Literature
This collection highlights the intellectual range and creative depth of undergraduate work in MIT’s Literature section. Each thesis represents a student’s original contribution to literary scholarship, developed through close reading, research, and critical thinking.
Literature at MIT encourages students to explore texts across time periods, cultures, and media—from ancient epics to contemporary novels, from poetry and drama to film and digital storytelling. Our majors examine how literature reflects and shapes human experience, while engaging urgent questions surrounding identity, race, gender, climate, technology, migration, and memory.
These undergraduate theses reflect the department’s commitment to both tradition and innovation. Students often bring interdisciplinary perspectives to their work, drawing connections between literature and science, politics, philosophy, and the arts. The result is a body of scholarship that is thoughtful, original, and deeply engaged with the world beyond the classroom.
Our students are part of a vibrant academic community that values conversation and collaboration. Regular events such as Lit Tea, Pleasures of Poetry, the Ancient and Medieval Studies Colloquium, the People’s Poetry Archive, and the Global Humanities Initiative help foster the creative and intellectual spirit that shapes much of the work represented here.
We invite you to explore these theses as a window into how MIT undergraduates use literature to ask big questions and to imagine new ways of understanding our world.
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