This class is an introduction to writing about science—including nature, medicine and …
This class is an introduction to writing about science—including nature, medicine and technology—for general readers. In our reading and writing we explore the craft of making scientific concepts, and the work of scientists, accessible to the public through articles and essays.
Environmentalists have traditionally relied upon the power of their prose to transform …
Environmentalists have traditionally relied upon the power of their prose to transform the thoughts and behavior of their contemporaries. In 1963, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist with a penchant for writing, described a world without wildlife in Silent Spring and altered the way Americans understood their impact on the landscape. Like other writers we will encounter this semester, Carson realized that she could alter the perceptions of her contemporaries only if she was able to transmit her knowledge in engaging and accessible language. We will do our best to follow in her footsteps.
This class addresses the craft of writing about science in and for …
This class addresses the craft of writing about science in and for contemporary society, both its pleasures and its challenges. We will read essays, reportage, op-eds, and web-based articles on a variety of topics concerning science, technology, medicine and nature. Readings by contemporary writers such as Elizabeth Kolbert, Atul Gawande, and Michael Pollan will serve as examples of the craft and sources of ideas for our own writing.
This seminar is intended to help students in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic …
This seminar is intended to help students in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program develop a broader perspective on their thesis research by considering some aspects of science in the large. The first part of the course challenges students to develop a thoughtful view towards major questions in science that can be incorporated in their own research process, and that will help them articulate research findings. The second part of the course emphasizes science as a social process and the important roles of written and oral communication. This course is offered through The MIT/WHOI Joint Program. The MIT/WHOI Joint Program is one of the premier marine science graduate programs in the world. It draws on the complementary strengths and approaches of two great institutions: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Using film and related popular media as our texts, this course will …
Using film and related popular media as our texts, this course will examine how screen “embodiments” of the woman visualize ideologies of discipline and desire in a culture in which her body has become a representation of the ability to control appetites, size and shape while investing personal and social capital in its rehabilitation as a project of endless reconstruction, redesign and maintenance. Throughout the course we will draw from feminist film theory, clinical psychology, as well as women’s, gender, and cultural studies, to better understand how filmic representations of the woman’s body first emerge from contemporary psychosocial contexts and then in turn shape the body ideals and internalizations, as well as the behavioral practices of the film spectator. The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS) This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.
Screening Shakespeare is an open-access web-based textbook written and designed by Alexa …
Screening Shakespeare is an open-access web-based textbook written and designed by Alexa Alice Joubin based on her original research. It contains openly-licensed learning modules that introduce students to key concepts of film studies, such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound and music, and film theory within the context of film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays.
This class focuses on reading a script theatrically with a view to …
This class focuses on reading a script theatrically with a view to mounting a coherent production. Through careful, intensive reading of a variety of plays from different periods and different aesthetics, a pattern emerges for discerning what options exist for interpretating a script. Students discuss the consequences of those options for production.
This course focuses on reading a script theatrically with a view to …
This course focuses on reading a script theatrically with a view to mounting a coherent production. Through careful, intensive reading of a variety of plays from different periods and different aesthetics, a pattern emerges for discerning what options exist for interpretating a script. The Fall 2005 version of this course contains alternate readings and assignments sections.
Ben goes to the beach and watches a seal being born. Over …
Ben goes to the beach and watches a seal being born. Over the next few seasons, Ben develops a special bond with this seal, a bond that Ben knows will last the rest of his life.
"See, Think, Wonder" is a "Visible Thinking Routine" developed by Project Zero …
"See, Think, Wonder" is a "Visible Thinking Routine" developed by Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This activity invites students to "make their thinking visible" by responding to a selected poem.
This course explores the city through writing—listening to the voices of poets, …
This course explores the city through writing—listening to the voices of poets, short story writers, novelists, journalists, critics, historians, ethnographers, urbanists, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists. Through extensive reading that informs their work on a longform story, students will join the chorus of storytellers to richly represent the variegated city. Our focus is on three nonfiction forms—essay, memoir, literary narrative—with special emphasis on the writer-editor relationship and on revision as a heuristic to better thinking.
Jonathan Swift's 1729 pamphlet "A Modest Proposal" is a model for satirizing …
Jonathan Swift's 1729 pamphlet "A Modest Proposal" is a model for satirizing social problems. In this lesson, students complete multiple readings of Swift's essay: a guided reading with the teacher, a collaborative reading with a peer, and an independent reading. The online Notetaker tool helps students restate key ideas from Swift's essay as they read and elaborate upon these ideas postreading. After independent reading, pairs of students develop a mock television newscast or editorial script, like those found on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report, including appropriate visual images in PowerPoint.
This work is a comparative study of select Aesop and Jean de …
This work is a comparative study of select Aesop and Jean de la Fontaine fables with introductions and questions for discussion. This text also includes color photos and illustrations.
A great poet of the Western landscape, Jeffers celebrated the heartbreaking beauty …
A great poet of the Western landscape, Jeffers celebrated the heartbreaking beauty of existence and reminded humanity of its responsibility to the natural world. The Big Read Readers Guide deepens your exploration with biography, timelines, and historical information. We hope these educational materials allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American poet.
SI 615 - This is a special topics seminar focusing on the …
SI 615 - This is a special topics seminar focusing on the current state of Ňdigital librariesÓ broadly defined. The seminar is multi-disciplinary in focus and in method, covering the history of the idea, its manifestation as projects and programs in academic, non-profit, and research settings, and the suite of policy issues that influence their development and growth. The concept of the digital library will serve as an intellectual construct within which to explore the related concepts of scholarly communication, digital preservation, cyberinfrastructure, representation, and information technology standards. Given the seminar format, students will be expected to master a diverse literature, to participate actively in the discussion of issues, and to take steps, collectively and individually, to advance our understanding of future directions of digital libraries.
Three hundred and eighty years after his death, William Shakespeare remains the …
Three hundred and eighty years after his death, William Shakespeare remains the central author of the English-speaking world; he is the most quoted poet and the most regularly produced playwright — and now among the most popular screenwriters as well. Why is that, and who “is” he? Why do so many people think his writing is so great? What meanings did his plays have in his own time, and how do we read, speak, or listen to his words now? What should we watch for when viewing his plays in performance? Whose plays are we watching, anyway? We’ll consider these questions as we carefully examine a sampling of Shakespeare’s plays from a variety of critical perspectives.
Filmed Shakespeare began in 1899, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree performing the …
Filmed Shakespeare began in 1899, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree performing the death scene from King John for the camera. Sarah Bernhardt, who had played Hamlet a number of times in her long career, filmed the duel scene for the Paris Exposition of 1900. In the era of silent film (1895-1929) several hundred Shakespeare films were made in England, France Germany and the United States, Even without the spoken word, Shakespeare was popular in the new medium. The first half-century of sound included many of the most highly regarded Shakespeare films, among them – Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet and Henry V, Orson Welles’ Othello and Chimes at Midnight, Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Polanski’s Macbeth and Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. We are now in the midst of an extremely rich and varied period for Shakespeare on film which began with the release of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V in 1989 and includes such films as Richard Loncraine’s Richard III, Julie Taymor’s Titus, Zeffirelli and Almereyda’s Hamlet films, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and Shakespeare in Love. The phenomenon of filmed Shakespeare raises many questions for literary and media studies about adaptation, authorship, the status of “classic” texts and their variant forms, the role of Shakespeare in youth and popular culture, and the transition from manuscript, book and stage to the modern medium of film and its recent digitally inflected forms. Most of our work will involve individual and group analysis of the “film text” – that is, of specific sequences in the films, aided by videotape, DVD, the Shakespeare Electronic Archive, and some of the software tools for video annoatation developed by the MIT Shakespeare Project under the MIT-Microsoft iCampus Initiative. We will study the films as works of art in their own right, and try to understand the means – literary, dramatic, performative, cinematic – by which they engage audiences and create meaning. With Shakespeare film as example, we will discuss how stories cross time, culture and media, and reflect on the benefits as well as the limitations of such migration. The class will be conducted as a structured discussion, punctuated by student presentations and “mini-lectures” by the instructor. Students will introduce discussions, prepare clips and examples, and the major “written” work will take the form of presentations to the class and multimedia annotations as well as conventional short essays. The methodological bias of the class is close “reading” of both text and film. This is a class in which your insights will form a major part of the work and will be the basis of a large fraction of class discussion. You will need to read carefully, to watch and listen to the films carefully, and develop effective ways of conveying your ideas to the class.
This lesson is intended for students who are new to Shakespeare and …
This lesson is intended for students who are new to Shakespeare and his writing. In the lesson, students will read about sonnets, read and respond to specific Shakespearean sonnets, and explore the poetic elements - specifically meter and rhyme - of Shakespearean sonnets. This lesson was created by Tyler Barna as part of the 2020 NDE OER Workshop and was conceived from Maxx Stewart's lesson posted to OER Commons. It is designed for beginning Shakespeare students, typically in English Language Arts grades 8-10. It is expected that this lesson will take students 90 minutes to complete. All materials are linked digitally within the lesson. This lesson is written for students; "Student View" is the recommended output for this lesson.
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