The course will rely on one text book but PhD students should learn to read texts on their own in case they must work on something not quite familiar but in their area---that's the essence of a PhD program. Hence the list includes two recommended, introductory text books.

Required Text:

Felleisen, Findler, Flatt. Semantics Engineering with PLT Redex. MIT Press 2009.

Recommended Texts:

Krishnamurthi. Programming Languages: Applications and Interpretation.

Friedman, Wand. Essentials of Programming Languages (Third edition). MIT Press 2008.

These undergraduate texts present the same topics from a hands-on perspective. They teach you how to construct interpreters, essential interpretation techniques, and a few applications of these techniques to domains other than programming languages. Many of you have covered this material in undergraduate courses. This course takes a second look at this material from a research-oriented perspective.