The course will focus primarily on contemporary discourses concerning gender inequality. Most of the readings assigned will be recent articles published in U.S. and British media capturing the latest thinking and research on gender inequality in the workplace. The class will be highly interactive combining case studies, videos, debates, guest speakers, and in-class simulations.

This course will provide students with an analytic framework to understand the roles that gender, race, and class play in defining and determining access to leadership and power in the U.S., especially in the context of the workplace. We will explore women and men in leadership positions within the corporate, political and non-profit sectors, with attention to the roles of women of color and immigrant women within this context. We will also look at specific policies such as affirmative action, parental leave, child-care policy, and working-time policies and the role they play–or could play–in achieving parity. We will further investigate ways in which these policies address gender, racial, and class inequities, and think critically about mechanisms for change. The course will be highly interactive, and will combine texts, theater, videos and visual arts.

After decades of efforts to promote development, why is there so much poverty in the world? What are some of the root causes of inequality world-wide and why do poverty, economic transformations and development policies often have different consequences for women and men? This course explores these issues while also examining the history of development itself, its underlying assumptions, and its range of supporters and critics. It considers the various meanings given to development by women and men, primarily as residents of particular regions, but also as aid workers, policy makers and government officials. In considering how development projects and policies are experienced in daily life in urban and rural areas in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Melanesia, this course asks what are the underlying political, economic, social, and gender dynamics that make “development” an ongoing problem world-wide.

What can we learn about science and technology–and what can we do with that knowledge? Who are “we” in these questions?–whose knowledge and expertise gets made into public policy, new medicines, topics of cultural and political discourse, science education, and so on? How can expertise and lay knowledge about science and technology be reconciled in a democratic society? How can we make sense of the interactions of living and non-living, humans and non-humans, individual and collectivities in the production of scientific knowledge and technologies?
The course takes these questions as entry points into an ever-growing body of work to which feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts and activists have made significant contributions. The course also takes these questions as an invitation to practice challenging the barriers of expertise, gender, race, class, and place that restrict wider access to and understanding of the production of scientific knowledge and technologies. In that spirit, students participate in an innovative, problem-based learning (PBL) approach that allows them to shape their own directions of inquiry and develop their skills as investigators and prospective teachers. At the same time the PBL cases engage students’ critical faculties as they learn about existing analyses of gender, race, and the complexities of science and technology, guided by individualized bibliographies co-constructed with the instructors and by the projects of the other students. Students from all fields and levels of preparation are encouraged to join the course.

This course explores how gender shaped the historical experiences and cultural productions in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. The North American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a fascinating case study of the shifting meanings of gender, race, citizenship, and power in border societies. As the site of migration, settlement, and displacement, it spawned contests over land, labor disputes, inter-ethnic conflicts and peaceful relations, and many kinds of cultural productions.
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.

This course seeks to examine how people experience gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - and sexuality in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. We will explore how gender and sexuality relate to other categories of social identity and difference, such as race and ethnicity, economic and social standing, urban or rural life, etc. One goal of the class is to learn how to critically assess media and other popular representations of gender roles and stereotypes. Another is to gain a greater sense of the diversity of human social practices and beliefs in the United States and around the world.

This course examines relationships between identity and participation in Japanese popular culture as a way of understanding the changing character of media, capitalism, fan communities, and culture. It emphasizes contemporary popular culture and theories of gender, sexuality, race, and the workings of power and value in global culture industries. Topics include manga (comic books), hip-hop and other popular music, anime and feature films, video games, contemporary literature, and online communication. Students present analyses and develop a final project based on a particular aspect of gender and popular culture.

This course explores stereotypes associated with Asian women in colonial, nationalist, state-authoritarian, and global/diasporic narratives about gender and power. Students will read ethnography, cultural studies, and history, and view films to examine the politics and circumstances that create and perpetuate the representation of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, despotic tyrants, desexualized servants, and docile subordinates. Students are introduced to the debates about Orientalism, gender, and power.

This course considers a wide range of issues related to the contemporary and historical use of technology, the development of new technologies, and the cultural representation of technology, including the role women have played in the development of technology and the effect of technological change on the roles of women and ideas of gender. It discusses the social implications of technology and its understanding and deployment in different cultural contexts. It investigates the relationships between technology and identity categories, such as gender, race, class, and sexuality, and examines how technology offers possibilities for new social relations and how to evaluate them.

This subject explores the legal history of the United States as a gendered system. It examines how women have shaped the meanings of American citizenship through pursuit of political rights such as suffrage, jury duty, and military service, how those political struggles have varied for across race, religion, and class, as well as how the legal system has shaped gender relations for both women and men through regulation of such issues as marriage, divorce, work, reproduction, and the family. The course readings will draw from primary and secondary materials in American history, as well as some court cases. However, the focus of the class is on the broader relationship between law and society, and no technical legal knowledge is required or assumed.

This course uses theories of gender to explore sociopolitical, ethical and theological perspectives on immigration policy, with a focus on the U.S. The course begins with an overview of global developments in the feminization of migration and ethical and policy dilemmas that are specific to the current era.

This course focuses on contributions of biochemistry toward an understanding of the structure and functioning of organisms, tissues, and cells. Topics include:

Chemistry and functions of constituents of cells and tissues and the chemical and physical-chemical basis for the structures of nucleic acids, proteins, and carbohydrates.
Basic enzymology and biochemical reaction mechanisms involved in macromolecular synthesis and degradation, signaling, transport, and movement.
General metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and nitrogen-containing materials such as amino acids, proteins, and related compounds.

NOTE: The first half of this course, taught by Prof. Yaffe, is available on the MITx platform as 7.05x Biochemistry: Biomolecules, Methods, and Mechanisms. This OCW website provides content primarily from the second half with Prof. Vander Heiden, which focuses on metabolism.

This course examines diagnostic studies of the Earth’s atmosphere and discusses their implications for the theory of the structure and general circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. It includes some discussion of the validation and use of general circulation models as atmospheric analogs.

8.962 is MIT’s graduate course in general relativity, which covers the basic principles of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, differential geometry, experimental tests of general relativity, black holes, and cosmology.

This course provides concepts and frameworks for understanding the potential impact of information technology (IT) on business strategy and performance. We will examine how some firms make IT a strategic asset while other firms struggle to realize value from IT investments. The course focuses on the implications of increased digitization for defining business strategies and operating models, and explores the roles of both general managers and IT executives in using IT to achieve operational excellence and business agility. Topics include business operating models, IT investment and prioritization, business strategy and IT alignment, the design and governance of digitized processes, and the role of the IT unit. Draws heavily on research and case studies from MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research. Restricted to graduate students.

The emergence of transformer architectures in 2017 triggered a breakthrough in machine learning that today lets anyone create computer-generated essays, stories, pictures, music, videos, and programs from high-level prompts in natural language, all without the need to code. That has stimulated fervent discussion among educators about the implications of generative AI systems for curricula and teaching methods across a broad range of subjects. It has also raised questions of how to understand both these systems and the at times overstated claims made for them. This class will introduce the foundations of generative AI technology, and participants will explore new opportunities it enables for K–12 education. It will also describe and explore how an analytical frame of mind can help make clear the core issues underlying both the successes and failures of these systems. Much of the work will be project-based, involving implementing innovative teaching and learning tools and testing these with K–12 students and teachers.

This course deals with the specific functions of neurons, the interactions of neurons in development, and the organization of neuronal ensembles to produce behavior. Topics covered include the analysis of mutations, and molecular analysis of the genes required for nervous system function. In particular, this course focuses on research work done with nematodes, fruit flies, mice, and humans.

This course discusses the principles of genetics with application to the study of biological function at the level of molecules, cells, and multicellular organisms, including humans. The topics include: structure and function of genes, chromosomes and genomes, biological variation resulting from recombination, mutation, and selection, population genetics, use of genetic methods to analyze protein function, gene regulation and inherited disease.

This course reviews the key genomic technologies and computational approaches that are driving advances in prognostics, diagnostics, and treatment. Throughout the semester, emphasis will return to issues surrounding the context of genomics in medicine including: what does a physician need to know? what sorts of questions will s/he likely encounter from patients? how should s/he respond? Lecturers will guide the student through real world patient-doctor interactions. Outcome considerations and socioeconomic implications of personalized medicine are also discussed. The first part of the course introduces key basic concepts of molecular biology, computational biology, and genomics. Continuing in the informatics applications portion of the course, lecturers begin each lecture block with a scenario, in order to set the stage and engage the student by showing: why is this important to know? how will the information presented be brought to bear on medical practice? The final section presents the ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding genomic medicine. A vision of how genomic medicine relates to preventative care and public health is presented in a discussion forum with the students where the following questions are explored: what is your level of preparedness now? what challenges must be met by the healthcare industry to get to where it needs to be?

Lecturers
Dr. Atul J. Butte
Dr. Steven A. Greenberg
Dr. Alvin Thong-Juak Kho
Dr. Peter Park
Dr. Marco F. Ramoni
Dr. Alberto A. Riva
Dr. Zoltan Szallasi
Dr. Jeffrey Mark Drazen
Dr. Todd Golub
Dr. Joel Hirschhorn
Dr. Greg Tucker-Kellogg
Dr. Scott Weiss

This course will focus on understanding aspects of modern technology displaying exponential growth curves and the impact on global quality of life through a weekly updated class project integrating knowledge and providing practical tools for political and business decision-making concerning new aspects of bioengineering, personalized medicine, genetically modified organisms, and stem cells. Interplays of economic, ethical, ecological, and biophysical modeling will be explored through multi-disciplinary teams of students, and individual brief reports.