Studies in Drama: Theater and Science in a Time of War
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this interdisciplinary look at 17th-century western Europe, the era of Descartes, Newton, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Moliere. The course treats that century as a laboratory for the modern scientific and cultural world, pairing period debates about method, religion, and art with present-day equivalents. Materials draw on literary, dramatic, historical, and scientific texts and images, and the class includes theatrical experimentation alongside reading, writing, and research assignments. Team-taught by MIT faculty, it asks students to move between primary sources like scientific treatises and stage plays, testing how drama and science shaped each other during a period of religious war and intellectual upheaval. As with other MIT OCW offerings, the full syllabus, readings, and assignments are published online at no cost, with no certificate attached.