En este curso el estudiante perfeccionará su comunicación oral y escrita mediante el estudio y la discusión de temas relacionados al impacto social y cultural de la ciencia y la tecnología en ciertas sociedades hispanas. Algunos de los temas a tratar son los efectos de los cambios tecnológicos en la estructura familiar y comunitaria, en las relaciones entre los sexos, en la identidad personal y cultural, en el mundo natural y en los sistemas de valores, la religión, la educación y el trabajo. También se examinan y discuten diversas actitudes hacia la innovación tecnológica y científica así como las ramificaciones éticas de las decisiones tecnológicas.

This class examines how anthropology and speculative fiction (SF) each explore ideas about culture and society, technology, morality, and life in "other" worlds. We investigate this convergence of interest through analysis of SF in print, film, and other media. Concepts include traditional and contemporary anthropological topics, including first contact; gift exchange; gender, marriage, and kinship; law, morality, and cultural relativism; religion; race and embodiment; politics, violence, and war; medicine, healing, and consciousness; technology and environment. Thematic questions addressed in the class include: what is an alien? What is "the human"? Could SF be possible without anthropology?

The Art of the Probable" addresses the history of scientific ideas, in particular the emergence and development of mathematical probability. But it is neither meant to be a history of the exact sciences per se nor an annex to, say, the Course 6 curriculum in probability and statistics. Rather, our objective is to focus on the formal, thematic, and rhetorical features that imaginative literature shares with texts in the history of probability. These shared issues include (but are not limited to): the attempt to quantify or otherwise explain the presence of chance, risk, and contingency in everyday life; the deduction of causes for phenomena that are knowable only in their effects; and, above all, the question of what it means to think and act rationally in an uncertain world. Our course therefore aims to broaden students’ appreciation for and understanding of how literature interacts with--both reflecting upon and contributing to--the scientific understanding of the world. We are just as centrally committed to encouraging students to regard imaginative literature as a unique contribution to knowledge in its own right, and to see literary works of art as objects that demand and richly repay close critical analysis. It is our hope that the course will serve students well if they elect to pursue further work in Literature or other discipline in SHASS, and also enrich or complement their understanding of probability and statistics in other scientific and engineering subjects they elect to take.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Anthropology of Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion
Chapter 2: Cultural Relativism and Cannibalism
Chapter 3: Theoretical Approaches Toward The Study Of Religion
Chapter 4: Postmodern Thought
Chapter 5: Witchcraft
Chapter 6: Rituals
Chapter 7: Myths
Chapter 8: Comparative Religion
Chapter 9: Religion and Syncretism
Chapter 10: Altered States of Consciousness
Chapter 11: Religious Specialists

This course serves as an introduction to the Buddhist artistic traditions of South, Southeast, and East Asia, as well as the Himalayas. It starts with the core tenets of Buddhism, Buddhist iconography, and early Buddhist art and architecture in India, then progresses to Southeast Asia. The course then focuses on Vajrayana Buddhism and its artistic traditions in the Himalayas, then examines Mahayana Buddhist art and architecture in China, Korea and Japan. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: identify the core beliefs of Buddhism, major Buddhist schools, and basic Buddhist iconography; identify major works of Buddhist art and Buddhist monuments from South, Southeast, and East Asia, as well as the Himalayas; identify the major developments in Buddhist doctrine and Buddhist art and architecture, as well as the relationship between the two as the religion spread throughout Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Himalayas. (Art History 406)

This course examines the causes of war, with a focus on practical measures to prevent and control war. Topics include causes and consequences of misperception by nations; military strategy and policy as cause of war; religion and war; U.S. foreign policy as a cause of war and peace; and the likelihood and possible nature of great wars in the future.

The historical cases covered include World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Seven Years' War, the Arab-Israel conflict, other recent Mideast wars, and the Peloponnesian War.

This course will introduce the student to the history of Latin and South America from the year in which European explorers first discovered and began to colonize the region to the early 19th century, when many Latin and South American colonies declared their independence from European rule. The student will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place throughout Latin and South America during this 400-year period. By the end of the course, the student will understand how the interaction between native peoples and European settlers created diverse and complex colonial societies throughout Latin and South America, and why the colonies of the region eventually declared their independence from European political control. Upon successful completion of this course, student will be able to: Think critically about the history of Latin and South America from the pre-colonial period though the beginning of the 19th century; Compare and contrast the political, economic, and social practices of the peoples of Iberia, Africa, and the Americas in the pre-colonial period; Analyze the political, social, and military interactions between Iberian explorers and conquerors and the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries; Identify how Spanish colonists settled Latin and South America in the 16th century and analyze the role played by imperial and religious institutions in colonization efforts; Assess the role of European Mercantile policies in the formation of colonial economies and trade networks; Analyze the structure of Spanish and Portuguese colonial societies and assess the role of women, indigenous peoples, and Afro-Latinos in these societies; Students will be able to assess the status of Latin and South American colonies in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 17th and 18th centuries and identity how European conflicts affected political and economic life in the colonies; Identify how the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century led to the rise of independence movements in the colonies of Latin and South America; Assess how political revolutions and wars for independence throughout Latin and South America ended European colonial control of the region, and compare and contrast the consequences of these revolutions for ethnic European and indigenous populations; Analyze and interpret primary source documents from the pre-colonial period though the beginning of the 19th century using historical research methods. (History 221)

Caribbean Creole languages result from language contact via colonization and the slave trade. In this course we explore the history of Creole languages from cognitive, historical and comparative perspectives. We evaluate popular theories about "Creole genesis" and the role of language acquisition. Then we explore the non-linguistic aspects of Creole formation, using sources from literature, religion and music. We also look into issues of Caribbean identities as we examine Creole speakers' and others' beliefs and attitudes toward their cultures. We also make comparisons with relevant aspects of African-American culture in the U.S

At the outset of the 16th century, Europeans tended to dismiss English literature as inferior to continental literary traditions; the educated Englishman was obliged to travel to the continent and speak in other languages in order to culture himself. By the end of the Renaissance, however, some of the greatest works in the English language from Shakespeare's dramas to Thomas More's Utopia had been written. In this course, the student will read and examine these works, situating them within their socio-historical and literary contexts, while attempting to determine how the art of English language and letters came into its own during this dynamic period. (English Literature 202)

Beginning with the decline of the Roman Empire, this course discusses German, Muslim, Viking and Magyar invasions, the development of Catholicism in Western Europe and of Eastern Orthodoxy in the Byzantine Empire, the Arabic contribution to mathematics, science, and philsophy and the institutions of feudalism and manorialism. The course concludes with the economic, demographic and urban revival which began around 1000 AD.

Survey of the social, cultural, and political development of western Europe between 500 and 1300. Topics include: the Germanic conquest of the ancient Mediterranean world; the Carolingian Renaissance; feudalism and the breakdown of political order; the crusades; the quality of religious life; the experience of women; and the emergence of a revitalized economy and culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

A brief history of conflicting ideas about mankind's relation to the natural environment as exemplified in works of poetry, fiction, and discursive argument from ancient times to the present. What is the overall character of the natural world? Is mankind's relation to it one of stewardship and care, or of hostility and exploitation? Readings include Aristotle, The Book of Genesis, Shakespeare, Descartes, Robinson Crusoe, Swift, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Darwin, Thoreau, Faulkner, and Lovelock's Gaia. This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mankind, a source of imperatives for the collective organization and conduct of human life. In this sense, nature is less the object of complex scientific investigation than the object of individual experience and direct observation. Using the term "nature" in this sense, we can say that modern reference to "the environment" owes much to three ideas about the relation of mankind to nature. In the first of these, which harks back to ancient medical theories and notions about weather, geographical nature was seen as a neutral agency affecting or transforming agent of mankind's character and institutions. In the second, which derives from religious and classical sources in the Western tradition, the earth was designed as a fit environment for mankind or, at the least, as adequately suited for its abode, and civic or political life was taken to be consonant with the natural world. In the third, which also makes its appearance in the ancient world but becomes important only much later, nature and mankind are regarded as antagonists, and one must conquer the other or be subjugated by it.

This project discovers the history of Modern Europe, starting at the Hundred Years War and ending at the present time.
A chronological perspective of history is attempted within this text. Although this is the case, it is also important to understand patterns within European History, therefore chapters will attempt to cover a breadth of material even though their titles might be that of a specific pattern in history rather than a time period.

" As we read broadly from throughout the vast chronological period that is "Homer to Dante," we will pepper our readings of individual ancient and medieval texts with broader questions like: what images, themes, and philosophical questions recur through the period; are there distinctly "classical" or "medieval" ways of depicting or addressing them; and what do terms like "Antiquity" or "the Middle Ages" even mean? (What are the Middle Ages in the "middle" of, for example?) Our texts will include adventure tales of travel and self-discovery (Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Inferno); courtroom dramas of vengeance and reconciliation (Aeschylus's Oresteia and the Icelandic NjĚÁls saga); short poems of love and transformation (Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Lais of Marie de France); and epics of war, nation-construction, and empire (Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf)."

This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about the nature of mankind's ethical and political life in the West since the renaissance It will deal with the change in perspective imposed by scientific ideas, the general loss of a supernatural or religious perspective upon human events, and the effects for good or ill of the increasing authority of an intelligence uninformed by religion as a guide to life. The readings are roughly complementary to the readings in 21L001, and classroom discussion will stress appreciation and analysis of texts that came to represent the cultural heritage of the modern world.

Examines interactions across the Eurasian continent between Russians, Chinese, Mongolian nomads, and Turkic oasis dwellers during the last millennium and a half. As empires rose and fell, religions, trade, and war flowed back and forth continuously across this vast space. Britain and Russia competed for power over Eurasia in the "Great Game" of geopolitics in the nineteenth century, just as China, Russia, and others did in the twentieth century. Today, the fall of the Soviet Union and China's reforms have opened new opportunities for cultural interaction. Topics include: the religious traditions of Central Asian Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism; caravans and travelers like Marco Polo and Rabban Sauma, the first Chinese to travel to the West; and nomadic conquest and imperialist competition, past and present. Source materials include primary documents, travelogues, films, music, and museum visits.

This course introduces diverse meanings and uses of the concept of culture with historical and contemporary examples from scholarship and popular media around the globe. It includes first-hand observations, synthesized histories and ethnographies, and visual and narrated representations of human experiences. Students conduct empirical research on cultural differences through the systematic observation of human interaction, employ methods of interpretative analysis, and practice convincing others of the accuracy of their findings.

This course explores how identities, whether of individuals or groups, are produced, maintained, and transformed. Students will be introduced to various theoretical perspectives that deal with identity formation, including constructions of "the normal." We will explore the utility of these perspectives for understanding identity components such as gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, language, social class, and bodily difference. By semester's end students will understand better how an individual can be at once cause and consequence of society, a unique agent of social action as well as a social product.

International Women's Voices has several objectives. It introduces students to a variety of works by contemporary women writers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The emphasis is on non-western writers. The readings are chosen to encourage students to think about how each author's work reflects a distinct cultural heritage and to what extent, if any, we can identify a female voice that transcends national cultures. In lectures and readings distributed in class, students learn about the history and culture of each of the countries these authors represent. The way in which colonialism, religion, nation formation and language influence each writer is a major concern of this course. In addition, students examine the patterns of socialization of women in patriarchal cultures, and how, in the imaginary world, authors resolve or understand the relationship of the characters to love, work, identity, sex roles, marriage and politics.This class is a communication intensive course. In addition to becoming more thoughtful readers, students are expected to become a more able and more confident writers. Assignments are designed to allow for revision of each paper. The class will also offer opportunities for speaking and debating so that students can build oral presentation skills that are essential for success once they leave MIT. The class is limited to 25 students and there is substantial classroom discussion.

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.