MIT: Independent Activities Period: IAP

IAP 2018 Activities by Sponsor - Urban Studies and Planning

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DUSP Yoga: All Levels Flow

Liz Haney, Marissa Reilly

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

Keep it moving! Flow classes, also known as vinyasa flow classes, are generally faster paced than mostother class types to help you build heat, strength and flexibility. Repeating a series of flowing postures between longer holds of static postures, movement is coordinated with breath. As an all levels class, it is appropriate for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students.

Please bring a yoga mat and warm clothing/a blanket so you are comfortable during the final resting pose.

Sponsor(s): Urban Studies and Planning
Contact: Liz Haney, ehaney@mit.edu


Yoga (all levels flow)

Add to Calendar Jan/09 Tue 07:30PM-09:30PM 7-429
Add to Calendar Jan/11 Thu 07:30AM-09:30AM 7-429
Add to Calendar Jan/16 Tue 07:30PM-09:30PM 7-429
Add to Calendar Jan/23 Tue 07:30PM-09:30PM 7-429
Add to Calendar Jan/25 Thu 07:30AM-09:30AM 7-429
Add to Calendar Jan/30 Tue 07:30PM-09:30PM 7-429

Liz Haney, Marissa Reilly


Planners Read Plato's "Gorgias"

Ezra Glenn

Add to Calendar Jan/24 Wed 02:00PM-04:30PM 9-217

Enrollment: DUSP Students Only
Sign-up by 01/10

What is the role of oratory and power in a democratic society? Is it worse to do wrong or to be wronged? What is the difference between knowledge and true belief? Why is it important for both the accused and their judges to meet naked in court? (And what do all of these questions have to do with becoming an urban planner?) Come explore these themes with us in a participatory -- possibly dramatic -- reading of Plato's "Gorgias," a Socratic dialog written in 380 BC that is as relevant today as when it was written. Books provided; Greek food included; togas optional. 

Note: this is mostly an opportunity to actually read this wonderful and thought-provoking book with others, not a lecture; come prepared to read and take part, and we'll see how far we get.

Sponsor(s): Urban Studies and Planning
Contact: Ezra Glenn, 7-337, x3-2024, eglenn@mit.edu


Unleashing Alternative Futures: Constructing New Worlds through Imagination, Narrative, and Radical Hope

Lawrence Barriner II, Program Director, Community Media, Grant Tank Williams

Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions

“I learned in school how to deconstruct—but how do we move beyond our beautiful deconstruction? Who teaches us to reconstruct? How do we cultivate the muscle of radical imagination needed to dream together beyond fear?” - Adrienne Maree Brown

It’s 2018 and something isn’t right. Or maybe more accurately, almost everything is wrong. The joint powers of imagination and fear have established a seemingly untouchable demagogue as the elected leader of the world’s most powerful empire. He carries out the wishes of the elite while destroying the dreams, realities, and futures of everyone and everything else, including the planet herself.

Standard tactics are proving ineffective. Fact-checking has been rendered useless. Reason, unreasonable. Imagination, myth-making, and stories reign (see alternative facts). The future of America, and perhaps the world, is in the hands of the best storytellers.

The Resistance is evolving to meet the challenge. How do we build past, even through fear, to something more powerful? To… radical hope? We are one faction of many fighting for the futurewe are writers, thinkers, and artists using our powers to fight imagination with imagination. In this 3-day workshop in January, 2018 we will: learn from the rich ancestry of speculative fiction, exercise collaborative ideation and world-building, and create stories and art that may unleash new futures to topple the hegemonic order. Come, join our schemes.

Click here for more Info/sign-up.

Sponsor(s): Urban Studies and Planning, Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Contact: Lawrence Barriner II, lqb@mit.edu


Add to Calendar Jan/24 Wed 06:00PM-09:00PM 9-217

Lawrence Barriner II - Program Director, Community Media


Add to Calendar Jan/26 Fri 06:00PM-09:00PM 9-217

Lawrence Barriner II - Program Director, Community Media


Add to Calendar Jan/31 Wed 06:00PM-09:00PM 9-217

Lawrence Barriner II - Program Director, Community Media


Urban Planning Film Series: Imagination and Place / Spotlight on the 1960s

Ezra Glenn

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

For IAP, the department's ongoing Urban Planning Film Series continues with three lesser-known films from the 1960s exploring the connections between people, the meaning of places, and the role of imagination in the worlds we perceive and create. 

 All films start following brief remarks at 7:00PM, MIT Room 3-133; everyone welcome.  Come to one or come to all!

Sponsor(s): Urban Studies and Planning
Contact: Ezra Glenn, 7-337, 617 253-2024, EGLENN@MIT.EDU


The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

Add to Calendar Jan/15 Mon 07:00PM-09:30PM 3-133

Harry Belafonte plays a coal miner who finds himself a lonely survivor of the collapse of civilization in this lost sci-fi gem from 1959. Seeking other survivors in the big city, he finds companionship, love--and trouble. Loosly based on a 1902 novel, but steeped in early civil-rights-era poignancy, the film explores race relations, sexual tension, and human drama on the depopulated streets of post-apocalyptic New York.

Ezra Glenn


(Canceled) The Swimmer

Jan/22 Mon 07:00PM-09:30PM 3-133

Long before "Mad Men," there were the stories of John Cheever, perfectly crystalized elegies to American suburbia.  One of the most quietly profound, allegorically meditative, and deeply melancholy was "The Swimmer," brought to the silver screen in 1968 by Frank and Eleanor Perry.  Burt Lancaster stars as Ned Merrill, a New York ad-man who sets out one morning to swim across his entire neighborhood, one pool at a time.

Ezra Glenn


Alphaville

Add to Calendar Jan/29 Mon 07:00PM-09:30PM 3-133

A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry from 1965, Jean-Luc Godard's irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60.

Ezra Glenn