This course aims to introduce students to the rich diversity of human culture from antiquity to the early 17th century. In this course, we will explore human culture in its myriad expressions, focusing on the study of literary, religious and philosophical texts as ways of narrating, symbolizing, and commenting on all aspects of human social and material life. We will work comparatively, reading texts from various cultures: Mesopotamian, Greek, Judeo-Christian, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim. Throughout the semester, we will be asking questions like: How have different cultures imagined themselves? What are the rules that they draw up for human behavior? How do they represent the role of the individual in society? How do they imagine 'universal' concepts like love, family, duty? How have their writers and artists dealt with encounters with other cultures and other civilizations?

This course covers French politics, culture, and society from Louis XIV to Napoleon Bonaparte. Attention is given to the growth of the central state, the beginnings of a modern consumer society, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, including its origins, and the rise and fall of Napoleon.

This course examines relationships between identity and participation in Japanese popular culture as a way of understanding the changing character of media, capitalism, fan communities, and culture. It emphasizes contemporary popular culture and theories of gender, sexuality, race, and the workings of power and value in global culture industries. Topics include manga (comic books), hip-hop and other popular music, anime and feature films, video games, contemporary literature, and online communication. Students present analyses and develop a final project based on a particular aspect of gender and popular culture.

This course explores stereotypes associated with Asian women in colonial, nationalist, state-authoritarian, and global/diasporic narratives about gender and power. Students will read ethnography, cultural studies, and history, and view films to examine the politics and circumstances that create and perpetuate the representation of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, despotic tyrants, desexualized servants, and docile subordinates. Students are introduced to the debates about Orientalism, gender, and power.

Prepares students for working and living in German-speaking countries. Focus on current political, social, and cultural issues, using newspapers, journals, TV, radio broadcasts, and Web sources from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Emphasis on speaking, writing, and reading skills for professional contexts. Activities include: oral presentations, group discussions, guest lectures, and interviews with German speakers. No listeners.

This course examines contemporary and historical cultural production on and from Africa across a range of registers, including literary, musical and visual arts, material culture, and science and technology. It employs key theoretical concepts from anthropology and social theory to analyze these forms and phenomena. It also uses case studies to consider how Africa articulates its place in, and relationship to, the world through creative practices. Discussion topics are largely drawn from Francophone and sub-Saharan Africa, but also from throughout the continent and the African diaspora.

This course explores how and why Japan, a late-comer to modernization, emerged as an industrial power and the world's second-richest nation, notwithstanding its recent difficulties. We are particularly concerned with the historical development of technology in Japan especially after 1945, giving particular attention to the interplays between business, ideology, technology, and culture. We will discuss key historical phenomena that symbolize modern Japan as a technological power in the world; specific examples to be discussed in class include kamikaze aircraft, the Shinkansen high-speed bullet train, Godzilla, and anime.

" This class explores the political and aesthetic foundations of hip hop. Students trace the musical, corporeal, visual, spoken word, and literary manifestations of hip hop over its 30 year presence in the American cultural imagery. Students also investigate specific black cultural practices that have given rise to its various idioms. Students create material culture related to each thematic section of the course. Scheduled work in performance studio helps students understand how hip hop is created and assessed."

Learning to Share Information (5 days)
1.Today we are going to start a research project on Greek gods. We started reading A True Book: Ancient Greece in shared reading today. One of the things that was really important to the ancient Greeks was religion. They believed in many gods and they believed that their gods looked and acted like humans, but had incredible powers and lived forever.
2. Yesterday you chose which god you were going to be an expert on. I have the list up here. Also, you started to research and write notes on your graphic organizer. I showed you how to make sections to take notes in and how to add more to each section as you read through different sources.
3. For the past two days, you have been working hard to gather information about your gods. All of you have several sections filled in. Some of those sections have lots of information and some of those sections only have one or two facts. Today we are going to talk about deciding which information to keep and which information to get rid of.
4. Yesterday you worked on choosing information to share in your infographic. Today you will need to begin planning how you will want your infographic to look.
5. Yesterday you used your graphic organizer to plan your infographic. Today you can start making your infographic.
Sharing

International Women's Voices has several objectives. It introduces students to a variety of works by contemporary women writers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The emphasis is on non-western writers. The readings are chosen to encourage students to think about how each author's work reflects a distinct cultural heritage and to what extent, if any, we can identify a female voice that transcends national cultures. In lectures and readings distributed in class, students learn about the history and culture of each of the countries these authors represent. The way in which colonialism, religion, nation formation and language influence each writer is a major concern of this course. In addition, students examine the patterns of socialization of women in patriarchal cultures, and how, in the imaginary world, authors resolve or understand the relationship of the characters to love, work, identity, sex roles, marriage and politics.This class is a communication intensive course. In addition to becoming more thoughtful readers, students are expected to become a more able and more confident writers. Assignments are designed to allow for revision of each paper. The class will also offer opportunities for speaking and debating so that students can build oral presentation skills that are essential for success once they leave MIT. The class is limited to 25 students and there is substantial classroom discussion.

This course examines major social and political trends, events, debates and personalities which help place aspects of contemporary French culture in their historical perspective through fiction, films, essays, newspaper articles, and television. Topics include the heritage of the French Revolution, the growth and consequences of colonialism, the role of intellectuals in public debates, the impact of the Occupation, the modernization of the economy and of social structures. The sources and meanings of national symbols, monuments, myths and manifestoes are also studied. Recommended for students planning to study abroad. Taught in French.

Studies the major social, political, and aesthetic modes which have shaped Spanish civilization. Coordinates the study of literature, film, art, and architecture with the historical evolution of Spain. Readings and discussions focus on such topics as: the coexistence of Christians, Moors, and Jews; Imperial Spain; The First and Second Republics; and the contemporary period as background for the emergence of distinctively Spanish literary and artistic movements. Taught in Spanish. This course has several purposes. The major concern will be the examination of Spanish culture including Spain's history, architecture, art, literature and film, to determine if there is a uniquely Spanish manner of seeing and understanding the world - one which emerges as clearly distinct from our own and that of other Western European nations.

An introduction to diverse musical traditions of the world. Music from a wide range of geographical areas are studied in terms of structure, performance practice, social use, aesthetics, and cross-cultural contact. Includes hands-on music making, live demonstrations by guest artists, and ethnographic research projects. This course explores the ways that music is both shaped by and gives shape to the cultural settings in which it is performed, through studying selected musical traditions from around the world. Specific case studies will be examined closely through listening, analysis, and hands-on instruction. The syllabus centers around weekly listening assignments and readings from a textbook with CDs, supplemented by hands-on workshops, lecture/demonstrations and concerts by master musicians from around the world.

This course examines the major aesthetic, social, and political elements which have shaped modern Japanese culture and society. There are readings on contemporary Japan and historical evolution of the culture are coordinated with study of literary texts, film, and art, along with an analysis of everyday life and leisure activities.

In the decades following the Second World War, a cluster of extraordinary French thinkers were widely translated and read in American universities. Their works were soon labeled as "French Theory." Why would sharing the same nationality make authors such as Lacan, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault or Debord, ambassadors of a specifically "French" theory? The course will explore the maze of transatlantic intellectual debates since 1945 and the heyday of French existentialism. We will study the debates on communism, decolonization, neo_liberalism, gender, youth culture and mass media. This course is taught in English.

Database of Hebrew and Arabic texts recovered by a US Army team in Iraq. Primary Resources/Authentic Texts. The restoration and preservation of these documents is explained.

This course surveys both cinematic and literary representations of diverse eras and aspects of Japanese culture such as the classical era, the samurai age, wartime Japan and the atomic bombings, social change in the postwar period, and the appropriation of foreign cultural themes, with an emphasis on the modern period. Directors include Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Authors include Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima. Films shown have subtitles in English. Taught in English.

Medieval Japanese society and culture from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries, when political power rested largely in the hands of feudal warriors. Topics include religion (especially Zen Buddhism), changing concepts of "the way of the warrior," the century of Japanese contact with Christian missionaries and European traders beginning in the 1540s, and the dynamic period of seclusion and urbanization which followed and witnessed, among other things, the vibrant "floating world" of the pleasure quarters. Presentations include weekly feature films.

Take a virtual tour of the prehistoric caves at Lascaux, France. The discovery of Lascaux in 1940 opened a new page in the knowledge of prehistoric art and our origins. Monumental work, the cave continues to feed the imagination and move the new generations of the world. This website is intended to help understand the secrets of the artists who painted and engraved bestiary at Lascaux 19,000 years ago, and to present the current trends in scientific research on the painted caves.

" The primary purpose of this seminar is to enable students to craft approaches to so-called "First World"/ "Third World" city comparisons that are theoretically sophisticated, methodologically rigorous, contextually grounded, and significantly beneficial. Since there exists very little literature and very few projects which compare "First World" and "Third World" cities in a sophisticated and genuinely useful manner, the seminar is structured around a series of readings, case studies, and discussions to assist students in becoming mindful of the potential and pitfalls of comparative analysis, the types of data, the methods of analysis, and the urban issues or sectors which may benefit the most from such approaches. The course is designed to be interdisciplinary and interactive, and is geared towards masters and doctoral students."