Faculty

James Paradis

James Paradis

Program Head, Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of Writing, and Interim Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program, 14N-338, 617-253-7392, jparadis@mit.edu

James Paradis is the Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of Writing and Humanistic Studies and Interim Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program. He works on problems of the mutually-influential rise of professionalism and vernacular culture, the public reception of science, and the way in which fields of expertise are represented in popular media. His methods are comparative, and draw on cultural studies, biographical approaches, intellectual history, and the history of rhetoric to study science popularization, science fiction, science education, two-cultures controversies, science as entertainment, and vernacular science. These interests are highlighted in his various books, articles, and edited collections, including T.H. Huxley: Man’s Place in Nature (Nebraska 1978); Victorian Science and Victorian Values (with T. Postlewait, Rutgers 1984); Evolution and Ethics (with G. Williams, Princeton 1989); Textual Dynamics of the Professions (with C. Bazerman, Wisconsin 1991); Samuel Butler: Victorian against the Grain: A Critical Overview (Toronto 2007).

Subjects:
*21W.739J - Darwin and Design
*CMS.376/876 - History of Media and Technology

Publications

Publications

  • T.H. Huxley: Man's Place in Nature (Nebraska, 1978)
  • Victorian Science and Victorian Values: Literary Perspectives,
    (with T. Postlewait, Rutgers, 1984)
  • Evolution and Ethics, (with G. Williams, Princeton, 1989)
  • Textual Dynamics of the Professions (with C. Bazerman, Wisconsin, 1991)
  • Samuel Butler: Victorian against the Grain - A Critical Overview (Toronto, 2007)
  • Essays in Victorian Science in Context - One Culture; Hugh Miller and the Controversies of Science; Writing in Non-Academic Settings; Science Serialized; London Review of Books; Harvard Educational Review (1997)
James Paradis


James Paradis


James Paradis


James Paradis



James Paradis


Links: http://mitworld.mit.edu/speaker/view/1100

Heather Hendershot

Heather Hendershot

Director of the CMS Graduate Program, Professor of Film and Media, E15-324, 617-324-4038, hshot@mit.edu

Heather Hendershot studies conservative media and political movements, film and television genres, and American film history. She has held fellowships at Vassar College, New York University, and Princeton University, and she has also been a Guggenheim fellow.

Hendershot is particularly interested in the complicated relationship between "extremist" and "mainstream" conservatism and in how that relationship is negotiated by conservative media. Her courses emphasize the interplay between industrial, economic, and regulatory concerns and how those concerns affect what we see on the screen (big or little). Students are encouraged to consider the ways that TV and film writers, directors, and producers have attempted creativity and innovation while working within an industry that demands novelty but also often fears new approaches to character and narrative.

Hendershot is the editor of Nickelodeon Nation (2004) and the author of Saturday Morning Censors (1998), Shaking the World for Jesus (2004), and What's Fair on the Air? (2011). She is also the editor of Cinema Journal, the official publication of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. She is currently researching a book on William F. Buckley Jr.'s Firing Line.

Vivek Bald

Vivek Bald

Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Media, 14N-435, 617-452-5086, vbald@mit.edu

Vivek Bald is a documentary filmmaker and scholar whose work focuses on histories of the South Asian diaspora. His current project traces the lives of South Asian Muslim silk peddlers and merchant seamen who settled within communities of color in the U.S. South, Northeast, and Midwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is the basis for a forthcoming book, Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard University Press, 2013), and a documentary film, In Search of Bengali Harlem.

Subjects:
*21W.785 - Communicating with Web-Based Media
*21W.786 - The Social Documentary
*21W.787 - Film, Music and Social Change
*21W.790J - Short Attention-Span Documtary

Publications

Publications

Recent and forthcoming publications include:

  • Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America - Harvard University Press, January 2013
  • “Desertion and Sedition: Indian Seamen, Onshore Labor, and Expatriate Radicalism in New York and Detroit, 1914-1930,” in Vivek Bald, Miabi Chatterji, Sujani Reddy and Manu Vimalassery, eds., The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power. New York: New York University Press, 2013.
  • “Selling the East in the American South: Bengali Peddlers in New Orleans, 1880-1920,” in Khyati Y. Joshi and Jigna Desai, eds., Improbable Southerners: Asian Americans in the U.S. South. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
  • “Overlapping Diasporas, Multiracial Lives: South Asian Muslims in U.S. Communities of Color, 1880-1950”, in Manning Marable and Hishaam Aidi, eds., Black Routes to Islam. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009..
  • “’Lost’ in the City: Spaces and Stories of South Asian New York, 1917-1965”, South Asian Popular Culture 5.1 (2007)


Films include:

  • In Search of Bengali Harlem - forthcoming documentary film
  • Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music (2003) - about South Asian youth, music, and anti-racist politics in 1970s-90s Britain
  • Taxi-vala/Auto-biography (1994) - about South Asian immigrant taxi drivers in New York City

Links: Dubs, Diasporas & Digital
SHASS Research Portfolio: Who are the South-Asian-Americans?

Profiles: January 2010

Ed Barrett

Edward Barrett

Senior Lecturer, 14N-336, 617-253-6475, ebarrett@mit.edu

Edward Barrett is a Senior Lecturer in Writing and General Editor of the MIT Press Series on Digital Communication. Areas of research and teaching: Digital Communication, Creative Writing, Writing and New Media, Digital Poetry, Interactive Fiction, Engineering and Scientific Writing.

Subjects:

*21W.032 - Science Writing and New Media
*21W.762 - Poetry Workshop
*21W.765 - Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative
*21W.772 - Digital Poetry
*21W.785 - Communicating with Web-Based Media
*21W.789 - Communicating with Mobile Technology

Publications

Publications

Books on digital communication and media include:

  • Contextual Media: Multimedia and Interpretation (1995)
  • Sociomedia (1992)
  • The Society of Text: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Information (1989)
  • Text, ConText, and HyperText: Writing with and for the Computer (1988)

Co-authored textbooks include:

  • The MIT Guide to Teaching Web Site Design (2001)
  • The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing (1998)

Books of poetry include:

  • Down New Utrecht Avenue (2011)
  • Holy Sonnets (poetry and visual art) in collaboration with Amanda Matthews
  • Bosston (2008)
  • Kevin White (2007)
  • Or Current Resident (2005)
  • Rub Out (Three Verse Novels) (2003)
  • Sheepshead Bay (2001)
  • Breezy Point (2000)
  • Practical Lullabies for Joe (collaboration with Joseph Torra, 1999)
  • Common Preludes (1994)
  • The Leaves Are Something This Year (1992)
  • Theory of Transportation (1990)
  • 7x3 (1987)

Plays (translation):

  • Rhapsody Antigone (1982)

Libretto for opera

  • Shaman (1987)
Marcia Bartusiak

Marcia Bartusiak

Professor of the Practice and Executive Director of the Graduate Program, 14N-210, 617-452-3214, bar2siak@mit.edu

Marcia Bartusiak has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for three decades and is a member of the editorial board of Astronomy. In 2010, Bartusiak won the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize for Best Book for a General Audience from the History of Science Society. In 2009 Bartusiak was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, cited for “exceptionally clear communication of the rich history, the intricate nature, and the modern practice of astronomy to the public at large,” and in 2006 was awarded the distinguished Andrew W. Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics, a prize given annually to recognize "significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics." In 1982, she was the first woman to receive the AIP Science Writing Award and won the award again in 2001 for Einstein's Unfinished Symphony. She was also a finalist in NASA's 1987 Journalist-in-Space competition. For the 1994-95 academic year, she was a Knight Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Subjects:
*21W.825/826 - Advanced Science Writing Seminar
*21W.THG - Graduate Thesis in Science Writing
*21W.892 - Science Writing Internship

Publications

Publications

  • Thursday's Universe (Times Books, 1986) - a guide to the frontiers of astrophysics
  • Through a Universe Darkly (HarperCollins, 1993) - a history of astronomers' quest to discover the universe's composition
  • Einstein's Unfinished Symphony (Joseph Henry Press, 2000) - a chronicle of the attempt to detect gravity waves, the last experimental test of general relativity. This book and two above were named notable books by the New York Times.
  • Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery (Pantheon, 2004) - an anthology and commentary on the historic discovery papers in astronomy.
  • The Day We Found the Universe (Pantheon, 2009) - a narrative history about the discovery of the modern cosmos
  • Published in National Geographic, Science, Smithsonian, Discover, Technology Review, Astronomy, Natural History, Sky & Telescope, Science News, New York Times, Washington Post

Links: http://www.marciabartusiak.com
Links: cosmosfirma.blogspot.com

Junot Diaz

Junot Díaz

Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing, 14N-436, 617-253-4010, junot@mit.edu

Professor Junot Díaz received in 2008, The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize and The Dayton Literary Peace Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books 2007). The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States, celebrating the power of literature to promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution.

Subjects:
*21W.745 - Advanced Essay Workshop
*21W.755 - Writing and Reading Short Stories
*21W.757 - Fiction Workshop

*21W.758 - Genre Fiction

Interview on NPR

Publications

Publications

Books include:

  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books 2007)
  •  Drown (selected as a Village Voice, a New York Times and an American Library Association Notable Book for 1996)

Links:http://www.junotdiaz.com/

Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman

Adjunct Professor, 14N-230, 617-253-7390, haldeman@mit.edu

Joe Haldeman has a B.S. in astronomy from the University of Maryland.  He currently is Adjunct Professor teaching science fiction writing workshop and reading and writing longer fiction and reading and writing genre fiction. He was named the 2010 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. The Grand Master award is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's highest accolade and recognizes excellence for a lifetime of contributions to the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Subjects:
*21W.758 - Genre Fiction
*21W.759 - Writing Science Fiction
*21W.773 - Longer Fiction

Profile: October 2010

For Publications, please go to Prof. Haldeman's web site

D. Fox Harrell

D. Fox Harrell

Associate Professor, 14N-207, 617-324-4278, fox.harrell@mit.edu

Fox Harrell is Associate Professor of Digital Media, joint in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Comparative Media Studies Program, and in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research explores the relationship between imaginative cognition, digital media arts, and computation, developing new forms of interactive narrative, gaming, social computing, and other types of culturally engaged AI-based media. Harrell received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his project “Computing for Advanced Identity Representation.” He is currently completing a book, Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression, for the MIT Press.

Anne Khaminwa interviews Fox in the Spring 2011 Article of International Review of African American Art, "How An Artist-Scientist Conjurer Thinks, Works and Lives".

Fox has an article covering his recent work "Identity, Avatars, Virtual life - and Advancing Social Equity in the 'Real' World" in DMLcentral.

Subjects:
*CMS.314/21W.753/CMS.814 Phantasmal Media: Theory and Practice
*CMS.628 Advanced Identity Representation

Publications

Publications

Selected Articles in Refereed Journals:

  • "Toward a Theory of Critical Computing: The Case of Social Identity Representation in Digital Media Applications,” CTheory, 2010.
  • "Toward a Theory of Phantasmal Media: An Imaginative Cognition- and Computation-Based Approach to Digital Media,” CTheory, 2009.
  • “Cultural Roots for Computing: The Case of African Diasporic Orature and Computational Narrative in the GRIOT System,” Fibreculture, Vol. 11, 2008.

Selected Book Chapter

  • “GRIOT’s Tales of Haints and Seraphs: A Computational Narrative Generation System,” Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, N. Wardrip-Fruin and P. Harrigan, Eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Other Selected Publications - Refereed

  • “Material-Based Imagination: Embodied Cognition in Animated Images,” Proceedings of the 8th Digital Arts and Culture Conference, After Media: Embodiment and Context, University of California Press, Irvine), 2009. (with Kenny K.N. Chow)
  • “Computational and Cognitive Infrastructures of Stigma: Empowering Identity in Social Computing and Gaming,” Proceedings of the 7th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Cognition and Creativity, New York: ACM Press, 2009.
  • “Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design,” Proceedings of the AAAI 2009 Spring Symposium on Narrative Intelligence II. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press), 2009. (with Jichen Zhu)
  • Identity and Online Avatars: A Discussion,” Kotaku, April 24, 2010.
  • “Chimeric Avatars and Other identity Experiments from Prof. Fox Harrell.” Elizabeth Soep, interviewer. BoingBoing.net, April 19, 2010.

Robert Kanigel

Robert Kanigel

Professor, 14N-420, 617-253-0087, kanigel@mit.edu

Grady-Stack Award for Science Writing. Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award. Recipient, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.

Subjects:
*21W.825/826 - Advanced Science Writing Seminar
*21W.ThG - Graduate Thesis Seminar

Publications

Publications

  • Faux Real - on leather and its imitators
  • High Season - popular history of French Riviera tourism
  • The Man Who Knew Infinity - biography of mathematician Ramanujan
  • The One Best Way - biography of efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor
  • Apprentice to Genius - about mentor relationships among elite scientists
  • Articles in New York Times Magazine, Wilson Quarterly

Links:http://www.robertkanigel.com/

Helen Lee

Helen Elaine Lee

Professor, 14N-425, 617-253-3060, helee@mit.edu

Helen Elaine Lee was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She graduated from Harvard Law School. Her short stories have appeared in Callaloo, SAGE and several anthologies, including Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present, edited by Gloria Naylor, and Ancestral House: The Black Story in the Americas and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell. Professor Lee serves on the Board of PEN New England and is a member of its Freedom To Write Committee.

Subjects:
*21W.755 - Writing and Reading Short Stories
*21W.757 - Fiction Workshop
*21W.770 - Advanced Fiction Workshop

Publications

Publications

  • Recently completed manuscript of Life Without - about the lives of a group of people who are incarcerated in two neighboring American prisons.  Published excerpts from this novel in Callaloo and Hanging Loose.
  • Water Marked - published by Scribner in 1999
  • The Serpent's Gift - published by Atheneum Publishers in 1994 and Scribner Paperback Fiction in 1995

Links:Faculty Profiles

Thomas Levenson copyright Joel Benjamin

Thomas Levenson

Professor and Director of the Graduate Program, 14E-303B, 617-253-8922, levenson@mit.edu

Professor Thomas Levenson is the winner of Walter P. Kistler Science Documentary Film Award, Peabody Award (shared), New York Chapter Emmy, and the AAAS/Westinghouse award. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, Discover, The Sciences. Winner of the 2005 National Academies Communications Award for Origins.  

Subjects:
*21W.778 - Science Journalism
*21W.825/826 - Advanced Science Writing Seminar

Publications

Publications

  • Articles and reviews in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, Discover, The Sciences
  • Newton and the Counterfeiter
  • Einstein in Berlin
  • Measure for Measure, A Musical History of Science
  • Ice Time: Climate, Science, and Life on Earth
  • Television documentaries include
    • Origins: Back to the Beginning (NOVA)
    • Building Big: Domes (PBS)
    • Einstein Revealed (NOVA)

Links:
1) Interview with Chris Lydon on Newton at MIT
2) Op-ed for the CNN on what Newton's experiences in the stock market tell us about the need for financial regulation now
3)The Most Beautiful System: The power and danger of Isaac's Newton's faith

Profiles: September 2009

Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman

Professor of the Practice of the Humanities, E51-179, 617-253-2308, www-humanistic@mit.edu

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. He was educated at Princeton University and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a PhD in theoretical physics. Before coming to MIT, he was on the faculty of Harvard University. At MIT, Lightman was one the first people to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities and was John Burchard Professor of Humanities before becoming an Adjunct Professor to allow more time for his writing. Lightman is the author of five novels, two collections of essays, a book-length narrative poem, and several books on science. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into 30 languages. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award in fiction. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won numerous other awards. Lightman is also the founding director of the Harpswell Foundation, which works to empower a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia.

Subjects:
*21W.757 - Fiction Workshop
*21W.825/826 - Advanced Science Writing Seminar

Publications

Publications

Novels rooted in science and technology:

  • Einstein's Dreams (1993)
  • Good Benito (1995)
  • The Diagnosis (2000)
  • Reunion (2003)
  • Ghost (October 2007)

Essays and Fables:

  • Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe (1984)
  • A Modern Day Yakee in a Connecticut Court (1986)
  • Dance for Two (1996)
  • Best American Essays (2000) - Guest Editor
  • Living with the Genie (2004) - Coedited with Christina Desser and Daniel Sarewitz
  • Heart of the Horse (2004) - with Juliet von Otteren
  • A Sense of the Mysterious (2005)

Books on science:

  • Problem Book in Relativity and Gravitation (1975) - with W.H. Press, R.H. Price, and S.A. Teukolsky
  • Radiative Processes in Astrophysics (1979) - with G.B. Rybicki
  • Origins: the Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (1990) - with R. Brawer
  • Ancient Light.  Our Changing View of the Universe (1991)
  • Great Ideas in Physics (1992, new edition 2000)
  • Time for the Stars.  Astronomy for the 1990s (1992)
  • The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science (November, 2005)

Links: Alan Lightman's Website

Kenneth Manning

Kenneth Manning

Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric and the History of Science, 16-236, 617-253-4085, manning@mit.edu

Professor Kenneth Manning was the winner of the Lucy Hampton Bostick Book Award in 1984 and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for 1984.

Subjects:
*21W.740 - Writing Autobiography and Biography
*21W.746 - Humanistic Perspectives on Medicine: From Ancient Greece to Modern America

Publications

Publications

  • Black Apollo of Science: the Life of Ernest Everett Just (Oxford University Press, 1983)
Seth_Mnookin

Seth Mnookin

Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Graduate Program, 14N-420, 617-324-1868, smnookin@mit.edu

Seth Mnookin is the Co-Director of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is also the author of the 2006 New York Times-bestseller Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top and 2004′s Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. In addition to his books, Seth blogs at the Public Library of Science and is a contributing editor at the online science e-book review Download the Universe. Since 2005, he has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including New York, Wired, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Spin, Slate, and Salon.com.

Nick Montfort

Nick Montfort

Associate Professor, 14N-233, 617-324-1429, nickm@nickm.com

Nick Montfort is a creator, critic, and theorist of digital media particularly focused on the intersection of computing and writing practice.  He is an author and programmer of interactive fiction, poetry generators, and other digital literary systems.  He blogs about digital media and other topics, writes poems in unusual forms, and frequently collaborates with writer/programmers and others on online literary projects. 

Subjects:
*21W.750 - Experimental Writing
*21W.764 - The Word Made Digital
*21W.765 - Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative

Publications

Publications

Books:

  • Riddle & Bind, Spineless Books (October 31, 2010)
  • Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, MIT Press, 2009)
  • The Electronic Literature Collection Volume I (edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland, ELO, 2006)
  • Ream (2006)
  • Implementation (by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg, 2004)
  • Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction (MIT Press, 2003)
  • The New Media Reader (edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, MIT Press, 2003)
  • 2002: A Palindrome Story (by Nick Montfort and William Gillespie, Spineless Books, 2002)

 Links: http://nickm.com/

 Profiles: Feb 12, 2009

T.L. Taylor

T.L. Taylor

Associate Professor of Comparative Media Studies, E15-327, 617-324-4148, tltaylor@mit.edu

T.L. Taylor is a qualitative sociologist working in the field of internet and game studies. Her work focuses on the interrelation between culture, social practice, and technology in online leisure environments. She has spoken and written on topics such as network play and social life, values in design, intellectual property, co-creative practices, avatars, and gender & gaming. Her most recent research explores the professionalization of computer game play, examining the developing scene of high-end competitive play, spectatorship, and the growing institutionalization of e-sports.

Her book about professional computer gaming, Raising the Stakes:E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (MIT Press, 2012) has just been published. She is also the author of Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006) which used her multi-year ethnography of EverQuest to explore issues related to massively multiplayer online games. Her co-authored Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (Princeton University Press) will be out September 2012.

She is currently a Visiting Researcher with the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England.

More information about her work can be found at her website.

Rosalind Williams

Rosalind Williams

Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Program in Science, Technology, and Society E51-103b, 617-253-2847, rhwill@mit.edu

Publications

Publications

    Publications
    •Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (University of California, 1982) - among the first studies of the history of technology with an emphasis on consumption rather than production.
    •Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination (MIT Press, 1990) - shows how both actual and imaginary underworlds encouraged the emergence of a new kind of environmental consciousness, one based on the perception of living beneath the surface of the earth.
    •Notes (2008) - emphasizes the relevance of subterranean consciousness to current understanding of the implications of climate change.
    •Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (MIT Press, 2002) - draws upon her experiences as a historian and MIT dean to comment upon our "technological age."
    •Working title The Human Empire: Rivers and Romance at the End of the Earth - forthcoming
    Links: http://web.mit.edu/~rhwill/www/
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