Earl Ubell is a pioneer among science and health writers in America. After a long, distinguished career at The New York Herald Tribune from 1943 to 1966, he went on to work at both CBS and NBC News. Prominent in the emerging scientific writing community in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a recipient of the Lasker Medical Journalism Award 1957. Milton Stanley Livingston was a leading physicist in the field of magnetic resonance accelerators. Working first with professor Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Livingston was instrumental in the development of the Berkeley cyclotron. Moving to Cornell in 1938, Livingston was part of the core group who established nuclear physics as a field of study. Choosing to stay with the Cornell cyclotron rather than follow colleagues onto the Manhattan Project, Livingston was involved in the production of radioisotopes for medical purposes. At the time of this interview, Livingston was director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a joint project of Harvard University and MIT.In this program segment Louis Lyons quizzes Earl Ubell about the lack of public knowledge and the perception of the nuclear bomb, while pressing Professor Livingston to explain exactly what nuclear fallout is, and the danger it presents.

At age twenty-seven, physicist Philip Morrison joined the Manhattan Project, the code name given to the U.S. government's covert effort at Los Alamos to develop the first nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was also the most expensive single program ever financed by public funds. In this video segment, Morrison describes the charismatic leadership of his mentor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the urgency of their mission to manufacture a weapon 'which if we didn't make first would lead to the loss of the war." In the interview Morrison conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Dawn,' he describes the remote, inaccessible setting of the laboratory that operated in extreme secrecy. It was this physical isolation, he maintains, that allowed scientists extraordinary freedom to exchange ideas with fellow physicists. Morrison also reflects on his wartime fears. Germany had many of the greatest minds in physics and engineering, which created tremendous anxiety among Allied scientists that it would win the atomic race and the war, and Morrison recalls the elaborate schemes he devised to determine that country's atomic progress. At the time that he was helping assemble the world's first atomic bomb, Morrison believed that nuclear weapons 'could be made part of the construction of the peace.' A month after the war, he toured Hiroshima, and for several years thereafter he testified, became a public spokesman, and lobbied for international nuclear cooperation. After leaving Los Alamos, Morrison returned to academia. For the rest of his life he was a forceful voice against nuclear weapons.

The "Into the Book" web site is designed to help elementary students practice eight reading comprehension strategies through playful interactive activities. The site focuses on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. "Behind the Lesson," the teacher area of the site, provides information, lesson plans and other resources for teachers.

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 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 course is an introductory survey of the genres and themes of the humanities. The material focuses on philosophy, religion, language, and the arts. As themes, the ideas of freedom, love, happiness, death, nature, and myth are be explored. Typically, a study of humanities looks at western philosophers, maybe a few of the world religions, a history of western music and western visual arts. This textbook begins to break down the barriers of limiting ourselves to learning primarily about western humanities. The question “What makes us human?” is answered by looking at many traditions.

Philosophy is the best training for living. Your thoughts, your convictions, and your values all exist within a framework that has developed over time. In order to understand that framework and your place in it, we will engage in thinking about the subjects and issues presented in this class through reading, discussion, and reflection. How you live and how you prepare for death, your political views, and your religious views are all determined by your thoughts and words. Through the study of philosophy, if you take it seriously, you will come to a better understanding of yourself and this will allow you to live authentically. The subject matter of philosophy is sometimes difficult but you will find that engaging in these ways will encourage you to think more deeply and sincerely about the material. This text was remixed from a number of sources for Introduction to Philosophy with the intent to offer readers a more comprehensive and diverse selection of readings. The text is divided thematically using (mostly) the expected branches of philosophy including logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. Within each section, readings come from a broad range of writers with the intent to include thinkers not usually included in Introductory texts like women and BIPOC. 

An Introduction to Religion by Mark Knockemus is a comprehensive and accessible resource designed to explore the fundamental concepts, historical developments, and cultural significance of religion. This open educational textbook delves into the meaning of religion, the evolution of religious thought, key figures in religious history, and the intersection of religion with society, ethics, and personal experience. It presents religion not merely as a set of beliefs but as a dynamic and complex phenomenon that has shaped human civilizations. With chapters on topics such as scripture, ritual, morality, and religious experience, the textbook offers a broad and inclusive overview of the world’s major faith traditions and philosophical perspectives. This resource aims to facilitate critical thinking and a deeper understanding of how religion influences individual lives and societies at large, using a phenomenological approach that encourages students to observe without judgment.

The purpose of this course is to explore the foundations of the Humanities and to increase our understanding of the relationship between history and philosophy and how these relate to the issues concerning the human condition. During this course we will learn about some of the many traditions in the humanities, including the foundations of artistic expression. One of my main goals for this course is to demonstrate that every aspect of the humanities (art, history, philosophy, science, etc.) are all inherently related, and that we cannot accurately study one component of society or humanity without having a working understanding of the related components.

This course explores the historical origins of the Japanese warrior class as well as its reinvention throughout the archipelago’s history, with a special focus on the pre-modern era (200–1600 CE). It highlights key historical contexts including the rise of the imperial court, interactions with the broader world, and the establishment of a warrior-dominated state. It also considers the modern imaginations and uses of the warrior figure.
Note: This course is taught in English with a project that requires research in Japanese.

This is an experimental version of 21G.505, which offers a combination of in-person and synchronous remote instruction. It aims to achieve simultaneous progression of four skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It immerses students in various aspects of Japanese culture through authentic everyday Japanese media.

This is an experimental version of 21G.506, which offers a combination of in-person and synchronous remote instruction. It aims to achieve simultaneous progression of four skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It immerses students in various aspects of Japanese culture through authentic everyday Japanese media.

Learning hiragana and katakana is an important part of reading and speaking Japanese. The following pages contain:
Hiragana - stroke order videos, pronunciation, and vocabulary for each character; reading and listening audio exercises; handouts on how to construct words and sentences; interactive quizzes testing character recognition; and printable worksheets to practice writing characters.
Katakana - pronunciation and vocabulary for each character; reading and listening audio exercises; interactive quizzes testing character and vocabulary recognition; and printable worksheets to practice writing characters.
These materials were developed as part of the Japanese curriculum at MIT for students of all levels to learn and review. Students and instructors are encouraged to incorporate them directly or as supplements in their study of Japanese.
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This resource aims to enhance students’ learning of kanji by providing a series of video lectures that cover the kanji characters in Tobira lessons 1–5. The video lectures not only teach how to write kanji but also provide stories behind the kanji characters.

This course is an introduction to language acquisition, a subfield of linguistics whose goal is to understand how humans acquire the ability to speak and understand a language—a highly complex task that is routinely and seemingly effortlessly accomplished by competent (native) speakers of the language in the first few years of life and without explicit instruction. By contrast, acquiring a second language after the critical period takes a long time, is effortful, usually requires explicit instruction and correction, and often fails to reach a level of competency that native speakers of the language have.
Focusing on first language acquisition—the process by which native speakers of a language acquire the ability to speak and understand that language—this course covers selected topics in core areas of linguistic knowledge, including the lexicon (words), sentence structure, meaning composition, and pragmatics, from a developmental perspective.

Help Spanish-speaking English-language learners unlock the mysteries of their new language by using a bilingual book to recognize unfamiliar words and construct meaning from the text.

This course examines theories and principles that underlie the concept of free speech in the United States, the historical context in which the values of free speech and toleration emerged, and the philosophical arguments that were and are made for and against them. Students analyze a variety of contexts and communicative practices, including new media technologies, to debate how “speech” can be described and when it should be appropriately regulated. The course also considers current disputes over free speech on college campuses.

The interactive explores the ways that poets choose line breaks in their writing. After viewing the demonstration, students are invited to experiment with line breaks themselves.

This seminar explored the idea that the study of linguistics can be a means to develop young people’s understanding of scientific inquiry as well as their understanding of the nature of language. The challenge of this seminar was to create pedagogical materials and methods that will motivate learners of all ages to be inquisitive about their native language and about language in general. Seminar participants worked with one another and in partnership with K–12 teachers to accomplish this goal.

How does one writer use another writer’s work? Does it matter if one author has been dead 300 years? What difference does it make if she’s a groundbreaking twentieth-century feminist and the writer she values has come to epitomize the English literary tradition? How can a novelist borrow from plays and poems? By reading Virginia Woolf’s major novels and essays in juxtaposition with some of the Shakespeare plays that (depending on one’s interpretation) haunt, enrich, and/or shape her writing, we will try to answer these questions and raise others. Readings in literary criticism, women’s studies, and other literary texts will complement our focus on the relationship–across time, media, and gender–between Shakespeare and Woolf. As a seminar, we will work to become more astute readers of literature within its historical, artistic, and political contexts, and consider how literature both reflects and contributes to these societal frameworks. Central texts will include Shakespeare’s Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale, and Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Between the Acts. This subject is an advanced seminar in both the Literature and the Women’s Studies Program.