The Nexus, 14S-130

Abstract: A woman is courted by a charming man, only to discover that all along he was engaged to another woman. Another woman loses her friend's diamond necklace and takes on ruinous debt to secretly replace it, only to discover that all along the necklace was cheap costume jewelry. A man tries to help a young boy haunted by ghosts, only to discover that he himself was a ghost all along. Whether or not you recognize these scenarios as Jane Austen's novel Emma, Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" and M. Night Shyamalan's movie The Sixth Sense, twist narratives are so widespread that you no doubt recognize the device. The plot twist is a particularly artful surprise which retroactively transforms our understanding of what came before ("all along...!"). As such, the plot twist complicates standard scholarly ways of understanding reading, knowledge and time. For this LitShop I'd like to take you on a whirlwind tour of my work on the history and theory of plot twists. The project began life as my dissertation, and I'm now intending to transform it into a scholarly monograph, an accessible short book for non-academic readers and perhaps a podcast series. I'd value everyone's thoughts on […]

Join the MIT Community for a (Mysterious) Book Exchange! Statement of Purpose: Strengthen Community Relationships and Foster a Love of Reading. If you could pick one book to recommend to someone at MIT, what would you choose? For the second time we are asking MIT community members this question and collecting hundreds of recommended favorite books for the second MIT (Mysterious) Book Exchange! This event, launched by an MIT graduate student, aims to strengthen community relationships and foster a love of reading. But there’s a twist: All the books will be wrapped and organized by genre, with only the recommendations written by community members printed and shown on the books.  Attendees will select books based solely on the genre and recommendation.  Attendees will walk away with a mysterious new treasure to brighten your day! We invite you to recommend a book on our Google Form that you would like to share with the MIT community, and write a short blurb that describes it without giving away the title or author! We welcome as many recommendations as you have to give. We also invite you to rejoin us later in the year to pick up one of these cherished books that was recommended by […]