Love is a many-splendored thing, and on OCW, there is so much to love and learn.
Our amazing team of OCW Digital Publication Specialists offer you a short list of MIT courses that delve into the subject of love in all of its varied roles in history, music and culture.
- CC.112 Philosophy of Love – Explore the nature of love through works of philosophy, literature, film, poetry, and individual experience. This course investigates the distinction among eros, philia, and agape. Students discuss ideas of love as a feeling, an action, a species of ‘knowing someone,’ or a way to give or take.
- 24.261 Philosophy of Love in the Western World – This course is a seminar on the nature of love and sex, approached as topics both in philosophy and in literature. Readings include recent philosophy as well as classic myths of love that occur in works of literature and lend themselves to philosophical analysis.
- 21L.000J Writing About Literature: Writing About Love – Designed around analyzing intimate bonds and the permutations of heartbreak, this course focuses on the analysis of a set of relations in novels, short stories, poetry, music videos, and live theatre. We’ll consider the transformative states of the lover’s (un)becoming, for how consciousness is constituted by bonds yet how the lover transcends crisis in the moment of the epiphany that surfaces in love’s very failure; indeed, love itself becomes narcissistically yet optimistically illuminating, even in its oppressive hold.
- 21L.460 Medieval Literature: Love, Sex, and Marriage – It is easy to think of love as a “universal language” – but do ideas about love translate easily across history, culture, and identity? In this course, we will encounter some surprising, even disturbing ideas about love and sex from medieval writers and characters: For instance, that married people can never be in love, that the most satisfying romantic love incorporates pain and violence, and that intense erotic pleasure can be found in celibate service to God. Through Arthurian romances, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, love letters, mystical visions, and more, we will explore medieval attitudes toward marriage, sexuality, and gender roles. What can these perspectives teach us about the uniqueness of the Middle Ages—and how do medieval ideas about love continue to influence the beliefs and fantasies of our own culture?
- 21A.111J / WGS.172J For Love and Money: Rethinking the Family – Through investigating cross-cultural case studies, this course introduces students to the anthropological study of the social institutions and symbolic meanings of family, gender, and sexuality. Explore the myriad forms that families and households take and consider their social, emotional, and economic dynamics.
- ES.S60 The Art and Science of Happiness – This seminar looks at current theories on happiness and positive psychology as well as practical implications of those theories for our own lives. It explores the concept of happiness, different cultural definitions of happiness, and the connection between happiness, optimism, and meaning. Also explored are practical strategies for creating more opportunities for happiness in our lives and for learning how to deal more effectively with sources of unhappiness.
- 21M.299 The Beatles (See week XI for All You Need is Love) This class surveys the music of the Beatles, from the band’s early years to the break-up of the group, mapping how the Beatle’s musical style changed from skiffle and rock to studio-based experimentation. Cultural influences that helped to shape them, as well as the group’s influence worldwide, will be a continuous theme.
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