Sunday, 9 May 2010
Best of iTunes U: Introduction to Ancient Greek History
The explosion of content available on iTunes U has probably been the single biggest improvement to my quality of life in the last year. Whereas before podcasts were the main thing I listened to, I am now able to enjoy lectures from preeminent professors at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and countless other great institutions of higher learning. This is fantastic, not only because it would not have been possible for all but a few to hear these great lectures before, but also because the subjects available are, in their variety and interest, just more informative to listen to than what one can find in the average podcast. I really love it.
iTunes U, however, really has a number of different kinds of content on it, ranging from simple promotional videos (not that informative, unless you are a prospective student), to one-off lectures, to interviews with faculty, and—my favourite by far—sometimes the lectures of an entire course are online. Finding the quality stuff is not always easy, though, so from time to time I want to highlight stuff that I found particularly good by writing about it here.
Donald Kagan's Introduction to Ancient Greek History deserves to be mentioned first of all. It is accessible, even to those who have not studied classics or ancient history. It is complete, with all twenty-four lectures online, giving you the full experience of sitting in on the course. It is coming from a top professor—Kagan is a Sterling professor at Yale and the world's preeminent living expert on the Peloponnesian war. And it is relevant—throughout Kagan is very good at explaining why Ancient Greek history matters to us today, and why we should care so much about the events he is describing.
That is high praise, and it is ironic to find myself writing it, since I nearly turned Kagan off ten minutes into the first lecture.
This is because that first lecture ventures into a political interpretation of history, and Kagan's own politics, and the interpretation of Greek history that he was propounding to support them, rubbed me the wrong way. Fortunately, this is only really present in the introduction to the course (and even then, perhaps I was hyper-sensitive to it), and frankly, by the end of the course it is abundantly clear that his views in no way impede his presentation of his actual subject matter.
It is an excellent presentation of ancient Greek history, an excellent experience to be able to follow the entire course of one of Yale's most famous humanities professors, and I think it would be easy to follow even for someone fairly new to the subject matter. A great place to start for anyone interested in learning more about Ancient Greece.
