Jesus and the Gospels is a far-ranging course. It examines not only the canonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John familiar to us from the New Testament, but also the many other, apocryphal narratives and literary works that have contributed to our perceptions of Jesus, Mary, and Christianity. All of these works are encompassed by the word "Gospel." Professor Luke Timothy Johnson attempts to show us the human Jesus underlying the many portraits we have. He approaches the Gospels and our perceptions of Jesus from a different perspective than the popular quest for the "historical Jesus." (The Teaching Company course The Historical Jesus offers a fascinating look at this approach.) Professor Johnson asserts that the portrait of Jesus addressed by such an approach, legitimate and compelling though such an approach may be, leads to questions that are virtually "impossible to answer satisfactorily" through proper historical methods. "It is, after all, as literature that the Gospels influenced history. And it is through literature that present-day readers can continue to encounter Jesus," he says.

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Identify the most important characteristics of the main five religions.
• Describe the fundamentals of the main five world religions.
• Explain the relationship between the different forms of faith.
• Reflect on what dialogue among religions means from a philosophical and epistemological point of view.
• Develop a critical thinking about dialogue among religions and what makes it possible.

• Evaluate arguments (chains of reasoning) using a formal language as a tool
• Apply an understanding of the concept of validity in evaluating arguments
• Explore the relationships between formal languages and everyday or ‘natural’ languages
• Apply an understanding of the idea of a formal language — a specially created language with key vocabulary having carefully specified precise meanings — in analysing and understanding claims expressed in everyday language

 

• Investigate what the discipline of anthropology is and how it relates to the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘society’.
• Describe the historical evolution of anthropology, from its foundation to the present day.
• Produce ethnographic field notes related to a field work exercise.
• Identify the significant theorists and theories undergirding anthropology.

SKILLS YOU WILL GAIN

• Art History
• Art
• History
• Mythology

In 60 enthralling half-hour lectures, Physics and Our Universe: How It All Works proves that case, giving you a robust, introductory college-level course in physics. This course doesn't stint on details and always presents its subject in all of its elegance—yet it doesn't rely heavily on equations and mathematics, using nothing more advanced than high school algebra and trigonometry. Your teacher is Professor Richard Wolfson, a noted physicist and educator at Middlebury College. Professor Wolfson is author or coauthor of a wide range of physics textbooks, including a widely used algebra-based introduction to the subject for college students. He has specially designed Physics and Our Universe to be entirely self-contained, requiring no additional resources. And for those who wish to dig deeper, he includes an extensive list of suggested readings that will enhance your understanding of basic physics.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Investigate the properties of plasmas and understand their place in the universe
• Explore how materials can be engineered and investigated at the atomic level
• Explain how we can detect and manipulate individual particles
• Describe the link between fundamental research and real world applications
• Discuss the crucial role of physics in solving major societal problems

In Math and Magic, Professor Benjamin introduces you to magic, using tools like playing cards, numbers, and geometric figures. For each trick, he first runs through a demonstration. Then, he pulls back the curtain to show how the trick is done, explaining in detail the mathematical ideas underpinning the illusion. In this way, you learn such fundamentals of the magician's art as: •     Parity principle: Promoted by magician Bob Hummer, this idea has inspired a series of tricks in which the cards are treated in pairs according to a systematic procedure. Although the cards seem to be fairly mixed, an inherent order is preserved that, when revealed, astounds spectators. •     Faro shuffle: Devised as a way to beat the popular 19th-century card game faro, this bit of trickery is also known as the perfect shuffle, in which cards from two equal halves of a deck are interlaced perfectly. A sequence of such shuffles can bring the top card to any desired position, creating a truly magical effect. •     Lightning calculations: Dr. Benjamin is famous for his ability to solve problems in his head, often faster than someone punching numbers into a calculator. Naturally, he uses shortcuts, many of which are quite simple. For example, in this course you learn an easy method for determining cube roots that will make you look like a mathematical genius. •     Magic squares: Popular for centuries, magic squares are grids of numbers where each row, column, and diagonal adds up to the same number. It might seem that only a few solutions are possible for a given grid, but that's usually not true. You can impress your audience by building a magic square based on any number, or even based on someone's birthday.

• Understand what organisational psychology is, its scope of practice and its central concepts
• Gain insights into how the psychology of people impacts the way they think and behave at work
• Learn how to manage teams in the workplace
• Improve the functioning of organisations by understanding systemic issues
• Predict and debate new and exciting trends that affect organisations globally

This course will teach you the basic terms and concepts in statistics as well as guide you through introductory probability. You will learn how to....

• Use statistical research methods.
• Compute and interpret values like: Mean, Median, Mode, Sample, Population, and Standard Deviation.
• Compute simple probabilities.
• Explore data through the use of bar graphs, histograms, box plots, and other common visualizations.
• Investigate distributions and understand a distributions properties.
• Manipulate distributions to make probabilistic predictions on data.

• Demonstrate an understanding of how the mind can be studied in a scientific way using experiments
• Develop your knowledge of the psychology of reasoning and thinking
• Demonstrate a knowledge of the psychology of mental imagery
• Perform a simple experiment in cognitive psychology

Embark on this unrivaled adventure with Latin 101: Learning a Classical Language, 36 innovative lectures that cover the material normally presented in a first-year college course in Latin. By watching these entertaining lectures, practicing the drills, and doing the exercises in the accompanying guidebook, you will gain access to some of the world’s greatest thought in its original language. You will also understand why no translation can reproduce the elegance and charm of Latin. Your guide is Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller of Union College in Schenectady, New York, an award-winning teacher and textbook author who brings warmth, humor, and enthusiasm to the age-old profession of Latin master. To his students, Professor Mueller is simply Molinarius, which is Latin for his surname, Mueller, which means “miller” in English. Fully equipped to live in ancient times, Professor Mueller speaks Latin using the restored classical pronunciation, which melodiously approximates the way Latin was spoken in antiquity. When he speaks, Latin is indeed alive!

After just a few hours of Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language, you’ll understand why no translation can capture the expressive power of this incomparable tongue. In some ways simpler than English, in other ways more complex, Greek is a delight to study. As you work through these 36 engaging half-hour lessons, mastering the graceful alphabet, the precision of the nouns and verbs, the endlessly flexible syntax, and a vivid vocabulary, you’ll learn words and phrases such as these:

• μῆνιν: Pronounced mēnin, the first word of Homer’s Iliad means wrath, setting the tone for the entire epic, which is about the consequences of Achilles’ anger and how it leads the Greek army to the brink of ruin in the Trojan War. In this course, you read the first 125 lines of the Iliad—in Greek.
• ἥρως: Once sounded out—hērōs—this word is obviously hero, and such larger-than-life warriors from Greek mythology are the chief characters in the Iliad. After learning the Greek alphabet and diacritical marks, you suddenly see the wide influence of Greek on English.
• μαθηταὶ: That’s you, the students, pronounced mathētai, and it’s how Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller addresses you throughout this course. It has the same root (a verb that means “to learn”) as our word mathematics, and in the New Testament it comes to mean disciples.
• μὴ γένοιτο: Pronounced mē genoito, it means literally, may this not happen. More colloquially, it translates, God forbid! and it isone of St. Paul’s favorite expressions, used in Romans 7:13 and elsewhere. In this course, you read many such extracts from the New Testament—in Greek.

In Books That Matter: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Professor Damrosch invites you on a riveting, 24-lecture examination of this great work from multiple perspectives; as a vast historical chronicle, as a compelling masterpiece of literature, as a sharp commentary on cultural mores, and as a cautionary tale to Enlightenment Europe. An engaging, chapter-by-chapter guide to the Decline and Fall, Professor Damrosch’s course helps you navigate the book’s themes, structure, philosophies, background, and lasting influence. Whether you’ve read the book before and are looking for new ways to think about it, or whether you’ve always wanted to read it but never knew where to start, Professor Damrosch’s lectures are a fascinating, rewarding, and authoritative guide to the enduring legacy of a once-mighty empire—and the great book that became its eulogy and epitaph.

Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition, 2nd Edition is your chance to survey over 70 literary geniuses and masterpieces of Western literature. In 84 lectures taught by five award-winning professors who are experts in particular literary time periods, you explore the vast collection of Western writers and their respective works. With its broad historical scope and its depth of insight, this course is a veritable encyclopedia of Western literature's greatest writers. It's your chance to get a look at their works, styles, themes, and relationships with one another without having to pour through thousands upon thousands of pages of their writing. And you'll see the role they played both within the context of their own time and within the larger span of literary history.

What you will learn

• An overview of modern Chinese history, including the fall of the Qing and the end of imperial China.
• How China engaged with the West and how this confrontation still resonates today.
• The birth of modern China between the fall of the Qing and the end of World War II.
• The rise of the Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution, and the reopening of China.
• China from the rise of Deng Xiaoping to the present.
• China’s global leadership role in the 21st century.

What you will learn

• Gain insight into the evolution of omens and oracles in ancient civilizations to the creation of forecasting via computer simulations, epidemiology, and GPS.
• Explore text and images to better understand the process of building new technologies and medical practices.
• Examine efforts to predict the future over recorded history.

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Demonstrate accessing digitised primary sources on the history of crime
• Evaluate information, ideas, and arguments about the history of crime
• Reflect on society's fascination with past crime
• Identify the methods used to record the appearance of those taken into custody

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Reflect on how the First World War affected the heroic ideals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Assess WW1 posters and interpret the message that each poster would have given to those signing up during the war years.
• Explore art from WW1 and discuss thoughts with other students.
• Curate an exhibition of paintings of WW1 heroes and heroines to help reflect on the way ideas about heroism has changed from 1914 onward.
• Explore how heroism is represented in post-WW2 German culture.
• Discuss how WW1 and heroism are represented in films produced or co-produced in Germany in the last few years.
• Evaluate a film, book or TV programme which focuses on the men and women who lived through WW1 and consider how they are portrayed in contemporary culture.
• Research and discuss thoughts with fellow learners.

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Identify and understand the methods used on an archaeological excavation
• Evaluate how digital technology, scientific applications and experimental archaeology can be used to investigate the past
• Apply a range of evidence in order to debate how different artefacts might have been used
• Describe the site of Star Carr and the main discoveries made there

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Explore how the British Army evolved as an institution between 1815 and 1945, reflecting on its social composition, place in society, and military proficiency
• Debate the importance of command and leadership and how this developed alongside the changing nature of warfare
• Compare the concepts of ‘limited’ and ‘total' war
• Reflect upon the British Army’s changing role in its Empire, Europe and the world
• Assess a range of primary source materials and incorporate their findings into historical debate

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Develop an understanding of the civil war context of the beginnings of Quakerism
• Engage with the key ideas of George Fox and the early Quakers
• Explore the mode and content of early Quaker writing
• Reflect on the consequences of key Quaker theological ideas
• Assess the importance of the location of the beginnings of Quakerism
• Develop an understanding of Quaker history after 1652