history

Overview Indigenous Canada is a 12-lesson Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that explores Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. From an Indigenous perspective, this course explores key issues facing Indigenous peoples today from a historical and critical perspective...

Overview This is a survey of modern history from a global perspective. Part One begins with the political and economic revolutions of the late 1700s and tracks the transformation of the world during the 1800s. Part One concludes as these bewildering changes seem to be running beyond the capacity...

Overview This is a survey of modern history from a global perspective. Part Two begins early in the twentieth century, as older ways of doing things and habits of thought give way. What follows is an era of cataclysmic struggles over what ideas and institutions will take their place. The course...

Overview A House Divided: The Road to Civil War, 1850-1861 begins by examining how generations of historians have explained the crisis of the Union. After discussing the institution of slavery and its central role in the southern and national economies, it turns to an account of the political...

Overview A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-1865 narrates the history of the American Civil War. While it examines individual engagements and the overall nature of the military conflict, the focus is less on the battlefield than on political, social, and economic change in the Union and...

Overview The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1865-1890: The Unfinished Revolution, examines the pivotal but misunderstood era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, the first effort in American history to construct an interracial democracy. Beginning with a discussion of the dramatic...

Overview In this four-part mini-course, Professor Jeffrey Sachs argues that we have always lived in a global world. He takes students on a historical and anthropological tour of six distinct waves of globalization and outlines the key factors that drove innovation, technology dispersal and...

Overview Humans have been navigating for ages. As we developed the tools and techniques for determining location and planning a route, navigation grew into a practice, an art, and a science. Navigational skill has long been tied to commercial, economic, and military success. However, the ability...

Overview Where is Giza? How were the Pyramids built? How did the cemeteries and hundreds of decorated tombs around them develop? What was Giza’s contribution to this first great age of ancient Egyptian civilization, the Old Kingdom? The Giza Plateau and its cemeteries — including the majestic...

Overview You will study this course in two parts. The first presents the main political events that set the chronological framework for the course, namely 6th century to the arrival of the Ottomans in the Middle East in the beginning of the 16th century. The second part delves into social and...

Overview This mini-course is a general introduction to both to medieval medicine and to the value of using manuscripts. Professor Y. Tzvi Langermann presents a case study that builds from a unique 15th-century volume in which three important medical manuscripts in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic (Arabic...

Overview Understand Greek and Roman approaches to health and well-being What did being healthy in ancient Rome or Greece look like? How can we tell what well-being meant in ancient times? This online course will help you investigate these questions, using both literary and archaeological...

Overview Explore Scottish history and learn more about using historical sources Palaeography is the study of ancient handwriting and a vital skill in the historian’s toolkit. It is essential when conducting research on early modern Scotland – a period of profound political, religious and social...

Overview Travel back to the 15th century and explore life during the time of Richard III The discovery of the skeleton of Richard III in a Leicester car park - and the recent revelations of an infidelity within his family’s bloodline - have made headline news around the world. Go beyond the...

Overview Explore the archaeology of the most heavily fortified frontier in the Roman Empire, its people and their lives. Hadrian’s Wall stretches over 73 miles (117 km), from coast to coast in what is now Northern England. The Wall, complemented by a sophisticated system of outposts and coastal...

Overview Explore the British Empire through six controversial themes Over six weeks, we’ll explore the British Empire through six themes - money, violence, race, religion, gender and sex, and propaganda. You’ll get to hear the stories of the fascinating individuals who contributed to both its...

Overview Trace the roots of modern science How did the science of today come about? What constitutes ‘modern’ science? How does science relate to religion? Answer these questions and more with this course that travels back in time to the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution to explore the...

Overview Travel back in time to discover Australian history. On this course you will take a journey through Australian history. You will examine a range of periods and topics including Aboriginal deep time history, transportation and convictism and colonialism. This course will also introduce...

Overview Discover key moments in American history after the Civil War American history is vast and complex. Through this course you will explore some of its key moments - examining domestic history and foreign relations. You will investigate the background to the modern history of the United...

Overview Uncover the turbulent history of Tudor England and its lasting impact From magnificence and martyrs to weddings and war, the Tudor period was one of the most eventful in British history. The reigns of the five (or was it six?) monarchs during the late fifteenth to seventeenth century...