Germany

Here is yet another tip that I got through the great blog of DIY Scholar. She reviews high quality podcasts, just like me, but is more exclusively focussed on University lectures and in addition writes also about books, vodcasts or video and anything else that has to do with free learning.

She has a very good grip on what academic institutions all over the world have to offer and as a result caught up on the British universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who have started to follow their American counterparts and begun to put good courses on line. One of DIY Scholar's mentions is a course on Oxford about German politics since 1945.

A German scholar, Andreas Busch (with hardly an accent it needs to be pointed out) gives this series with historic and legal constitutional background. The podcasts are enhanced with his power point (feed). I am in the third lecture now and like what I hear. A good podcast in political science and also interesting for history buffs such as myself. (And here I try to forget that once upon a time I taught constitutional law - god forbid!)

More Germany:
New Europe, Old Europe,
Antisemitism,
Germany (Berkeley History 167B),
Missing Link from Berlin.

Non Violence readers

Here is a short review for a lecture series that I occasionally listen to. It is a twofold feature, officially named PACS 164A and PACS 164B. In the academic year 2006/2007 Berkeley offered these courses about Non-Violence. The lecturer Michael Nagler uses the first series to explain the philosophy of Gandhi and then proceeds to tell the history of Gandhi non-violent career and then connects to Martin Luther King. The second series intends to reveal non-violence in the current time.

I do not succeed in very persistently follow the lectures. There is an air of self-righteousness I cannot stand for a long time, no matter how hard I want to believe in non-violence. Nevertheless, I do not abandon altogether and so, some time in the far future, I will sum up these podcasts in hindsight. Until then, I'd like to point out again, they are there and deliver also some news. The readers that go with the courses have been published on line so that, everyone who wishes, can follow more closely.

Previously on PACS 164:
Non Violence

The Kingdom of Ghana

Before I tell about a podcast lecture that touches upon the Kingdom of Ghana (not the same as contemporary Ghana) a few words about UCSD. This university delivers some great content that is easily accessible on line. The current courses available contain among others two series about Medieval History (MMW3). My advice to you is to download all lectures as soon as you can, for further use. I found out that UCSD rather quickly tends to archive those courses and then empties the feed. This happened for example to the course CATS 2 about the interaction of science, religion, culture and society. The course was given earlier this year and has been removed, before I could finish it.

Now to Ghana. This medieval kingdom is touched upon in the UCSD series MMW 3, more specifically in the series by Professor Herbst in lecture 15 (May 20th, 2008). Mostly, Africa has been tribal, but a kingdom could come into existence because of trade. Trade became possible as soon as the Arabs and Berbers figured out, how to cross the Sahara with camels. With the camels they brought in salt from the salt pans in the Sahara and traded it, most importantly for gold. Ghana was a kingdom situated roughly where today are Mauretania and Mali. The gold was not from their soil, they got it from peoples further south. With trade, also Islam reached this part of the world. Soon the elite of the Kingdom of Ghana became Muslims.

I was wondering whether also in earlier times gold made it from West-Africa to the rest of the world. Maybe through Egypt or Ethiopia. There are so many questions and so few podcasts with answers. Maybe there are very few sources, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was also little research. Africa still lies largely undiscovered.

More MMW 3:
Gupta History,
World history guided by the religions,
World history outside the European box,
Making of the Modern World - UCSD,
UC San Diego's podcast courses.

Bob on Tours - history podcast review

The most productive of all history podcasts is History according to Bob. Bob Packett is a college history professor, who uses his spare time to crank out straightforward podcast episodes on a daily basis. He touches on the widest variety of subjects imaginable, but does this as part of various programmatic lines he commits to. For example, he has embarked upon a series to tell the history of the Franks. After many episodes, he has reached the first big known climax: Charles Martel's victory at the battle of Tours.

Recently we have had another podcast, with David Levering Lewis, touching upon this subject. (review) This took a detached, if Muslim, perspective on the battle. Bob, of course, takes the Frankish, Christian perspective of Charles Martel. He dedicated two podcasts to Charles Martel personally and one to the Battle of Tours. The latter, was actually an older podcast he had done many months ago, Bob has reissued. On a side note: we can see how Bob has developed over time.

Bob makes a very meticulous report of the Battle of Tours (732 AD). He sets the stage; showing the Arab advance into Europe, explaining the importance of Tours (holy site) and constructing the position of Martel. Martel was a lot stronger than the Arabs assumed. Martel was a good strategist and he had battle-hardened troops at his disposal. He also managed to rally the Church and through the Church the people to his personal cause. The Ummayyad cavalry was maneuvered in an unfavorable position, but decided to attack anyway. Martel's troops maintained formation and the Arab's were the first to break discipline, thus taking the loss. Ultimately Bob also analyzes the importance and effects of the victory (interestingly, not incoherent with David Levering Lewis) and as usual gives his sources.

Relevant posts:
Islam and Europe,
Making of the Modern World - UCSD,
Islam meets Europe,
The Franks,
Thinking Outside the European Box.

Samson, the conflicted hero

Muscular Judaism is the title of a podcast delivering the recordings of five lectures delving into the story of Samson and trying to interpret this unusual figure in Judaism. I was directed to this podcast by fellow blogger DIY Scholar.

Two elements make this from the start an refreshing enterprise. One is the parallels that are being made with the current situation of Israel and the Palestinians. However the positions are reversed; the Israelis rule and the Palestinians are the subdued. The other is that Samson is taken for the uneasy figure he is. He is an unusual kind of hero in Judaism with his physical prowess and his sexual escapades with enemy women. Deeper than that, he is a man with a troubled, torn psyche; uneasy with his holy task, confused about his identity and hopelessly failing in his relations.

Lecturer Eli Ungarn, reveals he is inspired by David Grossman's interpretation of Samson, but to my taste, he doesn't completely succeed in supporting, or even explaining Grossman's characterization of Samson as an artist. What struck me more than that, was how Samson seemingly rebels against his task. He tries to connect with, and become part of the Philistines, but even in his rebellion, he fumbles and achieves nothing but the opposite. The story emphasizes, how this was all part and parcel of God's plan from the start. And so, even more, Samson in spite of all his might (he also turns out to be quite smart) is a human disaster from the git go.

The dialectic of knowledge and culture

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) offers a podcast containing a lecture series of Professor Tal Golan (History of Science). It is part of a scientific program that usually is rather technical. This particular series (CATS2), however, is historical and it proposes to hand the history of science and reveal the relationship between what we know and how we organize the world. (feed)

Golan says, you could title the series with 'Laws of men and laws of nature', which is also a book of his. He intends to show that what is perceived as knowledge and how knowledge is organized and institutionalized in society, is closely related with how society is organized, politically, legally, economically and so on. Considerations about truth designate how research is done (if at all), how theories are conceived (if at all) and who is assumed to have authority in this field. This authority in turn designates who can advise the political leaders, what agendas are served, what problems are detected and how it is assumed they can be handled.

In many ways this is a history of ideas and consequently, a more structured and deeper version of the BBC's In Our Time. At times it is very abstract and since I have not finished the course yet, I cannot begin to make any final review about it. I can only strongly recommend it. You are going to find out why for the Greeks it was not meaningful to conduct experiments, why this was essential for Christianity and the society of the Middle Ages and how the intellectual efforts of Galileo, to Descartes to Kant and others, completely revolutionized the world. Such a deep search is also confusing at times and Golan admits that right from the beginning and occasionally starts all over again. He announces he is not happy with how he has construed his argument and gives it another try. This may seem unstructured, but actually is thrilling.

More UCSD:
Gupta History,
World history guided by the religions,
World history outside the European box,
Making of the Modern World - UCSD,
UC San Diego's podcast courses.