performance of the narrative in another medium. Works by Bruce Chatwin, Susan Orlean, Marjane Satrapi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ernest Hemingway, Milcha Sanchez-Scott, Redmond O'Hanlon, and David Bezmozgis will be the focus of our study. Students will learn to discuss and write about literary techniques as well as the works' cultural and historical context. In exploring the treatment of similar themes by different authors and in different genres, we will investigate questions of voice and form. Students are required to prepare oral as well as written responses to the works.
21W.754J (21M.604J) Playwriting I - Laura Harrington
Introduces the craft of writing for the theater. Through weekly assignments, in class writing exercises, and work on a sustained piece, students explore scene structure, action, events, voice, and dialogue. Examine produced play-scripts and discuss student work. Emphasis on process, risk-taking, and finding one's own voice and vision.
21W.755 Writing and Reading Short Stories - Helen Elaine Lee, Shariann Lewitt
Introduction to the short story. Students write stories and short descriptive sketches. Readings from European and American stories from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Class discussion of students' writing and of the assigned stories in their historical and social contexts.
21W.756 Writing and Reading Poems - Bill Corbett
Examination of the formal structure and textual variety in poetry. Extensive practice in the making of poems and the analysis of both students' manuscripts and texts from 16th-through 20th- century literature. Attempts to make relevant the traditional elements of poetry and their contemporary alternatives. Weekly writing assignments, including some exercises in prosody.
Advanced
21W.735 Writing and Reading the Essay - Rebecca Faery
Prereq: 21W.730, or excellent writing sample and permission of instructor
Exploration of formal and informal modes of writing nonfiction prose. Extensive practice in composition, revision, and editing. Reading in the literature of the essay from the Renaissance to the present, with an emphasis on modern writers. Classes alternate between discussion of published readings and workshops on student work. Individual conferences.
21W.736 News Writing - B.D. Colen
An introduction to the basics of print journalism, including an overview of journalistic ethics and life in the newsroom. Students learn basis reporting techniques, interviewing, and news writing, with an emphasis on accuracy, clarity, and brevity. Most writing done in class whereby students learn to write under time pressure, as well as in a distracting environment. Techniques of investigative reporting including interviewing and research into public and private sources are assigned on a weekly basis for outside classroom work.
21W.739J (21L.448J) Darwin and Design - Jim Paradis, Alvin Kibel
In The Origin of Species, Darwin provided a model for understanding the existence of objects and systems manifesting evidence of design without posting a designer, and of purpose and mechanism without intelligent agency. Texts deal with pre-Darwinian and later treatment of this topic within literature and speculative thought since the 18th century, with some attention to the modern study of feedback mechanism in artificial intelligence. Readings in Hume, Voltaire, Malthus, Darwin, Butler, Hardy, H.G. Wells, and Freud.
21W.740 Writing Autobiography and Biography - Ken Manning
Writing an autobiography is a vehicle for improving one's style while studying the nuances of the language. Literary works are read with an emphasis on different forms of autobiography. Students examine various stages of life, significant transitions, personal struggles, and memories translated into narrative prose, and discuss: what it means for autobiographer and biographer to develop a personal voice; and the problems of reality and fiction in autobiography and biography.
21W.741J Black Matters: Intro to Black Studies - T. DeFrantz, C. Capozzola
Interdisciplinary survey that explores the experiences of people of African descent through the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing. Connects the experiences of African-Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories, and on linguistic patterns. Includes lectures, discussions, workshops, and required field trips that involve minimal cost to students.
21W.742J Writing about Race - Kym Ragusa
In this course, we will investigate the concept of “place” as a way of understanding race, both as a lived experience and as a socially constructed form of identity. How do the places we inhabit shape our sense of self, community and history? How do they shape our experience of belonging or exclusion? What makes a place home, or not home? How is place itself socially and culturally constructed? How do writers use place as a way of mapping social, political, and emotional terrain? We will read essays, short stories, memoirs and novels that examine various kinds of places - cities, suburbs, rural areas and natural landscapes such as deserts and forests, as well as in-between, imagined, and nonphysical places such as borderlands, cyberspace, and the nation.
Writers will include Percival Everett, Dinaw Mengestu, Janisse Ray, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Gloria Anzaldua, Toi Dericotte, Linda Hogan, Gary Paul Nabhan, Rebecca Solnit, Danzy Senna, Lan Samantha Chang, Octavia Butler, and Pico Iyer. Although our focus will be on the contemporary United States, we will consider the experience and representation of place from the perspective both of writers who were born within its borders and those who have encountered the U.S. as migrants and immigrants.
Throughout the course, we will pay close attention to the ways in which these authors explore the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality, and use the craft of writing to express their ideas in ways that challenge and surprise us. Writing assignments will include a series of short in-class descriptive pieces, an analytical essay, a personal essay that incorporates research, and an essay that expands upon an in-class exercise. Peer-centered workshops and revision will be essential elements of our work throughout the course.
21W.745 Advanced Essay Workshop - Rebecca Faery
Prereq: Permission of instructor
For students with experience in writing essays and nonfiction prose. Focuses on negotiating and representing identities grounded in gender, race, class, nationality, and sexuality in prose that is expository, exploratory, investigative, persuasive, lyrical, or incantatory. Authors include James Baldwin, Minne Bruce Pratt, Audre Lorde, Richard Rodriguez, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, Diana Hume George, bell hooks, Margaret Atwood, Patricia J. Williams, and others. Designed to help students build upon their strengths as writers and to expand their repertoire of styles and approaches in essay writing.
21W.746 Humanistic Perspectives on Medicine:
From Ancient Greece to Modern America - Ken Manning
For students with experience in nonfiction prose and interest in the non-science side of medicine. Advanced study of the art of essay (form, style, techniques of persuasion) and practice of that form. Students required to write substantial essays and revise their work. Students read and discuss the writings of distinguished physicians from antiquity to the late 20th century.
21W.747 Rhetoric - Les Perelman, Steve Strang, Mya Poe
For students with a special interest in learning how to make forceful arguments in written form. Studies the forms and structures of argumentation, including organization of ideas, awareness of audience, methods of persuasion, evidence, factual vs. emotional argument, figures of speech, and historical forms and uses of arguments.
21W.749 Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: Still Images of a World in Motion - B. D. Colen
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Designed to increase students' understanding of, appreciation for, and ability to do documentary photography and photojournalism. Each three-hour class is divided between a discussion of issues and readings, and a group critique of students' projects. Students must have their own photographic equipment and be responsible for processing and printing: either by student or commercial lab. Students must show basic proficiency with their equipment. Readings include Susan Sontag, Robert Coles, Ken Light, Eugene Richards, and others. Previous photographic experience required. Enrollment limited to 15.
21W.750 Experimental Writing - Nick Montfort New!
Students use innovative compositional techniques to write extraordinary texts, focusing on new writing methods rather than on traditional lyrical or narrative concerns. Writing experiments, conducted individually, collaboratively and during class meetings, culminate in chapbook-sized projects. Students read, listen to, and create different types of work, including sound poetry, cut-ups, constrained and Oulipian writing, uncreative writing, sticker literature, false translations, artists' books, and digital projects.
21W.752(U)/824(G) Making Documentary: Video, Audio and More - Vivek Bald, Tom Levenson New!
Prereq: 21W.786, 21A.339, or permission of instructor
This course focuses on the technical demands of long-form storytelling in sound and picture. Students build practical writing and production skills through a series of assignments: still photo-text works, audio-only documentaries (radio/podcast), short video projects (>4 minutes), and a semester-long team produced video documentary (12-15 minutes). Readings, screenings and written work hone students’ analytical capacity. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments. Students from the Graduate Program in Science Writing will center their work on topics in science, technology, engineering and/or medicine.
21W.757 Fiction Workshop - Helen Elaine Lee
Prereq: 21W.755
For students interested in developing their understanding of the craft of fiction. Weekly workshop discussions of students' work focus on analysis of structure, style, and characterization. Emphasis on editing and revision. Reading and discussion of 19th- and 20th- century authors, such as Babel, Carver, Chekhov, Faulkner, Kafka, Orwell, Marquez, and Woolf.
21W.758 Genre Fiction Workshop - Junot Díaz
Prereq: A subject in writing short fiction or comparable writing experience
Students read stories from various genres about catastrophes, natural and human-made, and write stories in specific genres, although not necessarily about the reading topic. Readings include The Last Days of Pompeii (historical fiction), The Tin Roof Blowdown (suspense), Road (fantasy), and the science fiction novels No Blade of Grass and A Canticle for Leibowitz. Students consider genre protocols and how to write within the restrictions and freedoms associated with each genre. Students write a short reaction to each novel, and one short story within a genre or between genres for round-table workshopping. Enrollment limited to 15 students.
21W.759 Writing Science Fiction - Joe Haldeman
Students write and read science fiction and analyze and discuss stories written for the class. For the first eight weeks, readings in contemporary science fiction accompany lectures and formal writing assignments intended to illuminate various aspects of writing craft as well as the particular problems of writing science fiction. The rest of the term is given to roundtable workshops on students' stories.
21W.762 Poetry Workshop - Erica Funkhouser
For students with some previous experience in poetry writing. Frequent assignments stress use of language, diction, word choice, line breaks, imagery, mood, and tone. Considers the functions of memory, imagination, dreams, poetic impulses. Throughout the term, students examine the work of published poets. Revision stressed.
21W.763J (CMS.309J) Transmedia Storytelling: Modern Science Fiction - Beth Coleman
Students investigate the genre of science fiction across the different media that include the short story, the screenplay, moving image, and games. Students write critical essays and their own works of science fiction, and submit critical analyses of each other's efforts in a roundtable workshop environment.
21W.764J(CMS.609J) The Word Made Digital - Nick Montfort
Video games, digital art and literature, online texts, and source code are analyzed in the contexts of history, culture, and computing platforms. Approaches from poetics and computer science are used to understand the non-narrative digital uses of text. Students undertake critical writing and creative computer projects to encounter digital writing through practice. This involves reading and modifying computer programs; therefore previous programming experience, although not required, will be helpful. The graduate section includes additional assignments. Maximum of 18 students.
21W.765J(21L.489J) Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative: Theory and Practice - Nick Montfort
Techniques of creating narratives that take advantage of the flexibility of form offered by the computer. Study of the structural properties of book-based narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time and of storyline. Analysis of the structure and evaluation of the literary qualities of computer-based narratives including hypertexts, adventure games, and classic artificial intelligence programs like Eliza. With this base, students use authoring systems to model a variety of narrative techniques and to create their own fictions. Knowledge of programming helpful but not necessary.
21W.766J(SP.574J) Contemporary US Women of Color: Writing and Reading Short Stories - Helen Elaine Lee
Students read short stories by Native American, Latina, African-American, and Asian-American women writers and write their own stories and descriptive sketches. Writing assignments and discussions focus on these themes: reclaiming, reconstructing, and preserving culture; cultural heritage as a source of power and resistance; storytelling as a means of celebration and survival; shifting, contending, and multiple identities; the costs and advantages of breaking silence; and tensions between assimilation and maintaining cultural practices.
21W.767J(CMS.612) Writing for Videogames - Clara Fernandez Vara New!
Explores the convergence of fiction, dramatic writing and game design in writing for videogames. Addresses the problematic relationship between storytelling and games, from both an analytical and practical standpoint. Discusses theory and analysis of pre-existing games. Assignments provide students the opportunity to tackle specific writing problems in a creative way. Basic programming knowledge and previous coursework in game design, videogame theory, interactive narrative or play writing is useful but not required. Graduate students complete additional assignments.
Limited to 15.
21W.768J(CMS.616) Social and Cultural Facets of Digital Games - Mia Consalvo New!
Examines social, cultural, economic and political aspects of digital games across all platforms. Topics reflect a particular social or cultural theme and include the culture of gameplay, gaming communities, the politics and economics of production processes, persistence in virtual worlds, the ethics of games, and identity as it relates to gameplay. Discussions cover classic gameplay theories as well as more contemporary readings. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
21W.769J(21M.785J) Playwrights' Workshop - Alan Brody
Prereq: 21M.604, 21W.754 or permission of the instructor
Continues work in the development of play scripts for the theater. Writers work on sustained pieces in weekly workshop meetings, individual consultation with the instructor, and in collaboration with student actors, directors, and designers. Fully developed scripts eligible for inclusion in the Playwrights' Workshop production.
21W.770 Advanced Fiction Workshop - Helen Elaine Lee
Prereq: Permission of the instructor
For students with some experience in writing fiction. Write longer works of fiction and short stories which are related or interconnected. Read short story collections by individual writers, such as Sandra Cisneros, Raymond Carver, Edward P. Jones, and Tillie Olsen, and discuss them critically and analytically, with attention to the ways in which the writers' choices about component parts contribute to meaning. In-class exercises and weekly workshops of student work focus on sources of story material, characterization, structure, narrative voice, point of view and concrete detail. Concentration on revision.
21W.771 Advanced Poetry Workshop - Erica Funkhouser
Prereq: Prior manuscript submission required
For students experiences in writing poems. Regular reading of published contemporary poets and weekly submission of manuscripts for class review and criticism. Students expected to do a substantial amount of rewriting and revision. Classwork supplemented with individual conferences.
21W.772 Digital Poetry - Ed Barrett
Digital forms of poetry, including hypertext poems, Flash-animated poems, poems within short digital videos and interactive forms of poetry and games. Readings in early hypertext theory and creative writing. Experiment with creating poetry for wireless access on hand held devices. Test the assumptions of these early theorists through practice of creating digital poetry. Students discuss online examples of each of these kinds of digital poetry and then compose their own work, to present in class for critique and revision. The final project allows students to build upon their experience throughout the term with these forms.
21W.773 Writing Longer Fiction - Joe Haldeman
Prereq: A fiction workshop or permission of instructor
Designed for students who have some experience in writing fiction and want to try longer forms like the novella and novel. Students interested in writing a novel are expected to produce at least two chapters and an outline of the complete work. Readings include several novels from Fitzgerald to the present, and novellas from Gogol's The Overcoat to current examples. Students discuss one another's writing in a roundtable workshop, with a strong emphasis on revision.
21W.774 Invention and Ingenuity: Writing about Engineers and the Worlds They Make - Rob Kanigel
Introduction to science writing for general audiences, with a particular emphasis on engineers and their work. Through structured writing assignments devoted to engineering as practiced today or in the past, students learn to tell nonfiction stories, explore the intellectual and creative puzzles engineers face, comment on engineering's social and cultural impact, and illuminate the human drama in engineering work. Students also read and critically discuss compelling examples of such writing in newspapers, magazines, and popular books. Maximum of 16 students.
21W.775 Writing about Nature and Environmental Issues - Karen Boiko
Focuses on traditional nature writing and the environmentalist essay. Students keep a web log as a journal. Writings are drawn from the tradition of nature writing and from contemporary forms of the environmentalist essay. Authors include Henry Thoreau, Loren Eiseley, Annie Dillard, Chet Raymo, Sue Hubbel, Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben, and Terry Tempest Williams.
21W.777 The Science Essay - Karen Boiko
Drawing in part from their own interests and ideas, students write about science within various cultural contexts. Students employ a broad repertoire of literary tools, such as narrative, scene-setting, and attention to larger issues of structure. Students study the work of science writers such as Alan Lightman, Oliver Sacks and Malcolm Gladwell to help them create essays of substance and grace that have science and technology as their subjects. Not a technical writing class.
21W.778 Science Journalism - Tom Levenson
An introduction to print daily journalism and news writing, focusing on science news writing in general, and medical writing in particular. Emphasis is on writing clearly and accurately under deadline pressure. Class discussions involve the realities of modern journalism, how newsrooms function, and the science news coverage in daily publications. Discussions of, and practice in, interviewing and various modes of reporting. In class, students write numerous science news stories on deadline. There are additional longer writing assignments outside of class. Enrollment limited.
21W.781J Communicating About Technology: Colossal Failures in Engineering - William Haas
Explores communication about technological subjects in the context of colossal engineering failures including Three Mile Island, Bhopal, the Columbia Shuttle, 9/11, and Katrina. Examines the basic engineering principles and the social context of several such failures in case studies from various engineering disciplines. Students see how problematic communications, sometimes subtly unrecognizable at the time, significantly contributed to the final failures. Students collaborate to produce a final written and oral research report that anticipates a potential failure and makes recommendations for avoiding it. Multiple sections, each limited to 18 students.
21W.782J(STS.014J) Principles and Practice of Science Communication - John Durant
Develop skills as science communicators through projects and analysis of theoretical principles. Case studies explore the emergence of popular science communication over the past two centuries and the changing relationships among authors, audiences and media. Project topics are identified early in the term, and feature opportunities to work with the MIT Museum staff or participate in a city wide Cambridge Science Festival. Projects may involve physical exhibits, practical demonstrations, or scripts for public programs.
21W.784 Becoming Digital: Writing about Media Change - Ben Miller
Compares pre-digital to digital media to explore the unique problems that arise in this transition, including the manipulability of digital images, the ethics of anonymity on the Internet, the social repercussions of the computer, and the allure of computer gaming. Readings include subject-specific texts, augmented by philosophical articles relevant to the course themes, and some film. Frequent writing and revision, an oral presentation, and intensive class participation are required. Enrollment limited to 18.
21W.785 Communicating with Web-Based Media - Vivek Bald
Analysis, design, implementation, and testing of various forms of digital communication through group collaboration. Students are encouraged to think about the Web and other new digital interactive media not just in terms of technology but also broader issues such as language (verbal and visual), design, information architecture, communication and community. Students work as small groups on a term-long project of their choice. Various written and oral presentations document project development.
21W.786J(CMS.336J) The Social Documentary: Analysis and Production - Vivek Bald
An introduction to the history of the social documentary from the 1960s through the 1980s. Explores how social upheaval and the shift to smaller, more portable film cameras, and ultimately hand-held video, converged to bring about an upsurge of socially engaged documentary film production. Students screen and analyze a series of key films from the period and work in groups to produce their own short documentary using digital video and computer-based editing. Enrollment limited to 18.
21W.787 Film, Music and Social Change - Vivek Bald
Examines films from the 1950s onward that document music subcultures and moments of social upheaval. Combines screening films about free jazz, glam rock, punk, reggae, hip-hop, and other genres with an examination of critical/scholarly writings to illuminate the connections between film, popular music, and processes of social change. Students critique each film in terms of the social, political, and cultural world it documents, and the historical context and effects of the film's reception. Students taking the graduate version of this subject (CMS.837) complete additional assignments. Enrollment limited to 18 students.
21W.788J South Asian America: Transnational Media, Culture, and History - Vivek Bald New!
Examines the history of South Asian immigration, sojourning, and settlement from the 1880s to the present. Focuses on the US as one node in the global circulation, not only of people, but of media, culture and ideas, through a broader South Asian diaspora. Considers the concept of “global media” historically; emphasis on how ideas about, and self-representations of, South Asians have circulated via books, political pamphlets, performance, film, video/cassette tapes, and the internet. Students analyze and discuss scholarly writings, archival documents, memoirs, fiction, blogs and films, and write papers drawing on course materials, lectures, and discussions.
Limited to 18.
21W.789 Communicating with Mobile Technology - Ed Barrett
Students work in small collaborative design teams to propose, build, and document a semester-long project focused on mobile applications for cell phones. Additional assignments include creating several small mobile applications such as context-aware mobile media capture and games. Students document their work through a series of written and oral proposals, progress reports, and final reports. Covers the basic of J2ME and explores mobile imaging and media creation. GPS location, user-centered design, usability testing, and prototyping. Java experience recommended.
21W.791J(CMS.614) Identity and the Internet - Mia ConsalvoNew!
Focuses on various aspects of identity, including gender, race, class, sexuality, ability and age, as they are expressed in and through internet-related technologies. Theories and readings focus on the cultural, social, economic and political aspects of Internet use and design. The Internet is defined broadly to include networked capability in computers, mobile devices, entertainment technologies, and emerging media forms. Covers foundational as well as more recent readings. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.
21W.792 Science Writing Internship
Part-time internships in Boston-area media and industries are arranged for students wishing to develop professional writing and publishing skills. Students planning to take this subject must contact the instructor by November of the previous term.
21W.797 Communication Workshop for CME - Mya Poe
Prereq: Acceptance in the CME program
Communication intensive subject for MIT undergraduates participating in the Cambridge-MIT Exchange program. Intensive week-long workshop focuses on written communication, including discipline-specific material and library research, and emphasizes argumentation skills.
21W.798, 21W.799 Special Topics in Writing - Jim Paradis
Primarily for students pursuing advanced writing projects with the assistance of a member of the Writing Program. Students electing this subject must secure the approval of the director of the Writing Program and its Committee on Curriculum. HASS credit for Special Topics subjects awarded only by individual petitions to the Committee on Curricula. Normal maximum is 6 units; to count toward HASS Requirements, 9 units are required. Exceptional 9-unit projects occasionally approved. 21W.789 is P/D/F.
21W.ThT Writing and Humanistic Studies Pre-Thesis Tutorial
Definition of and early stage work on a thesis project leading to 21W.ThU. Taken during the first term of a student's two-term commitment to the thesis project. Student works closely with an individual faculty tutor. Required of all students pursuing a full major in Course 21W. Joint majors register for 21.ThT.
21W.ThU Writing and Humanistic Studies Thesis
Prereq: 21W.ThT
Completion of work on the senior major thesis under the supervision of a faculty tutor. Includes oral presentation of the thesis progress early in the term, assembling and revising the final text, and a final meeting with a committee of faculty evaluators to discuss the successes and limitations of the project. Required of students pursuing a full major in Course 21W. Joint majors register for 21.ThU.
21W.UR Research in Writing and Humanistic Studies - Jim Paradis
Individual participation in an ongoing research project. For students in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
21W.URG Research in Writing and Humanistic Studies - Jim Paradis
Individual participation in an ongoing research project. For students in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.