For 55 years now, the world’s leading STEM university has broken up the grind of its Fall and Spring semesters with a one-month Independent Activities Period (IAP). It’s a relaxed time when students can delve into subjects outside their majors, learn new skills, dabble in the arts, or become activist cadres advancing the new world order.

This is the time of year when MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Socialist Scientism (SHASS) really shines.

What better place to start than course WGS.233[J]– New Culture of Gender: Queer France. Come and examine the current debates on post-colonial and globalized queer identities through essays, songs, movies, and novels. From Proust and Vivien to Hocquenghem and Wittig, participants will learn how to appreciate the artistic output of the world’s leading effete intellectual snobs. Students are advised to bring their own lube.

From there, move on to 21G.068[J]– The Invention of French Theory: A History of Transatlantic Intellectual Life since 1945. Learn how French intellectual leaders followed up their glory years of Vichy collaboration with a concerted attack on Western Civilization and the Americans who saved their bacon. Topics include communism, decolonization, neo-liberalism, gender and mass media.

Finally, cap it off with 14.773– Political Economy of Institutions and Development. Let Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu raise your consciousness by indoctrinating you in the classic Marxist historical analysis of class conflict, explaining how the threat of communist/socialist revolution drove democratization.

By the end of the month you will be ready to renounce your citizenship and join George Clooney in Provence. We understand he needs workers for his vineyard.