Online courses directory (2511)

This course covers empirical strategies for applied micro research questions. Our agenda includes regression and matching, instrumental variables, differences-in-differences, regression discontinuity designs, standard errors, and a module consisting of 8–9 lectures on the analysis of high-dimensional data sets a.k.a. "Big Data".

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we explore a variety of visual and written tools for self exploration and self expression. Through discussion, written assignments, and directed exercises, students practice utilizing a variety of media to explore and express who they are.

This subject serves as a broad introduction to the field of European and Latin American fiction. It is taught in an historical manner—beginning with the first picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, and ending with contemporary European fiction. It is designed to help students acquire a general understanding of major fictional modes-from 18th century epistolary fiction, Liaisons dangereuses, to 20th century avant-garde fiction: Cosmicomicsi and Aura. Attention is paid not only to the literary movements these works represent, but also to the subtle interplay of history, geography, language and cultural norms that gave rise to specific literary forms. While the reading load is heavy, the books are compelling.

This course aims to provide an overview of Indian popular culture over the last two decades, through a variety of material such as popular fiction, music, television and Bombay cinema. The class will explore major themes and their representations in relation to current social and political issues. In particular, students will examine the elements of the formulaic "masala movie", music and melodrama, the ideas of nostalgia and incumbent change in youth culture, as well as shifting questions of gender and sexuality in popular fiction. During the course, students will look at some journalistic writing, advertising clips and political cartoons to understand the relation between the popular culture and the social imagery of a nation. This course is taught in English.

Within twenty-four hours of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 politicians, artists, and cultural critics had begun to ask how to memorialize the deaths of thousands of people. This question persists today, but it can also be countered with another: is building a monument the best way to commemorate that moment in history? What might other discourses, media, and art forms offer in such a project of collective memory? How can these cultural formations help us to assess the immediate reaction to the attack? To approach these issues, "Out of Ground Zero" looks back to earlier sites of catastrophe in Germany and Japan.

This course analyzes cooperative processes that shape the natural environment, now and in the geologic past. It emphasizes the development of theoretical models that relate the physical and biological worlds, the comparison of theory to observational data, and associated mathematical methods.

This course provides an introduction to the atmospheric chemistry involved in climate change, air pollution and biogeochemical cycles using a combination of hands-on laboratory, field studies, and simple computer models. Lectures will be accompanied by field trips to collect air samples for the analysis of gases, aerosols and clouds by the students.

Using film as a lens to explore and interpret various aspects of the urban experience in both the U.S. and abroad, this course presents a survey of important developments in urbanism from 1900 to the present day, including changes in technology, bureaucracy, and industrialization; immigration and national identity; race, class, gender, and economic inequality; politics, conformity, and urban anomie; and planning, development, private property, displacement, sprawl, environmental degradation, and suburbanization.

This course encourages creative thinking through hands-on experience via building, observing and manipulating micro-and nano-scale structures. Students learn about underlying science and engineering principles and possible applications.

This course examines the problem of mass violence and oppression in the contemporary world, and the concept of human rights as a defense against such abuse. It explores questions of cultural relativism, race, gender and ethnicity. It examines case studies from war crimes tribunals, truth commissions, anti-terrorist policies and other judicial attempts to redress state-sponsored wrongs. It also considers whether the human rights framework effectively promotes the rule of law in modern societies. Students debate moral positions and address ideas of moral relativism.

This course surveys the development of popular music in the United States and in a cross-cultural milieu relative to the history and sociology of the last two hundred years. It examines the ethnic mixture that characterizes modern music, how it reflects many rich traditions and styles, and provides a background for understanding the musical vocabulary of current popular music styles.

Offered during MIT's Independent Activites Period (IAP), this short course covers the poker concepts, math concepts, and general concepts needed to play the game of Texas Hold'em on a professional level.

IAP is a special 4-week term in January that provides members of the MIT community including students, faculty, staff, and alums with an opportunity to organize, sponsor and participate in a wide variety of activities and topics that are often outside of the regular MIT curriculum.

Faculty Advisor: Paul Mende

This course addresses the place of contemporary queer identities in French discourse and discusses the new generation of queer authors and their principal concerns. Class discussions and readings will introduce students to the main classical references of queer subcultures, from Proust and Vivien to Hocquenghem and Wittig. Throughout the course, students will examines current debates on post-colonial and globalized queer identities through essays, songs, movies, and novels. Authors covered include Didier Eribon, Anne Garréta, Abdellah Taïa, Anne Scott, and Nina Bouraoui. This class is taught in French.

This course provides a selective overview of electoral politics in the United States, with an emphasis on presidential and congressional elections. It examines the macro-level determinants of electoral outcomes as well as the political behavior of individual Americans. Each week covers a different topic, with readings designed to highlight controversies or debates in the political science literature.

This course covers issues in contemporary French society as expressed through movies made in the 2000s. Topics include France's national self-image, the women's movement, sexuality and gender, family life and class structure, post-colonialism and immigration, and American cultural imperialism. Films by Lelouch, Audiard, Doillon, Denis, Klapisch, Resnais, Rouan, Balasko, Collard, Dridi, Kassovitz, and others. Readings from French periodicals. Films shown with English subtitles. Taught in French.

This course introduces undergraduates to the basic theory, institutional architecture, and practice of international development. We take an applied, interdisciplinary approach to some of the "big questions" in our field. This course will unpack these questions by providing an overview of existing knowledge and best practices in the field. The goal of this class is to go beyond traditional dichotomies and narrow definitions of progress, well-being, and culture. Instead, we will invite students to develop a more nuanced understanding of international development by offering an innovative set of tools and content flexibility.

Does it matter in education whether or not you've got a Y chromosome? You bet it does. In this discussion-based seminar, we will explore why males vastly outrank females in math and science and career advancements (particularly in academia), and why girls get better grades and go to college more often than boys. Do the sexes have different learning styles? Are women denied advanced opportunities in academia and the workforce? How do family life and family decisions affect careers for both men and women?

This course focuses on feedback control mechanisms that living organisms implement at the molecular level to execute their functions, with emphasis on techniques to design novel systems with prescribed behaviors. Students will learn how biological functions can be understood and designed using notions from feedback control.

This course will explore food in modern American history as a story of industrialization and globalization. Lectures, readings, and discussions will emphasize the historical dimensions of—and debates about—slave plantations and factory farm labor; industrial processing and technologies of food preservation; the political economy and ecology of global commodity chains; the vagaries of nutritional science; food restrictions and reform movements; food surpluses and famines; cooking traditions and innovations; the emergence of restaurants, supermarkets, fast food, and slow food. The core concern of the course will be to understand the increasingly pervasive influence of the American model of food production and consumption patterns.

This course develops and applies principles of game theory relevant to managers' strategic decisions. Topics include how to reason about strategies and opponents; strategic commitment, reputation, and "irrational" actions; brinkmanship and negotiation; auctions; and the design of markets and contests. Applications to a variety of business decisions that arise in different industries, both within and outside the firm.