Prohibition and Permission

Costume is red, black, and blue and includes a cape and baton.

Costume design for Feste (the clown/fool) from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, created for the Federal Theatre Project under the Works Progress Administration. Graphite and watercolor by Robert Byrne (1935). (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Federal Theatre Project Collection, W.P.A. Transfer [159.7].)

Instructor(s)

MIT Course Number

CC.S10

As Taught In

Spring 2007

Level

Undergraduate

Cite This Course

Course Description

Course Features

Course Description

Explore where the prohibitions and permissions that occur in every day life come from, why they exist, and what gives them force. For example: food—you are only willing and able to eat a subset of the world's edible substances. Marriage—some marriages are prohibited by law or by custom. This course addresses questions of prohibition and permission using psychological sources and literary works from ancient to modern. Texts include works by Shakespeare, Melville, Mary Rowlandson, and Anita Desai. Students give group and individual oral presentations.

Related Content

Jeremy Wolfe, and Wyn Kelley. CC.S10 Prohibition and Permission. Spring 2007. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.


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