Updated: Love and longing, hope and fear — these threads run throughout all literature, whether we’re talking about the great ancient epics, or contemporary novels written in the East or the West. That’s the main premise of Invitation to World Literature, a multimedia program organized by David Damrosch (Harvard University), and made with the backing of WGBH and Annenberg Media.
The program features 13 half-hour videos, which move from The Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2500 BCE) through García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude(1967). And, collectively, these videos highlight over 100+ writers, scholars, artists, and performers with a personal connection to world literature. Philip Glass, Francine Prose, Harold Ramis, Robert Thurman, Kwame Anthony Appiah — they all make an appearance.
Permanently housed in the Literature section of our collection of 1,300 Free Online Courses, Invitation to World Literature features the following lectures:
Here’s an update to our original 2011 post: The social theorist and geographer David Harvey has produced a free online course where he gives a close reading of Karl Marx’s Capital (1867). Often considered to be Marx’s masterpiece, Capital is where he elaborated a critique of capitalism and laid the groundwork for an ideology that took the 20th century by storm. Harvey has taught courses on Capital for over 40 years, both in universities (Johns Hopkins and CUNY) and in the community as well. Now his 26 lecture course is freely available on the web. You can watch the first lecture above. (It’s preceded by an introductory, six-minute interview.) The rest of the lectures can be accessed via Harvey’s web site, YouTube, iTunes, and the Economics section of our collection of Free Online Courses.
Marking a new phase of the project, Professor Harvey is now looking for volunteers to help translate his lectures into 36 languages. If you speak English and languages like Urdu, Arabic or Italian (just to list a few), you can start helping with translations here.
Also note that Harvey published A Companion to Marx’s Capitalin 2010. It’s something you’ll want read along with the lectures.
The School of Open is offering its second round of free, facilitated, online courses. Through August 4, you can sign up for 7 courses on open science, collaborative workshop design, open educational resources, copyright for educators, Wikipedia, CC licenses, and more. Courses will start after the first week of August and run for 3 to 7 weeks, depending on the course topic and organizer. All courses will offer badges for recognition of skills and/or course completion as part of P2PU’s badges pilot. Here’s a list of the upcoming courses, all of which have been added to our comprehensive list of MOOCs.
Hardly a day goes by where I’m not doing one of two things — listening to an audio book from Audible.com, or listening to a lecture from The Great Courses (formerly known as The Teaching Company). So, I was naturally pleased when the two companies announced a partnership yesterday. From now on, Audible subscribers can download courses/lectures from The Great Courses, and they’re pretty cheap. For example, members of Audible’s Gold plan can purchase a polished 36-hour course, such as How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, for roughly $15. Not bad, especially considering that it would cost exponentially more to buy it directly through the Great Courses’ web site. If you’ve never tried out Audible or The Great Courses, then you may want to sign up for Audible’s 30-Day Free Trial. It will let you download any one course for free. NB: Audible is an Amazon.com subsidiary, and we’re a member of their affiliate program.
Almost daily, readers write us and ask for courses that can deepen their professional education. Some want to learn new tech skills. Others want to bone up on statistics and calculus. And still others want to learn about project management. We decided to address this by creating a new collection of Free Online Business Courses. So far, we’ve compiled a list of 145 business-oriented courses and related resources. Some courses come from leading universities. Others come from government, non-profits and the occasional MOOC provider. The list is fairly rich. But we will keep adding to it over time. If you know of a great course (or a great business resource that’s free) please tell us in the comments below, or send us an email via this page. We would love to benefit from your collective wisdom. And you will be helping many people in the process, during a tough economic time. Visit: 145 Free Online Business Courses.
The History section of our big Free Online Courses collection just went through another update, and it now features 60 courses. Some courses (like those featured below) focus on broad time periods and themes. Others take a look at more specialized topics that will keep you engaged for hours. All lectures were taped right in the classrooms of great universities:
China: Traditions and Transformations – Multiple Formats – Peter K. Bol & William Kirby, Harvard
European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present - YouTube - iTunes Video — Web — Thomas Lacquer, UC Berkeley
History of the World to 1500 CE – YouTube - iTunes Video – Richard Bulliet, Columbia University
History of the World Since 1500 CE – YouTube — iTunes Video – Richard Bulliet, Columbia University
The Western Tradition (Video) – YouTube – Eugen Weber, UCLA
US History: From Civil War to Present — iTunes Audio — Web — Jennifer Burns, UC Berkeley
As you can see, the courses listed here are generally available via YouTube, iTunes, or the web. And they’re all listed in our meta collection of 700 Free Online Courses. Other key disciplines found in the collection include Philosophy, Literature, Physics, Computer Science and beyond.
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The Philosophy section of our big Free Online Courses collection just went through another update, and it now features 100 courses. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts introduction to a timeless discipline. You can start with one of several introductory courses.
Philosophy for Beginners – iTunes – Web Video – Marianne Talbot, Oxford
The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps - Multiple Formats– Peter Adamson, King’s College London
Then, once you’ve found your footing, you can head off in some amazing directions. As we mentioned many moons ago, you can access courses and lectures by modern day legends – Michel Foucault, Bertrand Russell, John Searle, Walter Kaufmann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Dreyfus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them introduce you to the thinking of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The courses listed here are generally available via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.
How’s that New Year’s resolution going? You know, the one where you promised to make better use of your free time and learn new things? If you’re off track, fear not. It’s only April. It’s not too late to make good on your promise. And we can help. Below, we’ll tell you how to fill your Kindle, iPad, computer, smartphone, computer, etc. with free intelligent media — great ebooks and audio books, movies, courses, and the rest:
Free eBooks: You have always wanted to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks collection you will find 400 great works by some classic writers (Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Tolstoy) and contemporary writers (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut). The collection also gives you access to the 51-volume Harvard Classics.
If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the download process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kindle and Nook users will generally want to click the “Kindle + Other Formats links” to download ebook files, but we’d suggest watching these instructional videos (Kindle –Nook) beforehand.
Free Audio Books: What better way to spend your free time than listening to some of the greatest books ever written? This page contains a vast number of free audio books, including works by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writers — Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Carver, etc. You can download these classic books straight to your gagdets, then listen as you go.
[Note: If you’re looking for a contemporary book, you can download one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audible’s no-strings-attached deal here.]
Free Online Courses: This list brings together over 700 free online courses from leading universities, including Stanford, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged courses range across all disciplines – history, physics, philosophy, psychology and beyond. Most all of these courses are available in audio, and roughly 75% are available in video. You can’t receive credits or certificates for these courses (click here for courses that do offer certificates). But the amount of personal enrichment you will derive is immeasurable.
Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 525 great movies. The collection hosts many classics, westerns, indies, documentaries, silent films and film noir favorites. It features work by some of our great directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch) and performances by cinema legends: John Wayne, Jack Nicholson, Audrey Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thousands of hours of cinema bliss.
Free Language Lessons: Perhaps learning a new language is one of your resolutions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 40 languages — Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin, English, Russian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yiddish and Esperanto. These lessons are all free and ready to download.
Free Textbooks: And one last item for the lifelong learners among you. We have scoured the web and pulled together a list of 150 Free Textbooks. It’s a great resource particularly if you’re looking to learn math, computer science or physics on your own. There might be a diamond in the rough here for you.
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Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
