Reminder, tonight at 5!

On Wednesday, we're hosting "Refusing Generative AI: A Critique of Rhetorical Commonplaces about 'AI' in Education". Join us in Stata, room 155: cmsw.mit.edu/event/refusi...

It's just about time for the Karmel Writing Prizes Reception! Celebrate the best of MIT student writing...across 20 categories with $ prizes! Be sure to RSVP: cmsw.mit.edu/event/karmel... It's next Wednesday May 7 at 4:30 pm. Building 14, The Nexus (14S-130)

“It’s an amazing opportunity to work through the data and write in a really vibrant setting where conversation and cross-disciplinary engagement is at the heart of the experience.” CMS/W Professor T.L. Taylor on her new fellowship: news.mit.edu/2026/tl-tayl...

In the second collaboration with the AP, grad students Ashley D'Souza and Lucie McCormick report on one of greater Boston's longest-running environmental infrastructure challenges: combined sewer outflows that discharge untreated wastewater into local waterways. apnews.com/article/comb...

This year our grad program in science writing students developed and pitched local climate stories, and then over a four-day intensive weekend, they worked with visual journalists from the AP. Read all about it: cmsw.mit.edu/mit-science-...

"We need to ensure that universities provide students with the tools they need to find a path to financial security and to build meaningful lives." news.mit.edu/2026/qa-mit-...

With MIT in 3:00 submissions now closed, next is the screening, Thursday April 16 in The Nexus (14S-130)! Register: calendar.mit.edu/event/mit-in... It starts with a reception at 5:30pm, then screenings at 6pm. The Jury Prize ($1,000) and Audience Prize ($500) awarded at the end!

"Poetry is the most intense and musical form of language." U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze last week returned to MIT, reminding the packed room in Hayden Library how poetry can sharpen attention and expand what we notice in the world. Watch: cmsw.mit.edu/video-a-read...

Reminder, we're thrilled to co-host U.S. poet laureate Arthur Sze tomorrow evening (Wednesday, doors at 5:30, Building 14S, room 130) for a reading and book signing. Please join us! Sze -- author of twelve books of poetry -- is also an editor and translator. cmsw.mit.edu/event/poet-l...

Next Friday, tune in with CMS/W's Andreas Karatsolis as he discusses "how Canvas and Panopto support the development of oral communication skills in 21W.015." openlearning.mit.edu/events/eleva...

Cool news via @variety.com, that CMS/W lecturer Marjorie Liu will have her Hugo and Eisner award-winning comic book series "Monstress" produced as an animated series: variety.com/2026/tv/news...

Via MIT Mechanical Engineering and the MLK Visiting Scholars program (and our own Amy Carleton) comes news that Public Enemy's "Media Assassin" Harry Allen is delivering a lecture next week... "BEHOLD! THE WINGS OF HIP-HOP SPACEFLIGHT" happens Thursday the 19th, 1pm, in Building 6's room 120.

Prof. Nick Montfort and collaborator Patsy Baudoin have published a new book! It's "based on a text generator that produces French and English news items that imagine some of the ways technology will impact us." It's available via publisher RR Rose Editions www.printedmatter.org/catalog/70507

A reminder, coming up Friday, we're hosting five CMS/W alums to discuss careers after being a media studies or writing major! cmsw.mit.edu/event/cms-w-... Panelists include a UX designer, network science Ph.D. student, market consultant, technical writer, and commercial film producer.

@chicagoreader.com's Sandra Treviño's review of Junot's "Oscar Wao" on stage: "I haven’t laughed or cried as much during a stage performance as I did at this production." chicagoreader.com/performing-a...

STS folks, I'm organizing an open panel on CONTRAPTIONS for 4S this year, following up on a lovely panel at last year's AAA meetings. You should submit something if you got it! www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

"If you give a chimp a crystal, she might not give it back. Researchers learned this the hard way." 😂 Great new piece in the @nytimes.com by science writing alum @cjgiaimo.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/s...

New from our Writing and Communication Center director Elena Kallestinova: janeway.uncpress.org/ccj/article/...

We've missed Les — "the man who killed the killed the SAT essay," NPR once said — ever since his retirement, and we are sad to pass along the news of his death: news.mit.edu/2026/les-per....

In or near Amsterdam next week? You need to join for CMS/W Professor Angela Saini's talk at the Rijksmuseum for the Women in the Museum Symposium, where she'll be discussing the themes of her book "The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule" www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/...

Excited to announce our first-in-a-long-while undergraduate alumni panel, coming up on March 13. '91, '15, and '17 to be represented so far, with others to be confirmed soon. There's a free lunch, and it's open to the whole MIT community. RSVP requested: cmsw.mit.edu/event/cms-w-...

The latest from alum Sophie Hartley, '24: "By flexing legal authority through Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, DOE recently halted the retirement of several coal plants across the country. Environmental advocates say the decision to do so was out of line." www.indystar.com/story/news/e...

Professor Justin Reich talks with Future Fluent about his worries that AI is "already slowing down learning". Listen: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

Join our Visual Game & Media Design two-year master’s program at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. Deadline March 1st! Visual Game & Media Design is a cross-disciplinary program open to all creative BA students. Read more about the program here: royaldanishacademy.com/en/programme...

The latest from Grad Program in Science Writing alum Emily Anthes, '06, in the @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/s... Scientists "saw signs that natural selection had been acting on genes involved in pesticide resistance and climate adaptation, including cold tolerance."

This Friday from @ksjatmit.bsky.social (if we've finished digging out): ksj.mit.edu/event/panel-...

yes! we already have things to teach! we have phds in them! they are the whole point of this enterprise!

Seems like an obvious idea, but apparently nobody had done it before. Looking forward to playing this game!

Hive mind, publishing cohort: You may have heard that I have a book coming out soon.* It's a brief polemical history of opposition to vaccines. I'm being asked by my publisher: index or no? Given current reading habits, is one an impediment or a necessity? Got thoughts? *Narr: They've heard:

Academic #writing is often framed as something faculty should simply manage better; when they struggle, the blame is put on the individual academic. But this explanation doesn’t hold, as Rachel Gabriele explains: https://ow.ly/kFFA50YiI3g#writing#Academia #HigherEd #AcademicSky

Glad to host @bospostmortem.bsky.social this month and speaker, @annamegill.com talk about Game Writing tonight. (At least one of us at the lab is a huge Threshold Kids fan).

ICYMI: our research scientist Philip Tan had a chance last summer to offer a mini version of his CMS subject "DJ History, Technology, and Technique". Tan traced the job of a DJ and the tech that evolved around it...reading the room, crate digging, scarcity...

Truly, I know I talk about her a lot here, but whenever I'm feeling down, then get to spend a couple of hours (or more, often more these days) with the local first-gen college student I'm mentoring—now working on scholarship apps—I just...feel better. She totally rocks.

The latest from Science Writing alum Anika Jane Beamer, '25: "Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the U.S., a public health crisis that residents worry is tied to consistently elevated nitrate levels in their drinking water sources." insideclimatenews.org/news/1702202...

Academic #publishing can be a harsh landscape. Here, a partnership model offers language and strategies to support new authors as they navigate early submissions and review: https://ow.ly/hs6750YhEwc#publishing #HigherEd #AcademicSky #EduSky

What can current research tell us about confidence & trust in elections? Join the next "Books & Ballots" webinar on 2/24 at 2pm ET to hear from three leading academics about their ongoing research on this hot topic. More info & registration can be found here: buff.ly/GALSRTz

Professor Junot Diaz's acclaimed "Oscar Wao" to have its stage adaptation premiere in Chicago! It runs from February 21 to April 5 at the Goodman: www.goodmantheatre.org/show/the-bri...

CMS/W Professor Ian Condry and the local spatial sound community are ready for a big February, starting with a social gathering at Berklee College of Music next Saturday...join us for one or all! cmsw.mit.edu/events/categ...

It's time for our annual filmmaking workshop! If you're interested in submitting a short film for the "MIT in 3:00" short film competition, join the MIT in 3:00 staff for the 1-day workshop on Thursday, January 29. cmsw.mit.edu/event/mit-in...

A great opportunity to spend some time with our professor Eric Klopfer and lecturer Michael Trice. Eric plays host and will run a session on AI's effects on learning, and Michael's Friday 11am session is on the use of AI in MIT's writing programs. computing.mit.edu/iap-2026-exp...

Mini-forests! MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing student Ashley D’Souza reports on the challenges of growing trees in urban neighborhoods like North Brookline, Mass., where they're not tied in to their native ecosystems. Her story starts at 9:14: brookline.news/brookline-ne...

Thank you to everyone who've followed along with us as we share these wonderful pieces from Angles. We wrap up these shares with "More than Nonsense: Language Acquisition and Identity in Through the Looking Glass" by Carl Osborne, '28: cmsw.mit.edu/angles/2025/...

In the latest from CMS/W professor Nick Montfort: "Today’s large language models are very different from both automated reporters and storytelling systems." cmsw.mit.edu/generating-r...

“I would go to one fire and I would cover it, and it would be the same script that I wrote on another fire a week ago.” www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/18/b...

Tonight on the 5:30 WMBR 88.1FM Nightly News, we get to hear the latest from a student in our MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing, covering Harry Allen's mission to fling hip-hop into space on its own golden record. Great work, Laura Martín Agudelo! wmbr.org/www/sched

The latest review from CMS/W lecturer Chris Featherman: "Together, these two books reveal the urgent challenge of combating harmful speech and propaganda – and the real violence it leads to – in our polarized political moment." blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...

"How many women, I wonder, are kept from communicating with their doctors by their abusers, and without other interpreting options can’t even speak for themselves?" cmsw.mit.edu/angles/2025/...

Reminder, tonight, with your host Professor Ian Condry! spatialsoundlab.mit.edu/events/