What does it mean to “learn to be human”?

Please join Professor Tu Weiming for this full semester course, archived in the 1990s at Harvard University, in which he puts forward his view of Confucianism as a form of cosmopolitan moral reasoning uniquely adaptable to the needs of the modern world.

Tu Weiming is the most famous Chinese Confucian thinker of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through his decades of study and teaching at Princeton University, the University of California, Harvard University, and the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University, Tu has aimed to renovate and enhance Confucianism through an encounter with Western social theory and Christian theology. From Tu’s perspective, the Confucian ideas of ren (“humaneness” or “benevolence”) and what he calls “anthropocosmic unity” can make powerful contributions to the resolution of issues facing the contemporary world.

Professor Tu’s Confucian project of “learning to be human” is a universal one, conceived as a work of lifelong learning. It is a project for students of any age, culture, or geographic location, and its profoundly humanistic message can be easily received without previous acquaintance with Classical Asian culture.

We warmly recommend this rare recording as an excellent introduction to the Asian roots of the Innermost House idea. This recording of the full course, originally offered at Harvard in 1996, was recovered in June of 2023 by Mary Evelyn Tucker of Yale University, and we wish to thank her for preserving these lectures and making them available to the broader public through the Cultural China Foundation on Youtube.

Journey of the Universe weaves together the discoveries of the evolutionary sciences together with humanities such as history, philosophy, art, and religion. The course draws on the Emmy-award winning film, Journey of the Universe, and the book from Yale University Press.

Journey explores cosmic evolution as a creative process based on connection, interdependence, and emergence. It examines a range of dynamic interactions in the unfolding of galaxies, Earth, life, and human communities. It investigates ways in which we understand evolutionary processes and the implications for humans and our ecological future.

The Journey course, thus, is based on a new integration that is emerging from the dialogue of the sciences and humanities. Journey tells the story of evolution as an epic narrative, rather than as a series of facts separated by scientific disciplines. This changes our perception so that we begin to see ourselves as an integral part of this narrative. By situating ourselves within this story we can better appreciate the complexity and beauty of processes such as self-organizing dynamics, natural selection, emergence, symbiosis, and co-evolution. As we discover these intricate processes of evolution, we awaken to the beauty and complexity of our natural environment at this critical juncture in our planetary history.

Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale in the School of the Environment, the Divinity School, and the Department of Religious Studies. She teaches in the MA program in religion and ecology and directs the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology with her husband, John Grim. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Asian Religions, especially Japanese Confucianism. Since 1997 she has been a Research Associate at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard. Please join in this famous series HERE.

In this course, we'll read William Shakespeare’s Othello and discuss the play from a variety of perspectives. The goal of the course is not to cover everything that has been written on Othello. Rather, it is to find a single point of entry to help us think about the play as a whole. Our entry point is storytelling.

We'll look at the ways in which Shakespeare's characters tell stories within the play––about themselves, to themselves, and to each other. We'll consider, too, how actors, directors, composers, and other artists tell stories through Othello in performance. By focusing on storytelling, we can see how the play grapples with larger issues including power, identity, and the boundary between fact and fiction.

From lectures filmed on-location in Venice and conversations with artists, academics, and librarians at Harvard, students will have unprecedented access to a range of resources for "unlocking" Shakespeare's classic play.

What you'll learn

• Develop a critical stance on Othello and its protagonist, the “Moor of Venice,” through the central motif of storytelling.

• Use primary sources, including sixteenth-century accounts of Africa and nineteenth- and twentieth-century performance artifacts, to evaluate the play in multiple historical contexts.

• Looking at adaptations of the play from the nineteenth century to the present, evaluate Othello as a platform for conversations about race, gender, class, and nationality.

Join renowned scholar and best-selling author, Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, for this contextual introduction to the author many consider to be the greatest writer who ever lived, examined here through one of his masterpiece tragedies. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

We are living in a contentious time in history. Fundamental disagreements on critical policy, economic, and political issues make it essential to learn how to compose an effective argument and to analyze the arguments of others. This ability will help you engage in civil discourse and make needed changes in society. Conveying a convincing message can benefit your personal, public, and professional lives.

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and speech. In it, you will learn to construct and defend compelling arguments, a crucial skill in many settings. We will be using selected speeches from prominent twentieth-century Americans -- including Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Margaret Chase Smith, Ronald Reagan, and more -- to explore and analyze rhetorical structure and style. Through this analysis, you will learn how speakers and writers persuade an audience to adopt their point of view.

Built around Harvard Professor James Engell's tremendously popular on-campus course, "Elements of Rhetoric," this course will help you analyze and apply rhetorical structure and style, appreciate the relevance of persuasive communication in your own life, and understand how to persuade and recognize when someone is trying to persuade you. You will be inspired to share your viewpoint and discover the most powerful ways to convince others to champion your cause. Join us to find your voice!

We warmly recommend this wonderful course. The full course may be audited at no charge, or, for only a nominal fee, one may interact with other learners and receive a certificate from Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

China’s Political and Intellectual Foundations: From the Sage Kings to Confucius is the first in a comprehensive series on China, introduces you to the history, geography, and culture of the country.

Time, space, and identity — enduring issues in Chinese history — are explored. You’ll study China’s early dynasties to understand how physical geography impacted its inhabitants and how the many ethnicities within the country affected Chinese identity. You’ll learn about China’s origins as told in ancient texts and through modern archeology. You’ll explore the first dynasties during the Chinese bronze age, the many facets of Confucianism and his Analects, and the competing schools of thought that followed.

New political and moral ideas appear in Chinese culture in this period — ideas that make up the country’s intellectual foundations and still resonate today. Join us to learn about China’s origins and how early concepts in Chinese culture still matter in the 21st century.

What you'll learn:

• China’s history from political, geographic, and cultural perspectives.

• The beginning of Chinese history in archaeology and mythology.

• The blossoming of Chinese thought, from Confucius to the Legalists.

• Historical methods for explaining how complex civilizations are formed.

• How to analyze texts and artifacts.

• Methods for the analysis of philosophical and political arguments.

• A critical appreciation of China’s literary, philosophical, political, and cultural resources.

Taught by Harvard University’s Peter K. Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and William C. Kirby, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

By the Tang period, China was divided into northern and southern dynasties with different rulers and political systems. The north was conquered by relatively unsophisticated barbarians, but in the south, the aristocratic families established a refined appreciation of writing and literature.

In this course, the third in a large collection covering all of Chinese history, you’ll learn about the Cosmopolitan Tang and the reemergence of great aristocratic clans. You’ll discover how these clans formed a kind of state aristocracy that dominated Tang government and society.

This period — a product of the Medieval period, and of the development of Buddhism and Daoism — gave the world a model for modern statehood. The great cosmopolitan empire that defined it is among the highest achievements in Medieval culture. Join us to discover those achievements through readings of classical Chinese poetry and a review of the ancient art of calligraphy.

What you'll learn:

• How the dynasties of north and south were reunified under the Sui and Tang.

• How to analyze China’s first multi-ethnic empire and its foreign relations.

• How to compose and analyze poetry and calligraphy.

• How to understand a romantic story as both history and literature.

Taught by Harvard University’s Peter K. Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and William C. Kirby, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Among Harvard’s most popular courses, Justice explores critical analysis of classical and contemporary theories of justice, including discussion of present-day applications. Topics include affirmative action, income distribution, same-sex marriage, the role of markets, debates about rights (human rights and property rights), arguments for and against equality, dilemmas of loyalty in public and private life. The course invites learners to subject their own views on these controversies to critical examination.

The principal readings for the course are texts by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls. Other assigned readings include writings by contemporary philosophers, court cases, and articles about political controversies that raise philosophical questions.

What you'll learn:

• The fundamentals of political philosophy

• An understanding of social justice and criminal justice, and the roles they play in the modern justice system

• A deeper sense of the philosophy that underlies modern issues such as affirmative action, same sex marriage, and equality

• The ability to better articulate and evaluate philosophical arguments and ask philosophical questions

Taught by lauded Harvard professor Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

For over two millennia, Jews throughout the entire world have been committed to reading, interpreting, and living their scriptures. But what are the Jewish scriptures? When were they written? And why are they relevant in the 21st century?

This religion course introduces students to the diversity of the ever-expanding Jewish canon and the equally diverse ways of reading it. It will examine how Jews, ancient and modern, drew inspiration and guidance from the traditional texts while simultaneously reinterpreting their contents in light of new circumstances. The religion we call “Judaism” emerges at the nexus of text, interpretation, and lived tradition.

Whether you are a long-time student of the Jewish scriptures or a complete newcomer, this course will give you a new understanding of the fascinating roles that sacred texts have played in the rich history of Judaism.

What you'll learn:

• The diversity of Jews and Judaism

• Key facts about the primary texts of the Jewish canon

• The role that scripture has played and continues to play in the lives of Jews

• Why the sacred texts of Judaism continue to matter in the 21st century

Taught by Shaye Cohen, Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, this is a course in the World Religions Through Their Scriptures series. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

This course is designed to give students a thorough introduction to early (pre-221 BCE) Chinese thought, its contemporary implications, and the role of religion in human well-being. This period of Chinese history witnessed the formation of all of the major indigenous schools of Chinese thought (Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism and Legalism), which in turn had an impact on the development of East Asian cultural history that is still felt today. We will also explore parallels with Western philosophical and religious traditions, the relevance of early Chinese thought for contemporary debates in ethics, moral education, and political philosophy, and the manner in which early Chinese models of the self-anticipate recent developments in the evolutionary and cognitive sciences.

What you'll learn:

• An empirically-grounded framework for studying other cultures and cultural history

• The origins of early Chinese culture and religion

• Early Confucianism, Daoism and Mohism

• The mid-Warring States “language crisis” and “physiological turn”

• How to analyze philosophical and religious arguments and debates

• Alternative models of ethics, the self, and the individual-society relationship

• The universality and contemporary relevance of basic ethical dilemmas

• The power of spontaneity, and the tensions involved in attaining it

• Religion or spirituality and the role of meaning in human well-being

Taught by Prof. Edward Slingerland, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds adjunct appointments in Philosophy and Psychology. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

In the first act of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice , the Jewish moneylender Shylock proposes a “merry sport” to the merchant Antonio: he will lend Antonio the money he needs if Antonio agrees to let Shylock take a pound of his flesh should he default. Shylock calls this contract a “merry bond,” and Shakespeare’s First Folio calls the play a comedy. But what does Shylock want from the bond, and how merry does the play ultimately prove?

In this course, Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt guides learners through an in-depth exploration of the character of Shylock. You'll learn about Jewish history in Europe, how early audiences might have responded to the play, and the history of the play’s production through the twenty-first century.

With short video lectures, readings from the play, and explorations of adaptations, you will develop critical tools with which to unlock the play's possible meanings.

If you're reading The Merchant of Venice for the first time, this course is a great introduction. If you're reading it for the hundredth time, it is the perfect chance to renew your understanding of one of Shakespeare’s most polarizing plays.

What you'll learn

• Discover sixteenth-century Venice, the commercial hub whose multicultural landscape gives shape to the play

• Analyze Shylock, the Jewish merchant: his moral ambivalence, his isolation from and connections to the other characters, and his troubling conversion

• Situate the play in a long history of artistic representations of Jews in the West, with attention to the problem of anti-Semitism

• Learn how the play, called a “comedy,” incorporates tragic elements that may prompt audiences to identify with Shylock despite his outsider status

• Weigh different responses to Shylock over four centuries through the study of artifacts and interviews with authors, actors, and curators

Join renowned scholar and best-selling author, Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, for this contextual introduction to the author many consider to be the greatest writer who ever lived, examined here through one of his most famous and problematic characters. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Architecture engages a culture’s deepest social values and expresses them in material, aesthetic form. This course will teach you how to understand architecture as both cultural expression and technical achievement. Vivid analyses of exemplary buildings, and hands-on exercises in drawing and modeling, will bring you closer to the work of architects and historians.

The first part of the course introduces the idea of the architectural imagination. Perspective drawing and architectural typology are explored and you will be introduced to some of the challenges in writing architectural history.

Then we address technology as a component of architecture. You will discover ways that innovative technology can enable and promote new aesthetic experiences, or disrupt age-old traditions. Technological advances changed what could be built, and even what could even be thought of as architecture.

Finally, we'll confront architecture’s complex relationship to its social and historical contexts and its audiences, achievements, and aspirations. You will learn about architecture’s power of representation and see how it can produce collective meaning and memory.

Architecture is one of the most complexly negotiated and globally recognized cultural practices, both as an academic subject and a professional career. Its production involves all of the technical, aesthetic, political, and economic issues at play within a given society. Join us as we examine how architecture engages, mediates, and expresses a culture’s complex aspirations.

What you'll learn

• How to read, analyze, and understand different forms of architectural representation

• Social and historical contexts behind major works of architecture

• Basic principles to produce your own architectural drawings and models

• Pertinent content for academic study or a professional career as an architect

Your distinguished instructors in this course are K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, and Erika Naginski, Professor of Architectural History, both at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Midway upon the journey of this our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward path was lost to me.

The Divine Comedy, composed by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and 1320, is widely considered to be the preeminent work of Italian literature and among the greatest poetic masterpieces in the world. An epic poem in three parts, it tells the story of Dante’s journey through the landscape of the afterlife: Inferno describes the suffering of souls misshapen by sin and vice. Purgatorio explores the theme of repentance and the reform of character. Paradiso reveals the transcendent glory and freedom attainable in God.

Through the course of his journey, the pilgrim Dante is accompanied by three guides: Virgil, representing human reason; Beatrice, who represents divine revelation, theology, faith, and grace; and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, representing contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary the Mother of God. Each in turn is charged with leading Dante further along a path of revelation, mirroring the ascent of the individual soul.

Course Lectures

1: Poetry and Character
2: At the Gates of Hell: The Journey Begins
3: Confronting Disordered Loves
4: Freedom from the Inferno
5: The Shores of Mount Purgatorio: Desire and Grace
6: The Seven Terraces: Learning How to Love Well
7: Repentance and Rebirth
8: Rising to Paradiso: “In His Will Is Our Peace”
9: The Theological Virtues
10: The Celestial Rose and the Victory of God

Taught by Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, where he is also a professor of politics and history, and Stephen Smith, Temple Family Professor in English Literature at Hillsdale College. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Today, finding happiness is about mindfulness and discovering your true self. You may have heard that happiness is found by looking within. Ancient Chinese philosophy challenges all of these modern assumptions. From Confucianism to Daoism, the philosophies developed over two thousand years ago are among the most powerful in human history.

The Path to Happiness: What Chinese Philosophy Teaches us about the Good Life brings voices from the past into modern contexts to explore the path to a good life today. The philosophical concepts discussed provide tools to change your life and increase personal happiness by focusing on your actions, the power of ritual, and the importance of sensing the world around you.

Through a series of lectures, animations, discussions, and reflection diaries, this course focuses on close readings from prominent Chinese philosophers. The course requires no prior knowledge of Chinese philosophy or history and all texts are in translation.

Adapted from one of the most popular classes at Harvard, this course is now available online for the first time. Study with Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, and start on your path towards happiness.

We warmly recommend this wonderful course as an excellent introduction to the deep Classical Chinese roots of the Innermost House idea. The full course may be audited at no charge, or, for only a nominal fee, one may interact with other learners and receive a certificate from Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

This short literature course, based on the first half of the Masterpieces of World Literature edX MOOC, examines how civilizations and cultures of the ancient world defined themselves through literature and how that literature has continued to contribute to our understanding of those civilizations and cultures today.

Cities, nations, and empires from antiquity through the middle ages drew on foundational histories and myths for their identities, relating these narratives through generations by means of oral-storytelling and new writing technologies. These epics, story collections, and novels, which take a keen interest in heroic travelers, would eventually travel themselves, finding new global audiences as the first works of world literature.

Tracing developments in language, writing, and literary genre, this course also travels in time, from legendary accounts of ancient kings to histories of medieval courts and early-modern exploration. We will stop to consider how all of these texts affected the history of their own eras, but also how they have continued to find new prominence and significance in ours.

Syllabus:

Section 1: Introduction: What is World Literature? (Goethe)
Section 2: The Birth of Literature (The Epic of Gilgamesh )
Section 3: Homer and the Archeology of the Classical Past (The Odyssey )
Section 4: West-Eastern Conversations (The1001 Nights )
Section 5: The Floating World (The Tale of Genji )
Section 6: The First National Epic (The Lusíads )

Your distinguished instructors: David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, and Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, at Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Learning to read poetry is learning to do the deep magic of language. It's learning to speak to the dead. At first the book just sits there silent as the grave, but if we listen carefully then, softly at first, the poetry begins to speak to us and we find ourselves speaking to it in response. Dante is the master of speaking with the dead. He convinces us that the dead can tell us things we do not know—things we cannot discover about the meaning of life because we are still in the middle of it. He shows us that conversations with the dead can change the way that we look at life. You and I may not have enough imagination to explore the realms of death that open up in the middle of life, and Dante knows that no one can find their way through life without a guide. This course will help you discover the magic of Dante's poetry and Dante will teach you to imagine the deepest terrors and the highest hopes that are still undiscovered in your heart. Only then will you be in a position to decide finally, for yourself, who you choose to become.

In this course, you will begin to question for yourself the meaning of human freedom, responsibility and identity by reading and responding to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. The Comedy , which is richly steeped in the medieval culture of 14th century, still speaks vividly to modern readers struggling with the questions “who am I?” and “what meaning or value can my life have?” Dante struggled with the same questions before coming to a moment of vision that wholly transformed him as a person.

This course is presented to you through the MyDante platform, an online environment developed by Professor Frank Ambrosio in collaboration with the Georgetown University Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS). Throughout the course, you will be asked to reflect on Dante's interpretation of freedom, how it functions in the formation of personal identity, and whether we might be able to find appropriate metaphors to discuss these issues in our modern lives. You, the modern reader, will only understand the full implications of Dante's poetry if you participate with it in a way that is personal and genuinely contemplative. Through the MyDante platform, you will learn to know yourself in your own historical, personal, and spiritual contexts as you journey toward a richer understanding of your freedom, identity, and responsibility as a person.

Taught by Georgetown University’s Frank Ambrosio, Associate Professor of Philosophy Senior Fellow, Francesco Ciabattoni, Term Associate Professor in Italian Literature, Italian Department, Jo Ann Moran Cruz, Associate Professor of History, and Eddie Maloney, Professor of English. Please enroll HERE.

This literature course explores how great writers refract their world and how their works are transformed when they intervene in our global cultural landscape today.

No national literature has ever grown up in isolation from the cultures around it; from the earliest periods, great works of literature have probed the tensions, conflicts, and connections among neighboring cultures and often more distant regions as well.

Focusing particularly on works of literature that take the experience of the wider world as their theme, this course will explore the varied artistic modes in which great writers have situated themselves in the world, helping us to understand the deep roots of today's intertwined global cultures.

Syllabus

Section 1: Goethe and the Birth of World Literature
Section 2:  The Epic of Gilgamesh
Section 3: Homer, The Odyssey
Section 4:  The 1001 Nights
Section 5: Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Section 6:  The Lusiads
Section 7: Voltaire, Candide
Section 8: Lu Xun and Eileen Chang
Section 9: Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Section 10: Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman
Section 11: Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri
Section 12: Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red

Your distinguished instructors: David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, and Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, at Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

This module of The Book: Histories Across Time and Space focuses on the physical qualities of books, the role of books in 17th and 18th century France, and the emergence of literature as a modern form of culture.

We will focus on the importance of books as physical objects and the raw material of literature--namely, paper. By considering the nature of paper and how it was made during the early modern period--from Gutenberg's time to the early nineteenth century--we can begin to understand the character of books and the way they worked.

This module also examines how books fit into the legal and political system of France under the Old Regime during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the French set standards imitated throughout Europe. Before modern copyright, legal books had privileges, granted by the king, which provided a guarantee of quality as well as certification of orthodoxy. To qualify for a privilege, books had to be approved by censors. Uncensored books, including most of the works of the Enlightenment, were usually produced outside France and circulated in the kingdom through a vast underground distribution system.

In addition, this module addresses the emergence of literature as a modern form of culture, which can be studied best in eighteenth-century England. The first copyright law (1710), a high rate of literacy, a booming consumer market, a precocious periodical industry, and entrepreneurial publishing concentrated in London led to the development of a new kind of author--the independent writer. Samuel Johnson epitomized this new phenomenon. This module will allow you to get a close look at him and everything he represented by providing access to the Hyde Collection of Johnson's books and papers in Houghton Library at Harvard.

What you'll learn:

• The importance of books as physical objects

• The construction of books

• The role of legal books in 17th and 18th century France

• The subversive role of illegal books in 17th and 18th century France

• The circumstances surrounding emergence of literature as a modern form of culture

• The early stages of copyright law and an the development of the independent writer

Please join Dr. Robert Danton, the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard University. Professor Danton has published extensively on the history of books since its emergence as a distinct field of study in the 1960s. Among his books are The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie; The Literary Underground of the Old Regime; The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France; The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future; and Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature. Please enroll HERE.

Albert Einstein has become the icon of modern science. Following his scientific, cultural, philosophical, and political trajectory, this course aims to track the changing role of physics in the 20th and 21st centuries. This history course addresses Einstein's engagement with relativity, quantum mechanics, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, the arts, and technology, and raises basic questions about what it means to understand physics in its broader history.

Participants in the course will follow seventeen lessons, each of which will present a mix of science (no prerequisites!) and the broader, relevant cultural surround. Some weeks will examine the physics concepts, while others will see excerpts of films or discuss modernist poetry that took off from relativity. Or we might be looking at the philosophical roots and philosophical consequences of Einstein’s works. At other times we will be fully engaged with historical and political questions: the building, dropping, and proliferation of nuclear weapons, for example.

Typically, in a lesson (about an hour of streamed material), there will be opportunities for individual mini-essay writing, some multiple choice questions to bolster your understanding of the science, and a group activity which might one week be a debate and another a collective commentary on elements of an artwork from 1920s Weimar Germany.

What you'll learn

• Through the life and work of Albert Einstein, the changing role of physics in the 20th and 21st centuries.

• Einstein's engagement with relativity, quantum mechanics, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, the arts, and technology

• How to engage with questions about what it means to understand physics in its broader history.

Your distinguished instructor for this course is Peter Galison, Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University. Among his many publications, prizes, and works, Prof. Galison is co-founder of the Black Hole Initiative, an interdisciplinary center for the study of these most extreme objects. His current research is on the history and philosophy of black holes and, in another direction, on the changing relation of technology to the self. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll here.

Explore what it means to be human today by studying what it meant to be a hero in ancient Greek times with this immensely popular course offered by Professor Gregory Nagy, Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. and Nafplio, Greece.

Learners will experience, in English translation, some of the most beautiful works of ancient Greek literature and song-making spanning a thousand years from the 8th century BCE through the 3rd century CE: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey ; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; dialogues of Plato, and On Heroes by Philostratus. All of the resources are free and designed to be equally accessible and transformative for a wide audience.

You will gain access to a supportive learning community led by Professor Nagy and his Board of Readers, who model techniques for "reading out" of ancient texts. This approach allows readers with little or even no experience in the subject matter to begin seeing this literature as an exquisite, perfected system of communication.

No previous knowledge of Greek history, literature, or language is required. This is a project for students of any age, culture, and geographic location, and its profoundly humanistic message can be easily received without previous acquaintance with Western Classical literature.

We warmly recommend this wonderful course as the best introduction to the classical roots of the Innermost House idea. The full course may be audited at no charge, or, for only a nominal fee, one may interact with other learners and receive a certificate from Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

As we pass the centennial of the passage of women’s suffrage in 1920, there has been a burst of activism among American women. Women are running for political office in record numbers. Women are organizing and taking to the streets to demand change. Women are grappling with inclusion and intersectionality.

While some of this activity may have been a response to the 2016 presidential elections, its roots lie deep in 20th-century history — a history richly preserved in Harvard’s Schlesinger Library building on the library’s 75th Anniversary Exhibit.

What you'll learn:

• The many ways ordinary people have created change

• The centrality of women in American history

• How history is complex, nonlinear, and in constant conversation with the present

• How objects can embody stories of change

• How our understanding of history is shaped by which stories are told

This course exemplifies the importance of archives in the making of history. Professors Laurel Ulrich and Jane Kamensky, along with colleagues from across Harvard University and beyond, show how women in the 20th-century United States pushed boundaries, fought for new rights, and challenged contemporary notions of what women could and should do.

Through the exploration of ten iconic objects from the Schlesinger collection, they demonstrate how women created change by embracing education, adopting new technologies, and creating innovative works of art; pushing against discrimination and stepping into new roles in public and in private. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

What is the American Renaissance? How did Dartmouth help foster the formation of the American Renaissance and its reevaluation and reinvention in the twentieth? Why should we, as twenty-first century readers, concern ourselves with this literature?

Join a hybrid community of learners, both online and in residence at Dartmouth College, as we discover how to discern the historical turning points involved in the production and transmission of American Renaissance writings. We will conceptualize the role historical and affective turning points continue to play in the selection, interpretation and valuation of these writings.

Together we will propose continuities and discontinuities between these historical literary works and the present. Along the way we will construct global and temporal mappings between a set of seemingly disparate locations, myths, and traditions.

Join us in a discussion of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain as we explore literary, political and historical context, their desire to create a distinctively national literature, and the ongoing controversy over the local, national, and transnational significance of this literature.

Please join Professor Donald E. Pease Jr. for this introduction to the age of Emerson. Dr. Pease is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at Dartmouth College. He is the founder and director of the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth; editor of Duke University Press book series The New Americanists, author of numerous important books on 19th c. America. Please enroll HERE.

Christianity is a global religion. From modest beginnings 2,000 years ago, it has grown to encompass nearly a third of the human population. Diverse in languages, cultures, histories and creeds, Christians nonetheless share a common collection of sacred scripture called the Bible.

This four-week-long religion course introduces you to the Bible and its scripture and asks the questions:

• What are the contents, languages, and forms of Bibles in various times and places?

• How have Christians lived out their stories and teachings?

• How does Christian history reflect the contested and varied uses of scripture—in the ancient Roman world where Christianity began, in its spread through European and American colonialism, in the diverse forms it takes in varied locations around the globe?

What you'll learn:

• What’s in the Bible, the book containing the sacred scriptures of Christians.

• An overview of contents with a focus on diverse interpretations of well-known passages.

• Exploration of select themes, such as how Christians approach diversity, attitudes toward non-Christian traditions, existential questions of suffering and violence, the encounter with modern science, the roles of women, liturgical time and pilgrimage.

With the guidance of Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, you will begin to explore these questions and others while learning about the content and interpretations of the sacred texts of Christianity. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

This course expands the definition of the “book” to include scrolls and albums, focusing on the reading experience of a variety of formats in traditional Japan.

Module 1: Books, Scrolls, and Religious Devotion
This unit offers special access to a unique group of books and scrolls and sacred objects once interred inside a thirteenth-century Buddhist sculpture of Prince Shotoku, now in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums. The works to be studied represent the most prevalent formats of Japanese books, but they display striking material idiosyncrasies that will help us understand how and why manuscripts were made, and how they could be personalized for individual readers, motivated, in this case, by religious devotion.

Module 2: Visual and Textual Storytelling: Short-Story Scrolls
Enter into the storyworlds of two lively illustrated Japanese tales, The Tale of the Rat (Nezumi sôshi) and The Chrysanthemum Spirit (Kiku no sei monogatari) in the Harvard Art Museums. Both tales are illustrated in the “small scroll” ( ko-e ) format, roughly half the size of standard scrolls, resembling medieval paperbacks, and intended for personal reading and private libraries. This unit focuses on reading experience, exploring the interrelationship between word and image, and explaining how literary and pictorial conventions work together to communicate a story.

Module 3: “Multimedia” Books: The Tale of Genji
Japan’s most celebrated work of fiction, The Tale of Genji , has been continuously read from the time it appeared in the eleventh-century to the present day and provides a perfect case study for exploring various book formats over the centuries in Japan. Using decorated manuscripts, richly illustrated albums, and a playful printed book of a Genji spin-off, A Fraudulent Murasaki’s Rustic Genji (Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji), this unit showcases the spectacular visual and material properties of Genji volumes that make them suggestive of “multimedia” books.

Join Harvard’s Melissa McCormick, Professor of Japanese Art and Culture, as she draws on the rich collections of the university’s libraries and museums to illustrate this course in a larger series on the history of books, where learners explore the book not merely as a container of content, but as significant physical objects that have shaped the way we understand the world around us. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Based on the second half of the Masterpieces of World Literature edX MOOC, this short literature course examines how writers reach beyond national and linguistic boundaries as worldly readers and travelers, and how their modern fictions rise to the status of world literature.

These masterpieces of modern world literature take part in a tradition of weaving small stories into ambitious projects—one that reaches back to medieval tales and extends forward to contemporary novels. Throughout the course, you will learn how these writers use their fictions to engage directly with the political and social concerns of their present and of a globalized modernity, relating experiences of exploration, migration, international conflict, and cultural exchange.

Syllabus

Section 1: Introduction: What is World Literature? (Goethe)
Section 2: West-Eastern Conversations (The 1001 Nights )
Section 3: Enlightenment in the Colonies (Candide)
Section 4: China and Its Neighbors (Lu Xun and Eileen Chang)
Section 5: Inventing Latin America (Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones )
Section 6: From Empire to Globe (Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman )
Section 7: East-West Encounters (Salman Rushdie, East, West ; Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies )
Section 8: Istanbul in – or as – the World (Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red 

Your distinguished instructors: David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, and Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, at Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony premiered in Vienna in 1824, and continues to be one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire. The monumental symphony’s size and complexity stretches traditional instrumental forms to the breaking point, and its famous choral finale changed our view of orchestral music forever.

First Nights - Beethoven's 9th Symphony and the 19th Century Orchestra guides learners through all four movements of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, highlighting aspects of symphonic form, describing Beethoven’s composition process, the rehearsals and premiere performance, and the work’s continued relevance today.

You will learn the basics of musical form and analysis, the genres and styles used and the circumstances of this symphony’s first performance and subsequent history. Learners in this course need not have any prior musical experience.

Additional First Nights Modules:
Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and the Birth of Opera
Handel’s Messiah and Baroque Oratorio
Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony"
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Program Music in the 19th Century
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring: Modernism, Ballet, and Riots

Taught by Thomas Forrest Kelly, Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

In China’s history, there has been a longstanding belief that being cultured and being moral are necessary for a person to participate in public life. We often think of China in political terms – and focus on the history of government – or in social terms – and study the role of the family in society. But this course looks at the individual and the striving for culture and morality.

In China Humanities, you will explore the idea of China as a country of individuals who create the thing we call Chinese culture through their own art, literature, and philosophy. The course will focus on how individuals pursue unique forms of expression, act upon their distinct experiences, and follow their own desires, creating enduring works that we continue to look to for inspiration and wisdom.

You will discuss the theories of early Chinese thinkers like Confucius and Zhuangzi, explore the poetry of writers like Tao Yuanming and Du Fu, read from novels such as the Dream of the Red Chamber, and learn how to see painting and calligraphy – all with a particular focus on how these works have shaped Chinese culture as we know it today.

Your distinguished instructors for this course are Harvard University’s Peter K. Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Wai-yee Li, Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Stephen Owen, James Bryant Conant University Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology.

We warmly recommend this wonderful course as an excellent introduction to the deep Classical Chinese roots of the Innermost House idea of the individual. The full course may be audited at no charge, or, for only a nominal fee, one may interact with other learners and receive a certificate from Harvard University. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Ever wondered about the sacred scriptures that have sustained for millennia one of the oldest and most diverse religions of the world - Hinduism? Want to discover the lessons this history may offer mankind in the 21st century?

This religion course introduces the rich and diverse textual sources from which millions of Hindus have drawn religious inspiration for millennia. The Bhagavad Gita has offered philosophical insights to a number of modern thinkers. This course will introduce important passages from important Hindu sacred texts, their interpretations by moderns and will give you an opportunity to engage with them.

What you'll learn:

• Religious and philosophical insights conveyed in Hindu texts

• How scriptures are interpreted to diverse ends in different historical contexts

• Sensitive appreciation of world religions

Taught by Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, Associate Professor at Wellesley College, this is a course in the World Religions Through Their Scriptures series. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

Whether you are new to the study of Buddhism or have been studying it or practicing it for years, this course will provide you with the opportunity to become acquainted with a variety of Buddhist teachings while guiding you to think about them, and yourself, in new ways.

Through a combination of carefully selected readings, both scriptural and informational, as well as exposure to various forms of Buddhist practice such as art, devotional acts, and literary works, you will learn how to interpret, reflect upon, and apply the teachings of the Buddha to your own life and deepen your understanding of Buddhism.

What you'll learn:

• Religious/philosophical insights conveyed in Buddhist texts

• How scriptures are interpreted to diverse ends in different historical contexts

• Sensitive appreciation of world religions

Taught by Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures at Harvard University, this is a course in the World Religions Through Their Scriptures series. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

The study of religion is the study of a rich and fascinating dimension of human experience that includes but goes well beyond beliefs and ritual practices.

In this four-week-long religion course, learners explore case studies about how religions are internally diverse, how they evolve and change through time, and how religions are embedded in all dimensions of human experience. We’ll explore these tenets through the lens of scripture and through themes such as gender and sexuality, art, violence and peace, science, and power and authority.

What you'll learn:

• Tools for how to interpret the roles religions play in contemporary and historic contexts;

• How religions are internally diverse

• How religions evolve and change

• How religions are embedded in all human cultures

• The strengths and limitations of learning about religions through their scriptures.

Join Diane L. Moore, Senior Lecturer and the Director of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard University, and peers from around the world, to embark on this journey to better understand religion in human affairs. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

How do we read Shakespeare? Do his plays belong to the past, or the present? To a famed dramatic genius or to readers and audiences around the globe? What do his plays really mean?

Moving between the world in which Shakespeare lived and the present day, this course will introduce different kinds of literary analysis that you can use when reading Shakespeare. With short videos filmed on location in England and readings covering topics like Shakespeare's contemporaries and the politics of modern performance, you will learn a range of critical tool that you can use to unlock the meaning and relevance of Shakespeare’s plays.

Join us as we visit Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was born in 1564; London, the lively city where he began as an actor; and the Globe Theater, where his first plays were performed. This journey through Shakespeare’s life will transport you to another era and will give you a new perspective on his timeless work.

What you'll learn:

• The cultural significance of Shakespeare's plays and their performance

• How Shakespeare’s work was considered in his own time and in the present, in his own country and around the world

• Different approaches to textual interpretation

• How to consider authorial intention, historical context, and present relevance

• How to analyze Shakespeare's plays on the page and in performance

• Foundational knowledge on Shakespeare that can be applied to his specific works

Join renowned scholar and best-selling author, Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, for this contextual introduction to the author many consider to be the greatest writer who ever lived. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

How can you improve your understanding of Islam and its most important holy text, the Quran? How can you make sense of a tradition and a text that have been interpreted in different ways across vast geographical spaces for nearly a millennium and a half?

Using a multimedia and student-centered approach, this religion course provides tools and perspectives for understanding the role of the Quran in the Islamic tradition. Learners will develop the skills and context to read the text themselves, while also being introduced to some of the issues classical and contemporary interpreters have addressed. This approach enables learners to explore the influence of the Quran on diverse Muslim understandings of Islam.

What you'll learn

• An introduction to the place of the Quran in Muslim cultures

• Major themes of the Quran

• The historical and cultural contexts of the Quran

• Interpretive skills that enable a more nuanced reading of the Quran

• Diverse approaches Muslims have adopted to engaging with Quranic texts, including issues in contemporary interpretation

Taught by Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures at Harvard University, this is a course in the World Religions Through Their Scriptures series. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

In the first act of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the Ghost of the dead King of Denmark appears to his son, setting off a chain of events that culminates in the play’s notoriously bloody finale. But how would this mysterious figure have been understood in Shakespeare’s time?

Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt guides learners through an exploration of the Ghost’s uncanny theatrical power and the historical contexts from which the character emerged. You will be introduced to the narrative sources of Hamlet, the religious convictions that shaped how Renaissance England understood the afterlife, and how the Ghost would have thrilled and challenged its original audience. By focusing on the Ghost, you will see how the play grapples with issues like death, mourning, remembrance, and the power of theatre.

Through short video lectures, readings from the play as well as later works by Coleridge and Joyce, and conversations with experts, you will develop critical tools with which to "unlock" the play's possible meanings.

Part 1: Spirit? Apparition? Illusion?
Part 1, we read Acts 1-2, analyzing how Shakespeare introduces the mysterious figure of the Ghost and builds up to Hamlet's encounter with it.

Part 2: Imagining the Afterlife
In Part 2, we continue our reading with Acts 3-4 and look closely at the religious controversies following the Protestant Reformation.

Part 3: The Theater of Mourning
As we finish reading the play, we weigh the idea that the play is "about" revenge with the idea that it is "about" remembrance.

Part 4: The Texts of Hamlet
In Part 4, we turn to the earliest printed texts of the play, situating them in a broader understanding of early modern print and manuscript production. 

Join renowned scholar and best-selling author, Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, for this look into the heart of Hamlet. For beginners, it is a great introduction. If you're reading Hamlet for the hundredth time, it is the perfect chance to revisit and refresh your "take" on Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.

This course is designed to give students a thorough introduction to early (pre-221 BCE) Chinese thought, its contemporary implications, and the role of religion in human well-being. Part 2 builds upon Part 1 by exploring late Warring States thinkers such as the Confucian Mencius, the Daoist Zhuangzi, and the return to externalism in the form of Xunzi—who believed Mencius betrayed the original Confucian vision—and his former student Hanfeizi, a “Legalist” thinker who helped lay the foundations for the autocratic system that unified the Warring States into China’s first empire. We will conclude with some reflections on what it means to study religious thought, and the thought of other cultures, in a modern, globalized world. Part 2 can be taken as a stand-alone course, but will be more comprehensible and rewarding with the background provided in Part 1.
See also: Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science - Part 1

What you'll learn:

• Legalism and the origins of the imperial Chinese state

• How to analyze philosophical and religious arguments and debates

• Alternative models of ethics, the self, and the individual-society relationship

• The universality and contemporary relevance of basic ethical dilemmas

• The power of spontaneity, and the tensions involved in attaining it

• Religion or spirituality and the role of meaning in human well-being

Taught by Prof. Edward Slingerland, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds adjunct appointments in Philosophy and Psychology. Revolving enrollment. Please enroll HERE.