Monday, August 9, 2010

The interpretation of modern history - History 1c UCLA

Over the past months I have followed (again) the entire course of History 1c at UCLA - Western Civilization 1715-present. (feed) This is an undergraduate modern history course which you can freely follow about once a year among UCLA's courses. Professor Lynn Hunt is the main lecturer who is occasionally replaced by a guest speaker who is an expert on the subject or era at hand. The accessibility can vary with the guests, but with Hunt one is always sure to get an engaged, informative and inspiring lecture.

The obvious order to go through the lectures is to start from the first (which is on the bottom of the list from your feed - observe the dates) and work your way to the last. In case you want to make a pick, check with the course website.

As is always the case when you listen in on a university course is that in addition to the material, you get some audio time that is spent on the course's technicalities. Stuff about section, about papers, about breaks and about the exam and usually you'd want to skip that. However, there is a special treat in this realm to be found here. Listen to the last lecture. Here Hunt tries to prepare her audience for the essay questions on the exam and while this may normally be the kind of stuff you'd want to skip, Hunt goes about this so extensive, that you get a bonus to the course that highlights the conceptual issues with the covered history and historiography. Hunt supplies more questions than answers, more open ends than conclusions and this really deepens the material. You might even want to take this lecture before going through the entire series.

More History 1c:
Holocaust,
Nietzsche in a nutshell,
Industrialization and Italian unification,
History since 1715.