1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities

in | April 24th, 2024

Take online cours­es from the world’s top uni­ver­si­ties for free. Below, you will find 1,700 free online cours­es from uni­ver­si­ties like Yale, MIT, Har­vard, Oxford and more.

Note: This page includes a lot of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs). If you want to enroll in a free ver­sion of a MOOC, please select the “Full Course, No Cer­tifi­cate” (edX) or “Audit” (Cours­era) option. If you take the course for a certificate/credential, you’ll be charged a fee, and we will receive a com­mis­sion from our affil­i­ate partners–Coursera, Future­Learn and edX.

How Being Bilingual Helps Your Brain (Even If You Learn a New Language in Adulthood)

in Language, Neuroscience | January 30th, 2024

There was a time in Amer­i­ca, not so very long ago, when con­ven­tion­al wis­dom dis­cour­aged immi­grants from speak­ing the lan­guage of the old coun­try at home. In fact, “it used to be thought that being bilin­gual was a bad thing, that it would con­fuse or hold peo­ple back, espe­cial­ly chil­dren. Turns out we could­n’t have been more wrong.” These words are spo­ken by one of the vari­ety of mul­ti­lin­gual nar­ra­tors of the recent BBC Ideas video above, which explains “why being bilin­gual is good for your brain” — not just if you pick up a sec­ond lan­guage in child­hood, but also, and dif­fer­ent­ly, if you delib­er­ate­ly study it as an adult.

“Learn­ing a new lan­guage is an exer­cise of the mind,” says Li Wei of the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. “It’s the men­tal equiv­a­lent of going to a gym every day.” In the bilin­gual brain, “all our lan­guages are active, all at the same time.” (This we hear simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in Eng­lish and the pro­fes­sor’s native Man­darin.) “The con­tin­u­al effort of sup­press­ing a lan­guage when speak­ing anoth­er, along with the men­tal chal­lenge that comes with reg­u­lar­ly switch­ing between lan­guages, exer­cis­es our brain. It improves our con­cen­tra­tion, prob­lem-solv­ing, mem­o­ry, and in turn, our cre­ativ­i­ty.”

In this cen­tu­ry, some of the key dis­cov­er­ies about the ben­e­fits of bilin­gual­ism owe to the research of York Uni­ver­si­ty cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Ellen Bia­lystok and her col­lab­o­ra­tors. Speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage, she explains in this Guardian inter­view, requires using the brain’s “exec­u­tive con­trol sys­tem, whose job it is to resolve com­pe­ti­tion and focus atten­tion. If you’re bilin­gual, you are using this sys­tem all the time, and that enhances and for­ti­fies it.” In one study, she and her team found that bilin­guals with advanced Alzheimer’s could func­tion at the same cog­ni­tive lev­els with milder degrees of the same con­di­tion. “That’s the advan­tage: they could cope with the dis­ease bet­ter.”

Mas­ter­ing a for­eign lan­guage is, of course, an aspi­ra­tion com­mon­ly held but sel­dom real­ized. Based on per­son­al expe­ri­ence, I can say that noth­ing does the trick quite like mov­ing to a for­eign coun­try. But even if you’d rather not pull up stakes, you can ben­e­fit from the fact that the inter­net now pro­vides the great­est, most acces­si­ble abun­dance of lan­guage-learn­ing resources and tools human­i­ty has ever known — an abun­dance you can start explor­ing right here at Open Cul­ture. If it feels over­whelm­ing to choose just one for­eign lan­guage from this world of pos­si­bil­i­ties, feel free to use my sys­tem: study sev­en of them, one for each day of the week. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s Tues­day, which means I’ve got some français à appren­dre.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Becom­ing Bilin­gual Can Give Your Brain a Boost: What Recent Research Has to Say

A Map Show­ing How Much Time It Takes to Learn For­eign Lan­guages: From Eas­i­est to Hard­est

Why You Have an Accent When You Speak a For­eign Lan­guage

What Are the Most Effec­tive Strate­gies for Learn­ing a For­eign Lan­guage?: Six TED Talks Pro­vide the Answers

Meet the Hyper­poly­glots, the Peo­ple Who Can Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Speak Up to 32 Dif­fer­ent Lan­guages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Free Download: A Knitting Pattern for a Sweater Depicting an Iconic Cover of George Orwell’s 1984

in Books, Fashion | January 23rd, 2024

It’s win­ter, and we still have a ways to go. So maybe we could inter­est you in a free knit­ting pat­tern that depicts a vin­tage Pen­guin Clas­sics cov­er of George Orwell’s <i>1984</i>. A col­lege stu­dent gave it a go and post­ed the results on Red­dit. It’s pret­ty swelle­gant. You can down­load the pat­tern here.

Please note, “The pat­tern includes extra alpha­bet charts so that you can cus­tomise the title and author to your favourite book.”

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Dr. Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

Behold 1,600-Year-Old Egypt­ian Socks Made with Nål­bind­ning, an Ancient Pro­to-Knit­ting Tech­nique

How George Washington Became President of the United States: It Was Weirder Than You Think

in History, Politics | January 16th, 2024

After serv­ing two terms as the first Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, George Wash­ing­ton refused to con­tin­ue on to a third. We now see this action as begin­ning the tra­di­tion of peace­ful relin­quish­ment of pow­er that has con­tin­ued more or less ever since (inter­rupt­ed, as in recent years, by the occa­sion­al trou­bled tran­si­tion). At the time, not every­one expect­ed Wash­ing­ton to step down, his­to­ry hav­ing most­ly offered exam­ples of rulers who hung on until the bit­ter end. But the new repub­lic’s cre­ation of not just rules but cus­toms result­ed in a vari­ety of unusu­al polit­i­cal events; even Wash­ing­ton’s elec­tion was “weird­er than you think.”

So declares his­to­ry Youtu­ber Pre­mod­ernist in the video above, an expla­na­tion of the very first Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 1789. “There were no offi­cial can­di­dates. There was no cam­paign­ing for the office. There were no polit­i­cal par­ties, no nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tions, no pri­ma­ry elec­tions. The entire elec­tion sea­son was very short, and the major issue of this elec­tion was the Con­sti­tu­tion itself.” It also took place after thir­teen pres­i­dent-free years, the U.S. hav­ing been not a sin­gle coun­try but “a col­lec­tion of thir­teen sep­a­rate colonies,” each tied more close­ly to Britain than to the oth­ers; there had­n’t even been a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment per se.

The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion changed that. Draft­ed in 1787, it pro­posed the exec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and judi­cial branch­es of gov­ern­ment, whose names every Amer­i­can who’s tak­en a cit­i­zen­ship exam (and every immi­grant who’s tak­en the cit­i­zen test) remem­bers. Set­ting up those branch­es in real­i­ty would prove no easy task: how, to name just one prac­ti­cal ques­tion, would the exec­u­tive — the pres­i­dent — actu­al­ly be cho­sen? Con­gress, the leg­isla­tive branch, could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly do it, but that would vio­late the now prac­ti­cal­ly sacred prin­ci­ple of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. The vot­ers could also elect the pres­i­dent direct­ly, but the framers reject­ed that option as both imprac­ti­cal and unwise.

Enter “the famous elec­toral col­lege,” a body of spe­cial­ized vot­ers cho­sen by the indi­vid­ual states in any man­ner they please. Hav­ing reject­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion itself, North Car­oli­na and Rhode Island did­n’t par­tic­i­pate in the 1789 elec­tion. Each of the oth­er states chose their elec­tors in its own way (exem­pli­fy­ing the polit­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry of Amer­i­can fed­er­al­ism as orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived), though it did­n’t go smooth­ly in every case: the wide­spread divi­sion between fed­er­al­ists and anti-fed­er­al­ists was pro­nounced enough in New York to cre­ate a dead­lock that pre­vent­ed the state from choos­ing any elec­tors at all. The elec­tors that did make it cast two votes each, with the first-place can­di­date becom­ing Pres­i­dent and the sec­ond-place can­di­date becom­ing Vice Pres­i­dent.

That last proved to be a “bad sys­tem,” whose mechan­ics encour­aged a great deal of schem­ing, intrigue, and strate­gic vot­ing (even by the sub­se­quent­ly estab­lished stan­dards of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics). Only with the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the twelfth amend­ment, in 1804, could elec­tors sep­a­rate­ly des­ig­nate their choice of Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent. In 1789, of course, “Wash­ing­ton eas­i­ly got all 69 elec­toral votes,” and went on reluc­tant­ly to pre­vail again in the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which more recent­ly became the sub­ject of its own Pre­mod­ernist video. Both of them mer­it a watch in this par­tic­u­lar moment, as the run-up to the U.S. con­test of 2024 gets into full swing. This elec­tion cycle cer­tain­ly won’t be as short as 1789, but it may well be as weird.

Relat­ed con­tent:

George Wash­ing­ton Writes to the First Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tion of New­port, Rhode Island: “The Gov­ern­ment… Gives to Big­otry No Sanc­tion, to Per­se­cu­tion No Assis­tance” (1790)

Sal Khan & the Mup­pets’ Grover Explain the Elec­toral Col­lege

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

Elect­ing a US Pres­i­dent in Plain Eng­lish

George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Gives Life-Changing Advice to Teens: Watch His Speech, “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?” (1967)

in History, Life | January 15th, 2024

Six months before his assas­si­na­tion, Mar­tin Luther King Jr. spoke to stu­dents at Bar­ratt Junior High School in Philadel­phia, and asked What Is Your Life’s Blue­print?

Address­ing the stu­dents, he observed: “This is the most impor­tant and cru­cial peri­od of your lives. For what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well deter­mine which way your life shall go. When­ev­er a build­ing is con­struct­ed, you usu­al­ly have an archi­tect who draws a blue­print. And that blue­print serves as the pat­tern, as the guide, as the mod­el, for those who are to build the build­ing. And a build­ing is not well erect­ed with­out a good, sound, and sol­id blue­print.”

So what makes for a sound blue­print? The civ­il rights leader had some sug­ges­tions:

Num­ber one in your life’s blue­print should be: a deep belief in your own dig­ni­ty, your own worth and your own some­bod­i­ness. Don’t allow any­body to make you feel that you are nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ulti­mate sig­nif­i­cance.

Now that means you should not be ashamed of your col­or. You know, it’s very unfor­tu­nate that in so many instances, our soci­ety has placed a stig­ma on the Negro’s col­or. You know there are some Negros who are ashamed of them­selves? Don’t be ashamed of your col­or. Don’t be ashamed of your bio­log­i­cal fea­tures…

Sec­ond­ly, in your life’s blue­print you must have as the basic prin­ci­ple the deter­mi­na­tion to achieve excel­lence in your var­i­ous fields of endeav­or. You’re going to be decid­ing as the days and the years unfold, what you will do in life — what your life’s work will be.

And once you dis­cov­er what it will be, set out to do it, and to do it well.

You can read a tran­script of the speech here. As a post­script, it’s worth high­light­ing a remark­able com­ment left on YouTube, from the stu­dent who appar­ent­ly record­ed the speech on Octo­ber 26, 1967. It reads:

I can­not believe that I found this footage. I am the stu­dent cam­era­man that record­ed this speech. I remem­ber this like it was yes­ter­day. I have been telling my boys for years about this and now I can show them. I thought this was lost years ago and am so hap­py that it sur­vived the years. I was 12 or 13 years old when he can to Bar­rett and was mes­mer­ized by what he was say­ing. I can’t wait to share this with my fam­i­ly. Wow I am elat­ed that I found this.

Amaz­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Niet­zsche, Hegel & Kant to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.‘s Hand­writ­ten Syl­labus & Final Exam for the Phi­los­o­phy Course He Taught at More­house Col­lege (1962)

How Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Got C’s in Pub­lic Speaking–Before Becom­ing a Straight‑A Stu­dent and a World Class Ora­tor

Ten Magnificent Historical Libraries (That You Can Still Visit Today)

in Architecture, Books, Travel | January 11th, 2024

When we first trav­el some­where, we see noth­ing quite so clear­ly as the usu­al cat­e­gories of tourist des­ti­na­tion: the mon­u­ments, the muse­ums, the restau­rants. Take one step deep­er, and we find our­selves in places like cafés and book­stores, the lat­ter espe­cial­ly hav­ing explod­ed in touris­tic appeal over the past few years. Take Por­to’s grand Livraria Lel­lo, which bills itself as “the most beau­ti­ful book­store in the world” — and has arguably done so too suc­cess­ful­ly, hav­ing drawn crowds large enough to neces­si­tate a cov­er charge. Per­haps we’d have a rich­er expe­ri­ence if we spent less time in the livrarias and more in the bib­liote­cas.

That, in any case, is the impres­sion giv­en by the Kings and Things video above, which presents “Ten Mag­nif­i­cent His­tor­i­cal Libraries,” two of them locat­ed in Por­tu­gal. Stand­ing on a hill­top over­look­ing Coim­bra, the Bib­liote­ca Joan­i­na “is sump­tu­ous­ly dec­o­rat­ed in Baroque fash­ion,” and “con­tains intri­cate­ly carved fur­ni­ture and book­shelves made of exot­ic woods as well as ivory, and is embell­ished with cold and chi­nois­erie motif.” As for the cen­turies-old vol­umes on those shelves, they remain in excel­lent con­di­tion thanks to the Bib­liote­ca Joan­i­na’s being one of only two libraries equipped with “a colony of bats to pro­tect the books from insects.”

The oth­er is in Lis­bon’s, Mafra Palace, which “con­tains what is arguably one of the world’s most beau­ti­ful libraries.” Com­plet­ed in 1755, it’s decked out with book­shelves “dec­o­rat­ed in the Roco­co style.” The stretch of the aes­thet­ic spec­trum between Baroque and Roco­co dom­i­nates this video, all of its libraries hav­ing been built in the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth cen­turies. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, most of them are in the Old World, from the Saint Gall Abbey in Switzer­land to the Library of Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin to the Nation­al Library of France (the Riche­lieu site in the thir­teenth arrondisse­ment, not the mod­ern François-Mit­ter­rand Site decried in W. G. Sebald’s Auster­litz).

Instra­gram­ma­ble though they may have become in this day and age, these ven­er­a­ble libraries all — unlike many tourist-spot book­stores, where you can’t hear your­self think for all the Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tions going on around you — encour­age the spend­ing of not mon­ey but time. They wel­come the trav­el­er look­ing not sim­ply to hit twen­ty cap­i­tals in a dozen days, but to build a long-term rela­tion­ship with a place. And not just the trav­el­er in Europe: the video also includes a des­ti­na­tion in the Unit­ed States, the “cathe­dral of books” that is Bal­ti­more’s George Peabody Library. The true con­nois­seur will, of course, fol­low a vis­it to that august insti­tu­tion by tak­ing the Sil­ver Line north to hit up Nor­mals Books & Records.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

What Was Actu­al­ly Lost When the Library of Alexan­dria Burned?

The Last Book­store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Per­se­ver­ance & the Love of Books

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

For 500 Years, Every Student Who Attained a BA from Oxford Had to Swear Enmity Towards a Person Named Henry Symeonis

in History | December 26th, 2023

Image via The Bodleian Library

If you were to ask a cer­tain kind of Eng­lish­man what sets his home­land apart from the rest of the world, he might point to the strength of its tra­di­tions. And what holds true for Eng­land itself holds even truer for its most renowned insti­tu­tions, espe­cial­ly its most pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties. Those who dream of attend­ing Oxford dream not least of its dis­tinc­tive tra­di­tions: from the rel­a­tive­ly fre­quent For­mal Hall, to the var­i­ous cer­e­mo­ni­al rit­u­als on Ascen­sion Day, to the Mal­lard Song sung just once per cen­tu­ry by the elites of All Souls Col­lege, dat­ing back to that col­lege’s foun­da­tion in 1438— which was still long after the time of Oxford’s ulti­mate per­sona non gra­ta, a long-mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Hen­ry Syme­o­nis.

As recent­ly as the time of Dick­ens (or at least the era in which he set his nov­els), Bach­e­lors of Arts stu­dents turn­ing Mas­ter of Arts stu­dents at Oxford were, accord­ing to the blog of the Archives and Man­u­scripts at the Bodleian Library, “required to swear that they would observe the University’s statutes, priv­i­leges, lib­er­ties and cus­toms, as you might expect; and not to lec­ture else­where, or resume their bach­e­lor stud­ies after get­ting their MA.” But they “also had to swear that they would nev­er agree to the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of Hen­ry Syme­o­nis,” who­ev­er that was. “Nowhere in the statutes did it explain who this Hen­ry Syme­o­nis (or Sime­o­nis) was, what he was sup­posed to have done or why those get­ting their MAs should nev­er agree to be rec­on­ciled with him.”

The clause in ques­tion came up for review in the ear­ly 1650s, but “even by that time, one sus­pects that the oath was of such antiq­ui­ty that no-one knew any­thing about it and it was thought best to leave it be.” Not until 1912 did Regi­nald Lane Poole, Keep­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty Archives, deter­mine that Syme­o­nis was the son of “a very wealthy towns­man of Oxford.” In 1242, “he and a num­ber of oth­er men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of mur­der­ing a stu­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty. Hen­ry and his accom­plices were fined £80 by King Hen­ry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result.” Two decades after the mur­der, Hen­ry III issued Syme­o­nis (who had, in any case, long since returned to town) an offi­cial par­don.

“The Gov­ern­ment was aware of the volatile rela­tion­ship between town and gown and was con­cerned, in 1264, at the prospect of the Uni­ver­si­ty leav­ing Oxford in protest if Hen­ry was allowed to return.” What seems to have hap­pened is that “Hen­ry Syme­o­nis had bought the King’s par­don and his per­mis­sion to return to Oxford. The King was will­ing to allow his return if the Uni­ver­si­ty agreed to it. But the Uni­ver­si­ty refused and chose to ignore the King’s order” — and even “gave Hen­ry Syme­o­nis the unique hon­or of being named in its own statutes, mak­ing the University’s dis­like of him offi­cial and per­pet­u­al.” There his name stayed, receiv­ing the sworn enmi­ty of five and a half cen­turies’ worth of Oxford stu­dents, until the removal of the rel­e­vant oath in 1827. “No back­ground infor­ma­tion nor rea­son for the deci­sion is record­ed,” notes the Bodleian’s blog, pos­si­bly because “nobody knew exact­ly what they were abol­ish­ing.”

via Archives and Man­u­scripts at the Bodleian Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Inter­ac­tive “Mur­der Map” Reveals the Mean­est Streets of Medieval Lon­don

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Free Online

in History, Maps | December 19th, 2023

FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press has made avail­able online — at no cost –five vol­umes of The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what Edward Roth­stein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” He con­tin­ues:

Peo­ple come to know the world the way they come to map it—through their per­cep­tions of how its ele­ments are con­nect­ed and of how they should move among them. This is pre­cise­ly what the series is attempt­ing by sit­u­at­ing the map at the heart of cul­tur­al life and reveal­ing its rela­tion­ship to soci­ety, sci­ence, and reli­gion…. It is try­ing to define a new set of rela­tion­ships between maps and the phys­i­cal world that involve more than geo­met­ric cor­re­spon­dence. It is in essence a new map of human attempts to chart the world.

If you head over to this page, you will see links (in the left mar­gin) to five vol­umes avail­able in a free PDF for­mat. The image above, appear­ing in Vol. 2, dates back to 1534. Cre­at­ed by Oronce Fine, the first chair of math­e­mat­ics in the Col­lège Roy­al (aka the Col­lège de France), the map fea­tures the world drawn in the shape of a heart. A pret­ty beau­ti­ful design. Below you can find links to the indi­vid­ual vol­umes avail­able online.

Vol­ume 1

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy: Car­tog­ra­phy in Pre­his­toric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediter­ranean

Vol­ume 2: Book 1

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic and South Asian Soci­eties

Vol­ume 2: Book 2

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Tra­di­tion­al East and South­east Asian Soci­eties

Vol­ume 2: Part 3

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Tra­di­tion­al African, Amer­i­can, Arc­tic, Aus­tralian, and Pacif­ic Soci­eties

Vol­ume 3: 

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Euro­pean Renais­sance: Part 1

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Euro­pean Renais­sance, Part 2 

Vol­ume 4:

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Euro­pean Enlight­en­ment

Vol­ume 5:

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry, Forth­com­ing

Vol­ume 6:

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry

If you buy any of the print­ed ver­sions on Ama­zon, each edi­tion will cost you $400-$500. As beau­ti­ful as the book prob­a­bly is, you’ll like­ly appre­ci­ate this free dig­i­tal offer­ing.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 91,000 His­toric Maps from the Mas­sive David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

40,000 Ear­ly Mod­ern Maps Are Now Freely Avail­able Online (Cour­tesy of the British Library)

Behold an Incred­i­bly Detailed, Hand­made Map Of Medieval Trade Routes

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

The World Map That Intro­duced Sci­en­tif­ic Map­mak­ing to the Medieval Islam­ic World (1154 AD)

What Is Postmodern Architecture?: An Introduction in Three Videos

in Architecture | November 21st, 2023

“Mod­ern archi­tec­ture died in St Louis, Mis­souri on July 15, 1972, at 3:32pm (or there­abouts).” This oft-quot­ed pro­nounce­ment by cul­tur­al and archi­tec­tur­al the­o­rist Charles Jencks refers to the demo­li­tion of the Wen­dell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apart­ments. The fate of that short-lived pub­lic hous­ing com­plex, bet­ter and more infa­mous­ly known as Pruitt-Igoe, still holds rhetor­i­cal val­ue in Amer­i­ca in argu­ments against the sup­posed social-engi­neer­ing ambi­tions made con­crete (often lit­er­al­ly) in large-scale post­war mod­ernist build­ings. Though the true sto­ry is more com­pli­cat­ed, the fact remains that, when­ev­er we pin­point it, mod­ern archi­tec­ture was wide­ly regard­ed as “dead.” What would come after it?

Why, post­mod­ernism, of course. Jencks did more than his part to define mod­ernism’s any­thing-goes suc­ces­sor move­ment with The Lan­guage of Post-Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture, in which he tells the tale of Pruitt-Igoe, which was then rel­a­tive­ly recent his­to­ry.

The first edi­tion came out in 1977, ear­ly days indeed in the life of post­mod­ernism, which in a video from His­toric Eng­land archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Elain Har­wood calls “the style of the nine­teen-eight­ies.” Its riots of delib­er­ate­ly incon­gru­ous shape and col­or, as well as its heaped-up unsub­tle cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, suit­ed that unbri­dled decade as per­fect­ly as did the ele­gant­ly gar­ish fur­ni­ture of the Mem­phis group.

In recent years, how­ev­er, the build­ings left behind by post­mod­ernism have got more than a few of us ask­ing ques­tions — ques­tions like, “Are they inten­tion­al­ly weird and tacky, or just designed with no taste?” That’s how Youtu­ber Bet­ty Chen puts it in the ARTic­u­la­tions video just above, before launch­ing into an inves­ti­ga­tion of post­mod­ern archi­tec­ture’s ori­gin, pur­pose, and place in the built envi­ron­ment today. In her telling, the style was born in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, when archi­tect Robert Ven­turi designed a rule-break­ing house for his moth­er in Philadel­phia, decid­ing “to dis­tort the pure order of the mod­ernist box by rein­tro­duc­ing dis­pro­por­tion­al arrange­ments of clas­si­cal ele­ments such as four-pane win­dows, arch­es, the ped­i­ment, and the dec­o­ra­tive dado.”

An impor­tant the­o­rist of post­mod­ernism as well as a prac­ti­tion­er (usu­al­ly work­ing in both roles with his wife and col­lab­o­ra­tor Denise Scott Brown), Ven­turi con­vert­ed arch-mod­ernist Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe’s dec­la­ra­tion that “less is more” into what would become, in effect, post­mod­ernism’s brief man­i­festo: “Less is a bore.” Ven­turi described him­self as choos­ing “messy vital­i­ty over obvi­ous uni­ty,” and the same could be said of a range of his col­leagues in the eight­ies and nineties: Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, and Charles Moore in Amer­i­ca; Also Rossi, Ricar­do Bofill, and Bernard Tschu­mi in Europe; Minoru Takeya­ma, Ken­go Kuma, and Ara­ta Isoza­ki in Japan.

Post­mod­ern archi­tec­ture flow­ered espe­cial­ly in Britain: “The irrev­er­ence came from Amer­i­ca, the clas­si­cism from Europe,” says Har­wood. “What British archi­tects did was weave those two ele­ments togeth­er.” As one of those archi­tects, Sir Ter­ry Far­rell, tells His­toric Eng­land, “the pre­ced­ing era had been earnest and anony­mous”; after inter­na­tion­al mod­ernism, the time had come to re-intro­duce per­son­al­i­ty, and in a flam­boy­ant man­ner. His col­league Piers Gough remem­bers feel­ing, in the mid-six­ties, a cer­tain envy for pop art — “they were doing col­or, they were doing pop­u­lar imagery, they had pret­ti­er girl­friends” — that inspired them to “ran­sack pop­u­lar imagery in archi­tec­ture.” This project posed cer­tain prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties of its own: “You can design a build­ing to look like a soup can, but the prob­lem real­ly comes when you put the win­dows in it.”

Ren­o­va­tions to many an aging post­mod­ern build­ing have proven dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy, giv­en that “irrev­er­ence and exag­ger­a­tion are out,” as Brock Keel­ing writes in a recent Bloomberg piece. “Sig­nif­i­cant post­mod­ern build­ings like the Abrams House in Pitts­burgh and the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art in San Diego have already been demol­ished,” and oth­ers are endan­gered: “Fans of the James R. Thomp­son Cen­ter — Hel­mut Jahn’s 1985 civic build­ing, not­ed for its sliced-off dome facade and 17-sto­ry atri­um with blue-and-salmon trim — fear it will deboned in prepa­ra­tion for Google’s new Chica­go head­quar­ters.” The true archi­tec­tur­al post­mod­ernism enthu­si­ast also appre­ci­ates much hum­bler works, such as Jef­frey Daniels’ Los Ange­les Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en fran­chise that unin­ten­tion­al­ly evokes of both a chick­en and a chick­en buck­et. Long may it stand.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

Why Peo­ple Hate Bru­tal­ist Build­ings on Amer­i­can Col­lege Cam­pus­es

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

An Intro­duc­tion to Post­mod­ernist Thinkers & Themes: Watch Primers on Fou­cault, Niet­zsche, Der­ri­da, Deleuze & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Renaissance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades & Now You Can Hear the Songs Performed by Modern Singers

in History, Music | November 9th, 2023

Image cour­tesy of The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um

On any giv­en week­end, in any part of the state where I live, you can find your­self stand­ing in a hall full of knives, if that’s the kind of thing you like to do. It is a very niche kind of expe­ri­ence. Not so in some oth­er weapons expos—like the Arms and Armor gal­leries at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, where every­one, from the most war­like to the staunchest of paci­fists, stands in awe at the intri­cate orna­men­ta­tion and incred­i­bly deft crafts­man­ship on dis­play in the suits of armor, lances, shields, and lots and lots of knives.

We must acknowl­edge in such a space that the worlds of art and of killing for fame and prof­it were nev­er very far apart dur­ing Europe’s late Medieval and Renais­sance peri­ods. Yet we encounter many sim­i­lar arti­sanal instru­ments from the time, just as fine­ly tuned, but made for far less bel­liger­ent pur­pos­es.

As Maya Cor­ry of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um in Cam­bridge—an insti­tu­tion with its own impres­sive arms and armor col­lec­tion—com­ments in the video above (at 2:30), one unusu­al kind of 16th cen­tu­ry knife meant for the table, not the bat­tle­field, offers “insight into that har­mo­nious, audi­ble aspect of fam­i­ly devo­tions,” prayer and song.

From the col­lec­tion of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, in Cam­bridge. (Johan Oost­er­man )

These knives, which have musi­cal scores engraved in their blades, brought a table togeth­er in singing their prayers, and may have been used to carve the lamb or beef in their “strik­ing bal­ance of dec­o­ra­tive and util­i­tar­i­an func­tion.” At least his­to­ri­ans think such “nota­tion knives,” which date from the ear­ly 1500s, were used at ban­quets. “The sharp, wide steel would have been ide­al for cut­ting and serv­ing meat,” writes Eliza Grace Mar­tin at the WQXR blog, “and the accen­tu­at­ed tip would have made for a per­fect skew­er.” But as Kris­ten Kalber, cura­tor at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, which hous­es the knives at the top of the post, tells us “din­ers in very grand feasts didn’t cut their own meat.” It’s unlike­ly they would have sung from the bloody knives held by their ser­vants.

The knives’ true pur­pose “remains a mys­tery,” Mar­tin remarks, like many “rit­u­als of the Renais­sance table.”  Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tor Kirstin Kennedy admits in the video above that “we are not entire­ly sure” what the “splen­did knife” she holds was used for. But we do know that each knife had a dif­fer­ent piece of music on each side, and that a set of them togeth­er con­tained dif­fer­ent har­mo­ny parts in order to turn a room­ful of din­ers into a cho­rus. One set of blades had the grace on one side, with the inscrip­tion, “the bless­ing of the table. May the three-in-one bless that which we are about to eat.” The oth­er side holds the bene­dic­tion, to be sung after the din­ner: “The say­ing of grace. We give thanks to you God for your gen­eros­i­ty.”

Com­mon enough ver­biage for any house­hold in Renais­sance Europe, but when sung, at least by a cho­rus from the Roy­al Col­lege of Music, who recre­at­ed the music and made the record­ings here, the prayers are superbly grace­ful. Above, hear one ver­sion of the Grace and Bene­dic­tion from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um knives; below, hear a sec­ond ver­sion. You can hear a cap­ti­vat­ing set of choral prayers from the Fitzwilliam Muse­um knives at WQXR’s site, record­ed for the Fitzwilliam’s “Madon­nas & Mir­a­cles” exhib­it. We are as unlike­ly now to encounter singing kitchen knives as we are to run into a horse and rid­er bear­ing 100 pounds of fine­ly-wrought wear­able steel sculp­ture. Such strange arti­facts seem to speak of a strange peo­ple who val­ued beau­ty whether carv­ing up the main course or cut­ting down their ene­mies.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness