Faculty

Junot Díaz

Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing, 14N-436 617-253-4010 junot@mit.edu

Professor Junot Díaz received for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books 2007) the Pulitzer Prize, The John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize and The Dayton Literary Peace Prize for 2008. This is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States, celebrating the power of literature to promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution.

Publications

Joe Haldeman

Adjunct Professor, 14N-234 617-253-7390 haldeman@mit.edu

Joe Haldeman has a B.S. in astronomy from the University of Maryland.  He currently is Adjunct Professor teaching science fiction writing workshop and reading and writing longer fiction and reading and writing genre fiction.

For Publications,  please go to Prof. Haldeman's web site

Robert Kanigel

Professor, 14N-420 617-253-0087 kanigel@mit.edu

Grady-Stack award for science writing. Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award. Recipient, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.

Publications

Helen Elaine Lee

Associate Professor, 14N-425 617-253-3060 helee@mit.edu

Helen Elaine Lee was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, from which she graduated in 1985. Her short stories have appeared in Callaloo, SAGE and several anthologies, including Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present, edited by Gloria Naylor, and Ancestral House: The Black Story in the Americas and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell. Professor Lee serves on the Board of PEN New England and is a member of its Freedom To Write Committee.

Publications

Alan Lightman

Adjunct Professor, 14N-230 617-253-2308 www-humanistic@mit.edu

Alan Lightman's background is in theoretical physics.

Publications

Kenneth Manning

Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric and the History of Science, 12-236 617-253-4085 manning@mit.edu

Professor Kenneth Manning was the winner of the Lucy Hampton Bostick Book Award in 1984 and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for 1984.

Publications

Nick Montfort

Associate Professor, 14N-233 617-324-1429 nickm@nickm.com

Nick Montfort is a creator, critic, and theorist of digital media particularly focused on the intersection of computing and writing practice.  He is an author and programmer of interactive fiction, poetry generators, and other digital literary systems.  He blogs about digital media and other topics, writes poems in unusual forms, and frequently collaborates with writer/programmers and others on online literary projects. 

Publications

James H. Williams Jr.

School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence, Charles F. Hopewell Faculty Fellow, 3-360 617-253-2221 jhwill@mit.edu

Professor James H. Williams, Jr. has received many awards and published numerous papers and reports in conjunction with his teaching, consulting, and research in the mechanical characterization of advanced fiber reinforced composites; wave propagation in large space structures; in-process and post-process quality control; reliability; dynamic fracture; nondestructive evaluation with emphasis on acoustic emission, thermal, and ultrasonic responses of composites; dynamic behavior of structures subjected to seismic excitation; and the development of computerized data base systems for composite materials selection. He has been interviewed, cited, or featured in hundreds of newspaper, magazine, and broadcast media pieces. He has conducted dozens of major multi-year consultations for the US government and international corporations involving a multiplicity of structural systems on high-performance aircraft, automobiles, rockets, offshore oil platforms, and hydroelectric power generation stations. If unavailable at his office, he can likely be found attempting to hit a 200-yard three-iron to an elevated green somewhere in the Boston area.

For Publications,  please go to Professor Williams' web site

Rosalind Williams

Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Program in Science, Technology, and Society E51-103b 617-253-2847 rhwill@mit.edu

Rosalind Williams attended Wellesley College and received degrees from Harvard University (B.A., History and Literature), the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Modern European History) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Ph.D., History). Her first book, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (University of California, 1982), explores the complicated relations between technological change, cultural values, and marketing techniques at a critical moment in the development of modern consumer society. Her next book, Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination (MIT Press, 1990), considers the implications for human life in the transition from a predominantly natural to a predominantly built environment. She has also studied this transition in writings about Lewis Mumford, Jules Romains, Enlightenment thinkers, and the issue of technological determinism.

In Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (MIT Press, 2002), Professor Williams draws upon her experiences as a historian and MIT dean to comment upon the information age.  In her current book project, she is examining the transformation of the relationship between human beings and the earth in the later nineteenth century, using a cluster of well-known writers (Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson) to provide evidence of and insight into the rise of human dominance on the planet—in particular, their exploration of non-realistic forms of literature, and, in both art and life, their fascination with boundary experiences where land and water meet.

Professor Williams came to MIT in 1980 as a research fellow in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. In 1982 she joined the Writing Program (now the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies) as a lecturer. In 1990 she was named Class of 1922 Career Development Professor. From 1991 to 1993 she served as Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty and from 1995 to 2000 as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education. From 2002-06 she was Head of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society.

Her main professional affiliation outside of MIT is the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), of which she served as president in 2005-06.

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Publications