MIT faculty and staff authors have published a plethora of books, chapters, and other literary contributions in the past year. The following titles represent some of their works published in the past 12 months. In addition to links for each book from its publisher, the MIT Libraries has compiled a helpful list of the titles held in its collections.
Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy the book lists from 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.
“The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death” (Routledge, 2023)
Chapter by Laura Anderson Barbata, lecturer in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology
This book provides an examination of death, dying, and human remains in museums and heritage sites around the world. In her chapter, “Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home,” Barbata describes the case of Julia Pastrana (1834-1860), an indigenous Mexican opera singer who suffered from hypertrichosis terminalis and hyperplasia gingival. Due to her appearance, Pastrana was exploited and exhibited for over 150 years, during her lifetime and after her early death in an embalmed state. Barbata sheds light on the ways in which the systems that justified Pastrana’s exploitation continue to operate today.
“Sky. Pond. Mouth.” (Yas Press, 2024)
By Kevin McLellan, staff member in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology
In this book of poetry, physical and emotional qualities free-range between the animate and inanimate as though the world is written with dotted lines. With chiseled line breaks, intriguing meta-poetic levels, and punctuation like seed pods, McLellan’s poems, if we look twice, might flourish outside the book’s margin, past the grow light of the screen, even (especially) other borderlines we haven’t begun to imagine.
“Emergency INDEX: An Annual Document of Performance Practice, vol. 10” (Ugly Duckling Press, 2023)
Chapter by Gearoid Dolan, staff member in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology
This “bible of performance art activity” documents performance projects from around the world. Dolan’s chapter describes “Protest ReEmbodied,” a performance that took place online during Covid-19 lockdown. The performance was a live version of the ongoing “Protest ReEmbodied” project, an app that individuals can download and run on their computer to be able to perform on camera, inserted into protest footage.
