This studio will investigate the social, physiological and phenomenological elements of a student gathering place on the MIT campus. Whether it is simply for socializing or for more specific events, the student gathering place will serve as a refuge from the vigorous educational environment of the Institute, and reinforce the sense of "play" through a sensible organization of the program. The place will foster a casual discovery of a sense of "being": a reflection upon the student's own existence based upon an intellectual attitude of acting and group events. To create a space that inspires, rather than imposes: such a discovery is the foremost challenge of this studio.

" This studio will investigate the social, programmatic, tectonic and phenomenological performance and character of a student gathering place on the MIT campus. Whether it is simply for socializing or for more specific events, the student gathering place will serve as a refuge from the vigorous educational environment of the Institute, and it will reinforce a critical sense of "place" through the almost logical organization of its program. The place will foster a casual discovery of "being": a reflection upon the student's own existence based upon participation in group events and an intellectual attitude toward acting. To create a space that inspires, rather than imposes: such a discovery is the foremost challenge of this studio."

looks at the role of servants at a 33-acre estate during the early 1900s. The 21-room mansion was built in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the 1880s with a separate entrance, dining area, and stairs for servants. Servants cleaned house, supervised children, washed laundry, cooked meals, cared for the garden and farm animals, and maintained carriages and cars. Floor plans, photos, and diary excerpts are included.

What is a "life" when it's written down? How does memory inform the present? Why are memoirs so popular? This course will address these questions and others, considering the relationship between biography, autobiography, and memoir and between personal and social themes. We will closely examine some recent memoirs: Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Students will write two brief papers: a critical essay and an experiment in memoir.As a "Sampling," this class offers 6 units, with a strong emphasis on close reading, group discussion, focused writing, and research and presentation skills.

Chapter Ten of Marcia Brennan's Flowering Light: Kabbalistic Mysticism and the Art of Elliot R. Wolfson

features photographs and text from three exhibits: living in a camp, existing day to day, and battling boredom.

In Origin of Species, Darwin provided a model for understanding the existence of objects and systems manifesting evidence of design without positing a designer, and of purpose and mechanism without intelligent agency. Texts deal with pre-Darwinian and later treatment of this topic within literature and speculative thought since the eighteenth century, with some attention to the modern study of "feedback mechanism" in artificial intelligence. Readings in Hume, Voltaire, Malthus, Darwin, Butler, Hardy, H. G. Wells, and Freud. This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the immediate intellectual antecedents and some of the implications of the ideas animating Darwin's revolutionary On the Origin of Species. Darwin's text, of course, is about the mechanism that drives the evolution of life on this planet, but the fundamental ideas of the text have implications that range well beyond the scope of natural history, and the assumptions behind Darwin's arguments challenge ideas that go much further back than the set of ideas that Darwin set himself explicitly to question - ideas of decisive importance when we think about ourselves, the nature of the material universe, the planet that we live upon, and our place in its scheme of life. In establishing his theory of natural selection, Darwin set himself, rather self-consciously, to challenge a whole way of thinking about these things. The main focus of attention will be Darwin's contribution to the so-called "argument from design" - the notion that innumerable aspects of the world (and most particularly the organisms within it) display features directly analogous to objects of human design and, since design implies a designer, that an intelligent, conscious agency must have been responsible for their organization and creation. Previously, it had been argued that such features must have only one of two ultimate sources - chance or conscious agency. Darwin proposed and elaborated a third source, which he called Natural Selection, an unconscious agency capable of outdoing the most complex feats of human intelligence. The course of study will not only examine the immediate inspiration for this idea in the work of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus and place Darwin's Origin and the theory of Natural Selection in the history of ensuing debate, but it will also touch upon related issues.

Deep-sea vents are home to strange, luminescent life forms that thrive through chemosynthesis. This video segment from NOVA: "Volcanoes of the Deep" hypothesizes life's beginnings in this extreme environment.

This course examines the growing importance of medicine in culture, economics and politics. It uses an historical approach to examine the changing patterns of disease, the causes of morbidity and mortality, the evolution of medical theory and practice, the development of hospitals and the medical profession, the rise of the biomedical research industry, and the ethics of health care in America.

This illustrated timeline from the NOVA Web site follows Albert Einstein's life, including 1905, his "Miracle Year," during which he developed his Special Theory of Relativity and the equation, E=mc2.

SPARK visits ceramicist Richard Shaw in his Fairfax studio as he scrambles to finish work for an upcoming one-person gallery show. This Educator Guide traces the history of the trompe l'oeil technique in art up through the Bay Area movement of realism in ceramics.

Civilization is mostly the story of how seeds, meats, and ways to cook them travel from place to place. - Adam Gopnik, "What's Cooking" "A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes." - Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating" If you are what you eat, what are you? Food is at once the stuff of life and a potent symbol; it binds us to the earth, to our families, and to our cultures. The aroma of turkey roasting or the taste of green tea can be a portal to memories, while too many Big Macs can clog our arteries. The chef is an artist, yet those who pick oranges or process meat may be little more than slaves. In this class, we will explore many of the fascinating issues that surround food as both material fact and personal and cultural symbol. We will read essays by Chang-Rae Lee, Francine du Plessix Gray, M. F. K. Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, and others on such topics as family meals, the art and science of cooking, fair trade, eating disorders, and food's ability to awaken us to "our own powers of enjoyment" (M. F. K. Fisher). We will also read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and view one or more films or videos as a class. Assigned essays will grow out of memories and the texts we read, and will include personal narratives and essays that depend on research. Workshop review of writing in progress and revision of essays will be an important part of the course.

This video segment adapted from NOVA describes the emergence of life on the islands of Hawaii from a barren volcanic platform under the ocean waves to the rich explosion of life that covers the many climate zones of the islands today.

We now live in a global village where distance in no longer a barrier to commercial or social contact. This unit will enable you to gain an understanding of the information and communication technologies that drive our networked world and how they now permeate our everyday lives.

This video segment adapted from NOVA illustrates why carbon is at the center of life on Earth. It also asks whether carbon-based life might exist on other planets.

This video segment adapted from NOVA goes on a whimsical journey in search of life forms thriving in extreme conditions on Earth and in outer space. Animations show ice on Jupiter's moon, Europa, and signs that water once existed on Mars.

describes village life in the Hidatsa and Mandan tribes during the peak of their culture in the early 19th century (North Dakota). It helps students compare information about these seasonally nomadic Plains villagers with the more popularized film and textbook history of nomadic horse-culture Indians such as the Lakota and Cheyenne.

This video segment adapted from Interactive NOVA features evidence of life on Earth before the atmosphere contained a rich supply of oxygen.

All animals develop and grow over time. The animals in this document undergo one of the most dramatic developmental processes known: metamorphosis. See if you can place the developmental stages in their proper order.