Explore the glory that was Ancient Rome with Carnegie Teacher of the Year Frances Titchener.

During the early years of the Cold War, the anticommunist witch hunt that we now call McCarthyism swept through American society. As we will discover, McCarthyism was much more than the career of the blustering senator from Wisconsin who gave it a name. It was the most widespread and longest-lasting episode of political repression in American history. Dozens of men and women went to prison, thousands lost their jobs, and untold numbers of others saw...

One of the most dramatic periods in world history is the age of Europe's discovery of the world from Columbus and da Gama in the late fifteenth century to the voyages of James Cook in the eighteenth century. The extent of the changes can be seen by comparing the pre-Columbian maps, which showed no knowledge of either the Americas or the Pacific, with those of 1800, which in terms of projection, scale, and content approximate today's maps. In this...

In this course, Kenyon College professor Dr. Timothy B. Shutt addresses three wars fought in antiquity, each of which had--even two thousand years and more later--a decisive effect in shaping our communal sense of who we are, wherever Western values hold.

Dante's Divine Comedy stands very high among the greatest literary works ever written. The Commedia is about the afterlife, not just Hell, but Purgatory and Heaven, too. Dante's genius is the genius of the allegorical method. The Commedia is, in the first instance, an account of Dante's own salvation. In chronicling his own recovery, indeed his salvation, Dante not only provides us with an autobiography, he also suggests that not only the problems...

For over 400 years, crusaders ("those signed by the cross"), out of Christian zeal, a declared love for their fellow man, and, in many cases, a simple desire for fortune, glory, and heavenly reward, marched to the Holy Land to battle both a real and perceived threat to their way of life and their religious beliefs. The story of the many crusades are filled with an unremitting passion to keep or return the home of Christianity to Christians. It is...

The main aim of this introductory course to the principle religions of Asia is to cultivate a basic literacy in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Professor Stephen Prothero explores the origins of these religious traditions in Asia, their impact on the societies of the region, and their transplantation to the United States. He focuses on three related issues: why religion matters, what the term "religion" means, and how Asian religions-especially...

Science fiction literature and films have contributed indelible images to the popular imagination, from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds to Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles to the fiction of "cyberpunks." In addition to enthralling readers with breathtaking narratives and dazzling the imagination with mind-bending glimpses of possible futures, the best science fiction asks essential questions: What does it mean to be human? Are we alone in the universe,...

In Understanding the Holocaust, Professor David Engel of New York University examines the encounter between Germany's Third Reich and the Jews of the twenty European countries that fell under Nazi domination between 1933 and 1945. The results of this encounter stretch human comprehension to the limit and raise frightening questions about the human condition. When it was over, two-thirds of Europe's Jews, some 5.8 million people, had died-and their...

Every human is composed of an amazing assortment of cells and tissues that carry out myriad functions necessary for sustaining life. In clear, concise language, Professor John K. Young of the Howard University College of Medicine takes audiences through the microscope on a fascinating journey of discovery into the world of cells and tissues, where a complex scheme of activity is taking place all the time, literally just beneath the surface.