SA+P receives $1 million grant from Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded MIT's School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P) a $1 million grant to help create a Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative.Aimed at expanding the...
View ArticleIn major extension of MIT nuclear policy studies, Gavin begins work as first...
Politics has been part of human culture, and the subject of scholarly inquiry, for millennia. But only 70 years have passed since the epochal arrival of nuclear weapons, and our understanding of...
View ArticleHip-Hop Japan comes to MIT
Zeebra is one of the most influential hip-hop artists in Japan today. His music has reflected the themes of a younger generation growing up at a time of unemployment and recession. An artist talk by...
View ArticleMIT Museum exhibit features 100 early photographic portraits
Photography is the closest thing we have to a time machine — and a new exhibition at the MIT Museum sends visitors traveling all the way back to the 1840s and 1850s, when the very first photographic...
View ArticleThe art and science of letterlocking
Long before email, text, and instant message, important words were passed discreetly from closed palm to palm with a knowing glance and nod. These hand-written notes were often elaborately folded,...
View ArticleSaid and Done for Summer 2014
Published monthly during the School terms, and once in the summer, Said and Done is a photo-rich digest from MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, integrating feature articles with...
View ArticleWrinkles in time
Take a walk along any sandy shoreline, and you’re bound to see a rippled pattern along the seafloor, formed by the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves. Geologists have long observed similar impressions —...
View ArticleKeeping score
One of the most successful composers of late 14th-century Italy was an unusual figure named Zachara da Teramo. A secretary to popes, despite being described as having no more than 10 fingers and toes...
View ArticleSaid and Done for September 2014
Published monthly during the School terms, and once in the summer, Said and Done is a photo-rich digest from MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, integrating feature articles with...
View ArticleFitzgerald to step down as dean of SHASS
Deborah K. Fitzgerald announced today that she will step down as Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), effective July 1, 2015. Provost Martin Schmidt shared...
View ArticleSHASS announces 12 research fund recipients for 2015
The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) Research Fund supports MIT research in the humanities, arts, or social sciences that shows promise of making an important contribution to the...
View ArticleAt MIT, food for thought
Beyond being a human necessity, food can serve as a symbol of social class or national identity; a consuming hobby; or even a battleground for raw politics. Last Friday at MIT, food also became a lens...
View Article3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on advancing racial and restorative justice
The U.S. Justice Department’s March report on racist policing in Ferguson, Missouri, was but the latest episode in a series highlighting the unsettled and unsettling issue of racial justice in the...
View ArticlePassage from India
They came across the ocean to build railways and work as traders. They settled as merchants, farmers, and government workers, and have stayed for generations. It’s a familiar immigration story, but in...
View Article3 Questions: Marcia Bartusiak on black holes and the history of science
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity — which, among other things, helped lead to the discovery of black holes, those mysterious, spacetime-bending...
View ArticleSleuthing the Glaser Codex at MIT
“An enemy ended my life, took away my bodily strength; then he dipped me in water and drew me out again, and put me in the sun where I soon shed all my hair. The knife’s sharp edge bit into me once my...
View ArticleHelen Elaine Lee and Emma Teng to head SHASS academic units
Deborah Fitzgerald, the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, has appointed two faculty members to new leadership roles within the school. Effective July 1,...
View ArticleHugh Hampton Young Fellowship celebrates 50 years
Named for the pioneering medical researcher, the Hugh Hampton Young Fellowship is one of the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education’s (ODGE) most prestigious awards. A famed urologist, Young was not...
View ArticleJeffrey S. Ravel named head of MIT History
Deborah Fitzgerald, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, has named Jeffrey S. Ravel, a professor of history, as head of the MIT History section, effective July...
View Article3 Questions: Jennifer Light on new media and democracy
New forms of digital media have made it easier for citizens to donate to politicians, start petitions, watch video of campaign-trail gaffes — and of course, offer their own opinions to a large...
View ArticleAnnouncing MIT-SHASS new faculty for fall 2015
The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences has announced the newest members of their faculty. They come with diverse backgrounds and vast knowledge in their areas of research: ecology and...
View ArticleWorld War II in Poland and the Pacific Theater
On Sept. 18, at 4 p.m., in the MIT Marlar Lounge (37-252), two authors will talk about biographies they've written on two participants of World War II. Both works have ties to MIT. Norma Olbert wrote...
View ArticleHundreds of MIT students explore fields at the 2015 TOUR de SHASS
On Sept. 10, several hundred MIT undergraduates attended the annual TOUR de SHASS, an academic expo that gives students a chance to discover the range and depth of MIT courses in the School of...
View ArticleMIT observes Constitution Day 2015
MIT is among many educational institutions that observe Constitution Day every year on Sept. 17. On this day 228 years ago, 39 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to sign the final draft of the U.S....
View ArticleInnovative humanities MOOC, “Visualizing Japan,” nominated for the Japan Prize
Shigeru Miyagawa, professor of linguistics and the Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture at MIT, has earned a reputation as a leading voice for the use of technology and digital...
View ArticleMIT’s response to earthquake in Nepal
On April 25, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal, killing more than 9,000, injuring more than 23,000, and leaving tens of thousands lacking food, shelter, and water. Aftershocks continue to afflict...
View ArticleTalking about race
Rinku Sen, the president and executive director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation — a group that produces research, media, and initiatives to advance racial equity — spoke on...
View ArticleMIT launches three-year collaboration with London’s Soane Museum
The School of Architecture and Planning and the MIT Museum have launched a three-year collaboration with Sir John Soane’s Museum, a museum and library set in the former London home of the 19th-century...
View ArticleMIT Libraries explore 17th-century postal archive in "Signed, Sealed,...
A recently rediscovered trunk containing 2,600 letters sent from France, Spain, and the Spanish Netherlands between 1689 and 1706 will soon provide a fascinating glimpse into the plight of the early...
View ArticleDeborah Fitzgerald receives lifetime achievement award from the Agricultural...
Professor Deborah K. Fitzgerald, former dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (MIT-SHASS), has received the Gladys L. Baker Award from the Agricultural History Society for...
View ArticleIlluminating urban planning
One of the key insights of MIT historian Jennifer Light’s career came when she was a summer intern at the RAND Corporation, the think tank famed for its analysis of Cold War military systems. That...
View ArticleHow the Tizard Mission paved the way for research at MIT
At the height of World War II, an unlikely group of scientific heroes travelled from Britain to the United States by way of Canada, clinging tightly to Britain’s most prized scientific war-time secret:...
View ArticleBlack student leaders present recommendations for a more inclusive MIT
Members of MIT’s Black Students’ Union (BSU) and the Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA) believe that at a moment of great national pain around the question of how black and other minority...
View ArticlePast and present
The murder of Rubén Jaramillo caused a brief international sensation in 1962. Jaramillo was a veteran of Mexico’s revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1920. Yet by the 1940s, he had become the leader...
View ArticleLife in the aftermath
In 1919, an Istanbul resident named Hayganush Mark did something remarkable: She started a magazine. Today, that might not sound extraordinary. But Mark was Armenian. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians...
View ArticleProfessor Stanford Anderson dies at 81
Stanford Anderson, professor of history and architecture and a former head of the Department of Architecture died on Jan. 5. He was 81. One of the country’s leading architectural historians, Anderson...
View ArticleWesley Harris delivers keynote at event honoring Martin Luther King
This article is adapted from a Princeton University news story. Wesley Harris, the Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, gave the keynote speech at Princeton...
View ArticleTen MIT-SHASS Research Fund recipients announced for 2016
The SHASS Research Fund supports MIT research in the humanities, arts, or social sciences that shows promise of making an important contribution to the proposed area of activity. The 10 recipients for...
View ArticleThomas Levenson receives the 2016 Levitan Prize in the Humanities
Thomas Levenson, professor of science writing and director of MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing, has been awarded the James A. (1945) and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities, a $30,000...
View ArticleDemocracy and design
The town of Byblos, in Lebanon, is several thousand years old. Indeed, it may be the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world. But now this ancient settlement is the site of a sleek new...
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