Online courses directory (2511)

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.

This course runs parallel to 8.02, but assumes that students have some knowledge of vector calculus. The class introduces Maxwell's equations, in both differential and integral form, along with electrostatic and magnetic vector potential, and the properties of dielectrics and magnetic materials.

This class was taught by an undergraduate in the Experimental Study Group (ESG). Student instructors are paired with ESG faculty members, who advise and oversee the students' teaching efforts.

This course is a fast-paced introduction to the C and C++ programming languages, with an emphasis on good programming practices and how to be an effective programmer in these languages. Topics include object-oriented programming, memory management, advantages of C and C++, optimization, and others. Students are given weekly coding assignments and a final project to hone their skills. Recommended for programmers with some background and experience in other languages.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

From Abilify to Zyrtec, the world is full of interesting drugs. Such substances have cured diseases, started wars, and ended careers. This seminar will explain how drugs can elicit a range of medicinal and recreational effects. Planned topics include over-the-counter drugs and "dietary supplements," drugs of abuse, treatments for neurological disorders, psychiatric medications, and many more. Prior experience is neither expected nor required, but student participation is essential.

This is a discussion-based interactive seminar on the two major issues that affect Sub-Saharan Africa: HIV/AIDS and Poverty. AIDS and Poverty, seemingly different concepts, are more inter-related to each other in Africa than in any other continent. As MIT students, we feel it is important to engage ourselves in a dynamic discussion on the relation between the two - how to fight one and how to solve the other.

This pass/fail seminar should be a fun setting where we can all enjoy a love of good books together. Students will read approximately one novel every two weeks, and the class will discuss each novel in a relaxed and interactive setting, with attention to whatever themes and issues interest them most about each book. We will read a wide mixture of classic and contemporary novels written by women, including: Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; and Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Recurrent issues likely to be discussed include: gender, race, and class; romance, love, and marriage; depression and suicide; and conception, childbirth, and parenthood.

This seminar introduces, through studio projects, the basic principles regarding the use of color in the visual arts. Students explore a range of topics, including the historical uses of color in the arts, the interactions between colors, and the psychology of color.

Through the comparative study of different cultures, anthropology explores fundamental questions about what it means to be human. It seeks to understand how culture both shapes societies, from the smallest island in the South Pacific to the largest Asian metropolis, and affects the way institutions work, from scientific laboratories to Christian mega-churches. This course will provide a framework for analyzing diverse facets of human experience such as gender, ethnicity, language, politics, economics, and art.
 

This course discusses applications of electromagnetic and equivalent quantum mechanical principles to classical and modern devices. It covers energy conversion and power flow in both macroscopic and quantum-scale electrical and electromechanical systems, including electric motors and generators, electric circuit elements, quantum tunneling structures and instruments. It studies photons as waves and particles and their interaction with matter in optoelectronic devices, including solar cells, displays, and lasers.

The instructors would like to thank Scott Bradley, David Friend, Ta-Ming Shih, and Yasuhiro Shirasaki for helping to develop the course, and Kyle Hounsell, Ethan Koether, and Dmitri Megretski for their work preparing the lecture notes for OCW publication.

This course provides students with the opportunity to develop a map of contemporary architectural practice and discourse. The seminar examines six themes in terms of their recent history: city and global economy, urban plan and map of operations, program and performance, drawing and scripting, image and surface, and utopia and projection. Students will study buildings and read relevant texts in order to place recent architectural projects in disciplinary and cultural context.

This course introduces the core theory of modern financial economics and financial management, with a focus on capital markets and investments. Topics include functions of capital markets and financial intermediaries, asset valuation, fixed-income securities, common stocks, capital budgeting, diversification and portfolio selection, equilibrium pricing of risky assets, the theory of efficient markets, and an introduction to derivatives and options.

Asia in the Modern World: Images and Representations examines visual representations of Asia, interpreting them from both historical and modern contexts. This course is based around using the Visualizing Cultures website. Case studies focus on Japan and China from the mid-19^th to the mid-20^th centuries.

This course explores the evolution of poverty and economic security in the United States, within a global context. It examines the impact of recent economic restructuring and globalization, and reviews the current debate about the fate of the middle class, sources of increasing inequality, and approaches to advancing economic opportunity and security. In this class, students will study the topic of poverty and economic security through the lens of the lived experience of Americans: individuals, families, and households; exploring the history, geography, and forces shaping the likelihood of being poor in America.

This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, formulating new ways of asking questions and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study.

What makes research distinctively feminist lies in the complex connections between epistemologies, methodologies and research methods. This course explores how these connections are formed in the traditional disciplines and raise questions about why they are inadequate and/or problematic for feminist inquiry and what, specifically, are the feminist critiques of these intersections.

This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies at MIT.

This course provides a detailed overview of the chemical transformations that control the abundances of key trace species in the Earth's atmosphere. Emphasizes the effects of human activity on air quality and climate. Topics include photochemistry, kinetics, and thermodynamics important to the chemistry of the atmosphere; stratospheric ozone depletion; oxidation chemistry of the troposphere; photochemical smog; aerosol chemistry; and sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and other climate forcers.

This course is a workshop for students with some experience in writing essays, nonfiction prose. Our focus will be negotiating and representing identities grounded in gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, and other categories of identity, either our own or others', in prose that is expository, exploratory, investigative, persuasive, lyrical, or incantatory. We will read nonfiction prose works by a wide array of writers who have used language to negotiate and represent aspects of identity and the ways the different determinants of identity intersect, compete, and cooperate.

In this course we will read essays, novels, memoirs, and graphic texts, and view documentary and experimental films and videos which explore race from the standpoint of the multiracial. Examining the varied work of multiracial authors and filmmakers such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Kip Fulbeck, James McBride and others, we will focus not on how multiracial people are seen or imagined by the dominant culture, but instead on how they represent themselves. How do these authors approach issues of family, community, nation, language and history? What can their work tell us about the complex interconnections between race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship? Is there a relationship between their experiences of multiraciality and a willingness to experiment with form and genre? In addressing these and other questions, we will endeavor to think and write more critically and creatively about race as a social category and a lived experience.

Transmedia narratives exist across multiple storytelling platforms, using the advantages of each to enhance the experience of the audience. No matter which medium nor how many, the heart of any successful transmedia project is a good story. In this class we will spend time on the basics of solid storytelling in speculative fiction before we move on to how to translate those elements into various media. We will then explore how different presentations in different media can complement and enhance our storytelling. While we will read scholarly articles and discuss ideas about transmedia, this is primarily a class in making speculative fiction transmedia projects. We will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various mediums and consider how they complement each other, and how by using several different media we can give the audience a more complete, rewarding, and immersive experience.

William Shakespeare didn't go to college. If he time-traveled like Dr. Who, he would be stunned to find his words on a university syllabus. However, he would not be surprised at the way we will be using those words in this class, because the study of rhetoric was essential to all education in his day. At Oxford, William Gager argued that drama allowed undergraduates "to try their voices and confirm their memories, and to frame their speech and conform it to convenient action": in other words, drama was useful. Shakespeare's fellow playwright Thomas Heywood similarly recalled:

In the time of my residence in Cambridge, I have seen Tragedies, Comedies, Histories, Pastorals and Shows, publicly acted…: this is held necessary for the emboldening of their Junior scholars, to arm them with audacity, against they come to be employed in any public exercise, as in the reading of Dialectic, Rhetoric, Ethic, Mathematic, the Physic, or Metaphysic Lectures.

Such practice made a student able to "frame a sufficient argument to prove his questions, or defend any axioma, to distinguish of any Dilemma and be able to moderate in any Argumentation whatsoever" (Apology for Actors, 1612). In this class, we will use Shakespeare's own words to arm you "with audacity" and a similar ability to make logical, compelling arguments, in speech and in writing.

Shakespeare used his ears and eyes to learn the craft of telling stories to the public in the popular form of theater. He also published two long narrative poems, which he dedicated to an aristocrat, and wrote sonnets to share "among his private friends" (so wrote Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598). Varying his style to suit different audiences and occasions, and borrowing copiously from what he read, Shakespeare nevertheless found a voice all his own–so much so that his words are now, as his fellow playwright Ben Jonson foretold, "not of an age, but for all time." Reading, listening, analyzing, appreciating, criticizing, remembering: we will engage with these words in many ways, and will see how words can become ideas, habits of thought, indicators of emotion, and a means to transform the world.