Humanities at Stanford

Colonial and Revolutionary America

This audio course covers the opening segment of the traditional American history survey.

The major themes of the course are the character of colonial society; the origins and consequences of the American Revolution, from the Stamp Act controversy to the adoption of the Federal Constitution; the impact of the Revolution on the general population and culture; and (implicitly) the long-term significance of the social and political history of this era for our conceptions of American nationhood, society, and citizenship.

Go to Colonial and Revolutionary America on iTunes

The American Founders and Their World

This audio course examines the group of leaders that turned the thirteen colonies into a nation.

By all accounts, popular interest in the American Revolutionary era has never been higher. Books on Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and other founders roll off the presses, make the bestseller lists, and provide clear evidence that Americans remain deeply fascinated by the remarkable generation that secured independence, formed a national union, created the first modern system of political parties—and espoused ideals of liberty and equality while maintaining a system of racial slavery. How should we think about the Founders and their legacy? How can we account for the emergence of this group of leaders in the provincial isolation of 18th-century British North America? To answer these questions, Continuing Studies invited Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and W.R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford, to recruit an “A Team” of fellow scholars from across the country to discuss the individual lives and collective acts that turned the thirteen colonies into a national republic. Presenters will not lecture formally; instead, in each class meeting Professor Rakove will engage in conversation with his guests to explore their subject in dialogue.

Go to The American Founders and Their World on iTunes

Structure of English Words

This audio course examines the richness of the English language.

Thanks to historical, cultural, and linguistic factors, English has by far the world’s largest vocabulary—leading many of us to have greater than average difficulty with words, and some of us to have greater than average curiosity about words. Our historical and linguistic study will cover both erudite and everyday English, with special attention to word meaning and word use, to both rules and exceptions. Most words originated with an image. “Reveal” = “pull back the veil,” “depend” = “hang down from.” Change is constant. “Girl” once meant “a young child of either sex;” an early synonym for “stupid” was “nice.” Despite resistance to change among some experts and some members of the general public, new words are entering at an accelerating rate, from “Frankenfood” to “ungoogleable.” Are there good changes and bad ones? And who gets to decide? Exploring the historical and contemporary richness of English will suggest some answers.

Go to Structure of English Words on iTunes

Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature) with Robert Harrison

Professor Robert Harrison hosts a weekly literary talk show that ranges broadly on issues related to literature, ideas and lived experience

The show, airing Tuesdays from 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm on KZSU - 90.1 Stanford University Radio, is typically a one-on-one conversation with a special guest about select topics or authors about which he or she is especially entitled to an opinion. Past guests have included Orhan Pamuk, Paul Ehrlich, Richard Rorty, Shirley Hazzard, Andrei Linde, Rene Girard, Michel Serres, and many others.

Visit the Entitled Opinions Web Page   Go to Entitled Opinions on iTunes

Presidential Politics: Race, Class, Faith & Gender in the 2008 Election

The Center for Comparitive Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) offered this course in the fall of 2008 and it is now available on iTunes

The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election is unprecedented. The nomination process and ongoing campaigns have revealed the complexities of identity and its role in uniting and dividing the electorate. This course will explore how issues of race, class, faith and gender have shaped the candidates, campaigns, and our society. Our analysis spans the presidential race from the announcements of more than ten presidential hopefuls to the current competition between Senators McCain and Obama.

Visit the Entitled Opinions Web Page   Go to Presidential Politics on iTunes

Spirituality & Religion

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations spans the gamut of topics on spirituality and religion

Subjects include commentary on religious and spiritual topics by speakers including Reza Aslan, the Dalai Lama, Bart Ehrman and Christopher Hitchens among them.

Go to Spirituality & Religion on iTunes

Celebrating South African Freedom

A symposium on the international campaign to end apartheid.

Sponsored by the Aurora Forum, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Reserach and Education Institute, and the Stanford Institute for International Studies, this one-day symposium covered the history and legacy of international campaigns to end Apartheid in South Africa.

Go to Globalization on iTunes

History

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations explores history from many eras and regions of the globe.

Subjects include African-American history, Hannibal, Thomas Jefferson, the Crusades and early modern Russia.

Go to History on iTunes

Culture

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations touches on the many facets of cultural studies.

Subjects include citizenship. pop culture, national pride and the aesthetics of sports.

Go to Culture on iTunes

Literature

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations spans the wide scope of the study and appreciation of literature.

Subjects include Robert Frost, Sherlock Holmes, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Author interviews include Tobias Wolff, Dana Gioia, Rene Girard and Diane Middlebrook.

Go to Literature on iTunes

Fine Art

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations about both visual and audio art forms.

Subjects include Your Brain on Art, Shakespeare, Hawaiian music and the globalization of the arts.

Go to Fine Art on iTunes

Philosophy

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations delves into a range of philosophical topics.

Subjects include democracy, the American Dream, and Infinity. Featured discussants include Arun Gandhi, the Dalai Lamam Richard Rorty and Kenneth Taylor.

Go to Philosophy on iTunes

Authors

This series of lectures, panel discussions, interviews and presentations featuring an array of noted authors representing numerous genres.

Featured authors include David Mamet, David Kennedy, Robert Sutton, Wallace Stegner, Marina Warner and Leonard Susskind.

Go to Authors on iTunes

Classics

This series of lectures and presentations explore the history and philosophies of ancient Greek and Roman societies.

Presentations include Lessons from the Greeks, Why Athens and Rome Matter More than Ever, Epicureanism and Virgil.

Go to Classics on iTunes

The Literature of Crisis

This audio series explores different ways to think about the challenges of living.

Our lives are not simply given to us, Socrates used to maintain, but also something we make. As we examine the circumstances of our existence, recognizing certain facts as immutable and others as subject to our control, we all face the challenge of fashioning out of them a way of living that is both meaningful and justifiable. "The Literature of Crisis" explores different ways to think about that challenge -- how to accommodate conflicting demands and values, how to make our choices "artfully", how to use works of imaginative literature to inspire us.

Go to The Literature of Crisis on iTunes

Geography of World Cultures

This audio course, presented by the Stanford Continuing Studied Program, explores the locational dynamics of the world's languages, religions and ethnic groupings.

Despite the supposedly homogenizing effects of globalization, people continue to be joined together and divided asunder by the languages they speak, the religions they follow, and the ethnic identities to which they belong. Such cultural features all have specific geographies, tied to particular places. But while cultural-geographical terms such as "the Arabic world" and "the Islamic world" are used ubiquitously, many people remain uncertain where such "worlds" are and how the differ from each other.

Go to Geography of World Cultures on iTunes

African-American History: The Modern Freedom Struggle

This video course provides an introduction to African-American history.

This course introduces the viewer to African-American history, with particular emphasis on the political thought and protest movements of the period after 1930, focusing on selected individuals who have shaped and been shaped by modern African-American struggles for freedom and justice. CLayborne Carson is a professor in the History Department at Stanford University.

Go to African-American History on iTunes

Historical Jesus

This audio course examines the best available literary and historical evidence about Jesus and his times.

Who was the historical Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actually say and do, as contrasted with what early Christians (e.g., Paul and the Gospel writers) believed that he said and did? What did the man Jesus actually think of himself and of his mission, as contrasted with the messianic and even divine claims that the New Testament makes about him? In short, what are the differences—and continuities—between the Jesus who lived and died in history and the Christ who lives on in believers’ faith?

Over the last four decades historical scholarship on Jesus and his times—whether conducted by Jews, Christians, or non-believers—has arrived at a strong consensus about what this undeniably historical figure (born ca. 4 BCE, died ca. 30 CE) said and did, and how he presented himself and his message to his Jewish audience. Often that historical evidence about Jesus does not easily dovetail with the traditional doctrines of Christianity. How then might one adjudicate those conflicting claims?

Go to Historical Jesus on iTunes

Ben Franklin and the World of the Enlightenment

This audio course provides an introduction to African-American history.

Printer, journalist, postmaster, scientist, inventor, diplomat, patriot, and tireless founder of civic institutions, Benjamin Franklin was the most versatile of the Founders—even more so than Jefferson. He was as famous as Washington in his day and his classic autobiography, with its celebration of the bourgeois virtues, is the only American autobiography of the 18th century that is still widely read today. Even the French loved him. But this master of self-presentation remains elusive; both his many pseudonyms and his bubbly wit helped him to maintain his distance from his contemporaries.

This course will examine the complexity of Franklin’s personality and the diversity of his achievements. In particular, it will explore Franklin’s place in the transatlantic cultural world of the 18th century, focusing on what the Enlightenment meant to Franklin, and what Franklin meant to the Enlightenment.

Go to Ben Franklin on iTunes

Virgil's Aeneid

The central text in the canon of Latin literature is Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem in twelve books composed more than two thousand years ago under the Roman emperor Augustus. The poem was an instant hit. It became a school text immediately and has remained central to studies of Roman culture to the present day. How can a poem created in such a remote literary and social environment speak so eloquently to subsequent ages? In this course we will discover what kind of poem this is and what kind of hero Aeneas is. Our studies will focus chiefly on the poem itself and on wider aspects of Roman culture.

Go to Virgil's Aeneid on iTunes

Hannibal

This audio course examines Hannibal's childhood and his young soldierly exploits in Spain.

Hannibal is a name that evoked fear among the ancient Romans for decades. His courage, cunning and intrepid march across the dangerous Alps in 218 BCE with his army and war elephants make for some of the most exciting passages found in ancient historical texts written by Polybius, Livy, and Appian. And they continue to inspire historians and archaeologists today. The mystery of his exact route is still a topic of debate, one that has consumed Patrick Hunt (Director of Stanford’s Alpine Archaeology Project) for more than a decade.

Go to Hannibal on iTunes

Colonial and Revolutionary America

This audio course covers the opening segment of the traditional American history survey.

The major themes of the course are the character of colonial society; the origins and consequences of the American Revolution, from the Stamp Act controversy to the adoption of the Federal Constitution; the impact of the Revolution on the general population and culture; and (implicitly) the long-term significance of the social and political history of this era for our conceptions of American nationhood, society, and citizenship.

Go to Colonial and Revolutionary America on iTunes

The American Founders and Their World

This audio course examines the group of leaders that turned the thirteen colonies into a nation.

By all accounts, popular interest in the American Revolutionary era has never been higher. Books on Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and other founders roll off the presses, make the bestseller lists, and provide clear evidence that Americans remain deeply fascinated by the remarkable generation that secured independence, formed a national union, created the first modern system of political parties—and espoused ideals of liberty and equality while maintaining a system of racial slavery. How should we think about the Founders and their legacy? How can we account for the emergence of this group of leaders in the provincial isolation of 18th-century British North America? To answer these questions, Continuing Studies invited Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and W.R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford, to recruit an “A Team” of fellow scholars from across the country to discuss the individual lives and collective acts that turned the thirteen colonies into a national republic. Presenters will not lecture formally; instead, in each class meeting Professor Rakove will engage in conversation with his guests to explore their subject in dialogue.

Go to The American Founders and Their World on iTunes

Structure of English Words

This audio course examines the richness of the English language.

Thanks to historical, cultural, and linguistic factors, English has by far the world’s largest vocabulary—leading many of us to have greater than average difficulty with words, and some of us to have greater than average curiosity about words. Our historical and linguistic study will cover both erudite and everyday English, with special attention to word meaning and word use, to both rules and exceptions. Most words originated with an image. “Reveal” = “pull back the veil,” “depend” = “hang down from.” Change is constant. “Girl” once meant “a young child of either sex;” an early synonym for “stupid” was “nice.” Despite resistance to change among some experts and some members of the general public, new words are entering at an accelerating rate, from “Frankenfood” to “ungoogleable.” Are there good changes and bad ones? And who gets to decide? Exploring the historical and contemporary richness of English will suggest some answers.

Go to Structure of English Words on iTunes