This course is a study of major French literary genres and an introduction to methods of literary analysis. This semester, students will serve on the jury for the Goncourt Prize USA. “Le Goncourt” is the most prestigious literary prize in France. Students will study and rank books on the Goncourt shortlist. They will elect a representative to present their selection at the Villa Albertine in New York and choose the winner along with students from Princeton, Duke, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, the other students will prepare a press article to present their experience as a jury! 
Special attention is devoted to the improvement of French language skills. The course is taught in French.
About the instructor: Bruno Perreau is the Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies at MIT and Director of MIT’s Center of Excellence in French Studies. He is also an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University.
Perreau recently published The Politics of Adoption: Gender and the Making of French Citizenship (MIT Press, 2014), Queer Theory: The French Response (Stanford University Press, 2016), Les Défis de la République (ed. with Joan W. Scott, Presses de Sciences Po, 2017), Qui a peur de la théorie queer ? (Presses de Sciences Po, 2018), and Sphères d’injustice. Pour un universalisme minoritaire (La Découverte, 2023).

This is a undergraduate course. It will cover normed spaces, completeness, functionals, Hahn-Banach theorem, duality, operators; Lebesgue measure, measurable functions, integrability, completeness of L-p spaces; Hilbert space; compact, Hilbert-Schmidt and trace class operators; as well as spectral theorem.

Functional analysis helps us study and solve both linear and nonlinear problems posed on a normed space that is no longer finite-dimensional, a situation that arises very naturally in many concrete problems. Topics include normed spaces, completeness, functionals, the Hahn-Banach Theorem, duality, operators; Lebesgue measure, measurable functions, integrability, completeness of Lᵖ spaces; Hilbert spaces; compact and self-adjoint operators; and the Spectral Theorem.

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of the process of designing games and playful experiences. Students are familiarized with methods, concepts, techniques, and literature used in the design of games. The strategy is process-oriented, focusing on aspects such as: Rapid prototyping, play testing, and design iteration using a player-centered approach.

Geology is the core discipline of the earth sciences and encompasses many different phenomena, including plate tectonics and mountain building, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the long-term evolution of Earth’s atmosphere, surface and life. Because of the ever-increasing demand for resources, the growing exposure to natural hazards, and the changing climate, geology is of considerable societal relevance. This course introduces students to the basics of geology. Through a combination of lectures, labs, and field observations, we will address topics ranging from mineral and rock identification to the origin of the continents, from geologic mapping to plate tectonics, and from erosion by rivers and glaciers to the history of life.

This class provides a space for medical students and MD/PhD students, as well as HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society) PhD students to discuss social and ethical issues in the biosciences and biotechnologies as they are being developed. Discussions are with course faculty and with leading figures in developing technologies such as George Daley or George Church in stem cell or genomics research, Bruce Walker or Pardis Sabeti in setting up laboratories in Africa, Paul Farmer and Partners in Health colleagues in building local support systems and first world quality care in Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda, and Amy Farber in building patient-centered therapeutic-outcome research for critical but “orphan” diseases. Goals include stimulating students to think about applying their learning in Boston to countries around the world, including using the experiences they have had in their home countries or research experience abroad. Goals also include a mix of patient-doctor care perspectives from medical anthropology, and moving upstream in the research chain to questions of how to move discoveries from basic research through the pipelines into clinical and bedside care.

This course is an introduction to the principal concepts and methods of heat transfer. The objectives of this integrated subject are to develop the fundamental principles and laws of heat transfer and to explore the implications of these principles for system behavior; to formulate the models necessary to study, analyze and design heat transfer systems through the application of these principles; to develop the problem-solving skills essential to good engineering practice of heat transfer in real-world applications.

As an introduction to the field of Housing, Community, and Economic Development (HCED), the course is structured to:

Advance student’s understanding of how public policy and private markets affect housing, economic development, the local economy, and neighborhood institutions;

Provide an overview of techniques for framing public and private interventions to meet housing and community development agendas, broadly defined, of inner city and low income neighborhoods;

Review and critique specific programs, policies and strategies that are (and have been) directed at local development and neighborhood regeneration issues;

Give students an opportunity to reflect on their personal sense of the “housing, community, and economic development” process and the various roles that planners play in implementing the elements of that agenda.

This course provides students with a critical introduction to: social and economic inequality in America; equitable development as a response framework for planners; social capital and community building as planning concepts; and the history, development, and current prospects of the fields of housing (with an emphasis on affordability and inclusion) and local economic development.

During this course, we will be exploring basic questions of architecture through several short design exercises. Working with many different media, students will discover the interrelationship of architecture and its related disciplines, such as structures, sustainability, architectural history and the visual arts. Each problem will focus on one of these disciplines and one exploration and presentation technique.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) represent a major transition in transportation on many dimensions. This course considers ITS as a lens through which one can view many transportation and societal issues. ITS is an international program intended to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of surface transportation systems through advanced technologies in information systems, communications, and sensors. In the United States, ITS represents the major post-Interstate-era program for advancing surface transportation in highways and public transportation, and is potentially comparable to the air traffic control system in impact. The readings for the class come primarily from the instructor’s own text: Sussman, Joseph. Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). New York, NY: Springer, 2005. ISBN: 0387232575.

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.

This introductory survey course is intended to develop an understanding of key issues and dilemmas of planning in non-Western countries. The issues covered by the course include state intervention, governance, law and institutions in development, privatization, participatory planning, decentralization, poverty, urban-rural linkages, corruption and civil service reform, trade and outsourcing and labor standards, post-conflict development and the role of aid in development.

This course provides an introduction to the causes of international conflict and cooperation. Topics include war initiation, crisis bargaining, international terrorism, nuclear strategy, interstate economic relations, economic growth, international law, human rights, and environmental politics.

Interdisciplinary introduction to contemporary Latin America, drawing on films, literature, popular press accounts, and scholarly research. Topics include economic development, ethnic and racial identity, religion, revolution, democracy, transitional justice, and the rule of law. Examples draw on a range of countries in the region, especially Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. Includes a heavy oral participation component, with regular breakout groups, formal class presentations on pressing social issues (such as criminal justice and land tenure), and a structured class debate.

This course is designed as an introduction to Latin American politics and society for undergraduates at MIT. No background on the region is required. Overall workload (reading, writing, class participation, and examinations) is similar to that of other HASS-D courses. Many of the themes raised here are covered in greater detail in other courses: 21G.020J (New World Literature), 21G.716 (Introduction to Contemporary Hispanic Literature), 21G.730 (Twentieth and Twentyfirst-Century Spanish American Literaturere), 21G.735 (Advanced Topics in Hispanic Literature and Film), 21A.220 (The Conquest of America), 21H.802 (Modern Latin America), 3.982 (The Ancient Andean World), 3.983 (Ancient Mesoamerican Civilization), 17.507 (Democratization and Democratic Collapse), and 17.554 (Political Economy of Latin America).F

This course covers the fundamental principles, practices and tools of Lean Six Sigma methods that underlay modern organizational productivity approaches applied in aerospace, automotive, health care, and other sectors. It includes lectures, active learning exercises, a plant tour, talks by industry practitioners, and videos. One third of the course is devoted to a physical simulation of an aircraft manufacturing enterprise or a clinic to illustrate the power of Lean Six Sigma methods.
The 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.

This course is devoted to the theory of Lie Groups with emphasis on its connections with Differential Geometry. The text for this class is Differential Geometry, Lie Groups and Symmetric Spaces by Sigurdur Helgason (American Mathematical Society, 2001).
Much of the course material is based on Chapter I (first half) and Chapter II of the text. The text however develops basic Riemannian Geometry, Complex Manifolds, as well as a detailed theory of Semisimple Lie Groups and Symmetric Spaces.

This class provides some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Throughout the course, we examine a number of ways in which human language is a complex but law-governed mental system. Much of the class is devoted to studying some core aspects of this system in detail; we also spend individual classes discussing a number of other issues, including how language is acquired, how languages change over time, language endangerment, and others.

This course studies what is language and what does knowledge of a language consist of. It asks how do children learn languages and is language unique to humans; why are there many languages; how do languages change; is any language or dialect superior to another; and how are speech and writing related. Context for these and similar questions is provided by basic examination of internal organization of sentences, words, and sound systems. No prior training in linguistics is assumed.