From poetry to tariffs: 14 SHASS classes available through MIT OpenCourseWare

What if you could learn from MIT educators for free? 

In 2001, MIT launched a bold experiment – MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), an open online resource offering access to course content and materials from across the Institute. Supported both by the Institute and generous foundations and donors, OCW provides on-demand educational opportunities for millions of learners and continues to redefine how equitable access to learning can look. These courses are always available and can be completed at students’ leisure. 

For 25 years, OCW has been a home for curious minds across the world. It has continued to expand its offerings, creating resources and empowering a dynamic global community by providing world-class Open Education Resources (OER) to interested students and educators everywhere.  A new documentary video celebrates OCW’s impact and the visionary commitment that’s made it possible. Participants are invited to share the courses and available resources broadly, bringing MIT and its resources to learners wherever they are.

Central to OCW’s mission has been its reflecting the entire MIT curriculum, across all academic disciplines, departments and programs. Among OCW’s 2,500+ courses, nearly 800 are from SHASS and reflect the diversity, rigor, and breadth of the School’s subject offerings. 

Here is a curated selection of SHASS courses available through OCW, one per department/program:

Anthropology

21A.S01 Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million Person Scale highlights an experiential learning course with a deep community-engaged interdisciplinary spirit.

Comparative Media Studies

CMS.595 Learning, Media and Technology shares important historical context and current perspectives on the rapidly evolving EdTech and learning landscape, with a selection of seminar videos and an Instructor Insights interview.

Economics

Seven Questions About Tariffs That Everyone Should Know the Answer To, a video of a talk from IAP 2026, demonstrates how OCW goes beyond the formal MIT curriculum to share timely and relevant information, in this case releasing on the same day as a U.S. Supreme Court decision about tariffs.

Global Languages

Kanji Learning Anytime Anyplace, for Japanese IV is a lively video series that complements and enriches OCW’s complete coverage of the Japanese I-V curriculum.

History

21H.151 Dynastic China features videos of a few selected lectures, which have found a substantial enthusiastic audience on OCW’s YouTube channel, with hundreds of thousands of views in the first couple of weeks since publishing in early April.

Linguistics

24.917 ConLangs: How to Construct a Language features a complete set of lecture notes and assignments to explore linguistics concepts by constructing a new language from scratch.

Literature

21L.004 Reading Poetry: Social Poetics includes a faculty podcast interview that brings the OCW course reading list and assignments to life.

Music

21M.011 Introduction to Western Music weaves together the complementary approaches of two different faculty for their respective sections of this introductory course.

Political Science

17.41 Introduction to International Relations is a classic OCW publication with syllabus, lecture slides, reading list and thorough descriptions of assignments.

Theater

21M.785 Playwrights’ Workshop shares several scripts written by students in the course, and an extensive list of plays suggested as reference works for aspiring playwrights.

Philosophy

24.150J Liberalism, Toleration, and Freedom of Speech highlights an example of SHASS engaging students in topics of great current interest, here with an extensive reading list, discussion prompts, and lecture slides.

Science, Technology, and Society

STS.042J Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century explores the transformation of physics through institutional, cultural, and political contexts, with video lectures and a faculty podcast interview.

Writing

21W.755 Writing and Reading the Short Story has consistently been among OCW’s most popular SHASS courses, with lecture notes and writing exercises that continue to engage an appreciative global community of learners.

Women’s and Gender Studies

WGS.301J Feminist Thought combines an extensive list of readings from scholarly and popular sources with some example papers written by students.