What Would MLK Say About the USA Today?

in Current Affairs, History, Stanford | January 15th, 2010

What would Mar­tin Luther King Jr. think about Amer­i­ca in 2010? Few would know bet­ter than Clay­borne Car­son, the Stan­ford his­to­ri­an who directs the Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Research and Edu­ca­tion Insti­tute. In this talk, Car­son describes MLK’s like­ly thoughts about Amer­i­ca dur­ing the Great Reces­sion. King cared deeply about eco­nom­ic jus­tice, and it’s clear that King would­n’t have looked unam­biva­lent­ly upon the inequal­i­ties that the finan­cial melt­down made so glar­ing­ly obvi­ous. Next week, the U.S. will cel­e­brate King’s birth­day and bankers will col­lect their record-set­ting bonus­es …

Note: Clay­borne Car­son is cur­rent­ly hold­ing Open Office Hours on Stan­ford’s Face­book Page. Be sure to vis­it. Also, Pro­fes­sor Car­son has taught an online course that you can freely down­load. It’s called African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle, and you can find it on YouTube and iTunes. It’s also the first course that appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es.

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Talking American History with Joseph Ellis

in History | December 23rd, 2009

Let me quick­ly call your atten­tion to an inter­view with Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning and best­selling his­to­ri­an, who most recent­ly pub­lished Amer­i­can Cre­ation: Tri­umphs and Tragedies in the Found­ing of the Repub­lic. In this casu­al, wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten below or here) with Russ Roberts, the host of Econ­Talk, Ellis talks through the found­ing years of the Unit­ed States — the break with Eng­land, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, the draft­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion and the forg­ing of the nation. A good con­ver­sa­tion for his­to­ry buffs, and an infor­ma­tive talk for those less famil­iar with Amer­i­ca’s begin­nings. You can gen­er­al­ly find Econ­Talk (which typ­i­cal­ly focus­es on eco­nom­ics) here: iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site.

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Google to Provide Virtual Tours of 19 World Heritage Sites

in Google, History | December 5th, 2009

On Fri­day, I men­tioned that you can now vis­it the Roman ruins at Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles via Google Street View. What I did­n’t real­ize is that this looks to be part of a larg­er ini­tia­tive, a larg­er attempt to pro­vide dig­i­tal tours of impor­tant world her­itage sites. Accord­ing to this UNESCO announce­ment, 19 his­tor­i­cal sites will be includ­ed, and I’ve list­ed them below. The video above offers more details.

“Spain: San­ti­a­go de Com­postela (Old Town); Old Town of Cáceres; His­toric Walled Town of Cuen­ca; Old City of Sala­man­ca; Old Town of Ávi­la with its Extra-Muros Church­es; Old Town of Segovia and its Aque­duct; His­toric City of Tole­do France: Palace and Park of Ver­sailles; Paris, Banks of the Seine Italy: Archae­o­log­i­cal Areas of Pom­pei, Her­cu­la­neum and Torre Annun­zi­a­ta; His­toric Cen­tre of Siena; His­toric Cen­tre of Urbino; His­toric Cen­tre of San Gimignano Nether­lands: Mill Net­work at Kinderdijk-Elshout Czech Repub­lic: Holy Trin­i­ty Col­umn in Olo­mouc; His­toric Cen­tre of Český Krumlov; His­toric Cen­tre of Prague Unit­ed King­dom: Stone­henge, Ave­bury and Asso­ci­at­ed Sites; Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens, Kew”

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Visit Pompeii (also Stonehenge & Versailles) with Google Street View

in Google, History | December 4th, 2009

pompeiigoogleThe sto­ry of Pom­peii is well known. Back in 79 AD, Mount Vesu­vius erupt­ed and cov­ered the neigh­bor­ing Roman city with 60 feet of ash over the course of two days. The city was wiped out and then entombed for cen­turies, until archae­ol­o­gists start­ed unearthing the ruins in the 18th and 19th cen­turies, offer­ing the mod­ern world an amaz­ing win­dow into the fin­er details of ancient Roman life. (Just for the record, dig­ging con­tin­ues there today, and I even got to do some this past sum­mer.) Today, Google is help­ing deep­en the mod­ern con­nec­tion to the ancient world. Using Google Street view, you can tour Pom­peii in 3D from the com­fort of your own home. To begin walk­ing through the ancient city, just click here.

As a side note, this isn’t the first time Google has used Street View in such a way. You can also find tours of Stone­henge and Louis XIV’s Ver­sailles. Plus, you can also use Google Earth, anoth­er Google pro­gram, to tour the ancient city of Rome.

Final­ly, to dig deep­er into ancient his­to­ry, I’d rec­om­mend look­ing through our pre­vi­ous post, Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free. This will point you to some of the best free cours­es avail­able on the web.

via Mash­able and the Nation­al Post

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The Velvet Revolution Revisited: Havel at Columbia

in History | December 1st, 2009

havel20 years ago, the domi­noes fell in East­ern Europe. Not long after the Wall fell in Berlin, a non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion got under­way in Czecho­slo­va­kia. The Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion took just a mat­ter of six weeks (Novem­ber 17 — Decem­ber 29, 1989) to unfold. It was fast and blood­less, and it put on the world stage Václav Hav­el — the play­wright, turned anti-Sovi­et dis­si­dent, and soon demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent of Czecho­slo­va­kia (and lat­er the Czech Repub­lic).

In 2006, Hav­el arrived in New York City, to spend 8 weeks at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. To mark the occa­sion, the uni­ver­si­ty built a web site called Hav­el at Colum­bia that recon­sid­ered Hav­el and the Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion. Along with some intrigu­ing his­tor­i­cal footage, the site fea­tures video inter­views with George H.W. Bush, David Rem­nick (the New York­er edi­tor and author of Lenin’s Tomb), Milos For­man (the great movie direc­tor of Czech her­itage), Edward Albee (the play­wright best known for Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf?), George Soros, and Lou Reed. Col­lec­tive­ly, these con­ver­sa­tions give you a very good feel for the man, the artist, and his his­tor­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions. You will also then find a con­ver­sa­tion between Pres­i­dents Bill Clin­ton and Václav Hav­el, and a read­ing of Havel’s play, The Gar­den Par­ty, direct­ed by Israel Horvitz fea­tur­ing Dustin Hoff­man and Robert Klein. Pod­casts of many of these won­der­ful events can be found on iTunes.

Note: The media-packed web­site, Hav­el at Colum­bia, was cre­at­ed by the Colum­bia Cen­ter for New Media for New Media Teach­ing and Learn­ing (CCNMTL) and the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Arts Ini­tia­tive (CUArts). Great work here, and I want to thank John F. for help­ing us put this post togeth­er.

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The Fall of the Berlin Wall in Moving Images

in History | November 10th, 2009

When I trav­eled to East Berlin in 1988, my first time as a young­ster, I read reports of a split between the hard­line East Ger­man regime and the open­ing Sovi­et gov­ern­ment. But nobody real­ly paid much atten­tion to that news. Less than a year lat­er, the Iron Cur­tain and the Berlin Wall would be gone, all of it. Above, you can watch footage that shows how East Ger­mans expe­ri­enced that moment, and here, cour­tesy of @courosa, you can find a series of vivid his­tor­i­cal images that com­mem­o­rate the events that took place 20 years ago.

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World War I Remembered in Second Life

in History, Literature | November 9th, 2009

Excel­lent find by Stephen Grant… You can now expe­ri­ence the bat­tle lines of World War I in Sec­ond Life, thanks to The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive and the Learn­ing Tech­nolo­gies Group at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty. WWI shocked the West­ern world with its land­scape-chang­ing war­fare and high tech car­nage. Remem­brances of “The Great War” live on in some remark­able poet­ry and lit­er­a­ture. And now Sec­ond Life too. Find more infor­ma­tion on this project here.

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Anne Frank’s Diary: From Reject Pile to Bestseller

in History, Literature | October 13th, 2009

We’re lucky to have Anne Frank’s diary — lucky that the diary was ever dis­cov­ered, and lucky, too, that some­one took a chance on pub­lish­ing the even­tu­al best­seller. This is all nice­ly out­lined by Francine Prose, who has a new book out called Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The After­life. You can lis­ten to her full book talk here. And also be sure to see our recent post show­ing the only exist­ing video of Anne Frank. It’s now online.

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