加载中…TTC课程：西方文明的基础(The Foundations of western civilization)
(2013-06-23 16:16:31)
标签：
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分类： 讲座课程 |
TTC课程：西方文明的基础(The Foundations of western
civilization)
Professor
Thomas F. X. Noble，University of Notre
Dame
Ph.D., Michigan
State University
英文名：The
Foundations of western civilization
媒体格式：视频/音频
语言：英语
集数：48讲/每讲30分钟
课程类型：历史学
主讲人：（美）Thomas
F. X. Noble
定价：欢迎交流
COURSE
OVERVIEW
48 lectures /
30 minutes per lecture
You can
discover the essential nature, evolution, and perceptions of
Western civilization from its humble beginnings in the great river
valleys of Iraq and Egypt to the dawn of the modern world. With
these 48 lectures on the people, places, ideas, and events that
...
LECTURE
LIST
1 “Western,”
“Civilization,” and “Foundations”
2 History
Begins at Sumer
3 Egypt—The
Gift of the Nile
4 The
Hebrews—Small States and Big Ideas
5 A Succession
of Empires
6 Wide-Ruling
Agamemnon
7 Dark Age and
Archaic Greece
8 The Greek
Polis—Sparta
9 The Greek
Polis—Athens
10 Civic
Culture—Architecture and Drama
11 The Birth of
History
12 From Greek
Religion to Socratic Philosophy
13 Plato and
Aristotle
14 The Failure
of the Polis and the Rise of Alexander
15 The
Hellenistic World
16 The Rise of
Rome
17 The Roman
Republic—Government and Politics
18 Roman
Imperialism
19 The Culture
of the Roman Republic
20 Rome—From
Republic to Empire
21 The Pax
Romana
22 Rome's
Golden and Silver Ages
23 Jesus and
the New Testament
24 The
Emergence of a Christian Church
25 Late
Antiquity—Crisis and Response
26 Barbarians
and Emperors
27 The
Emergence of the Catholic Church
28 Christian
Culture in Late Antiquity
29 Muhammad and
Islam
30 The Birth of
Byzantium
31 Barbarian
Kingdoms in the West
32 The World of
Charlemagne
33 The
Carolingian Renaissance
34 The
Expansion of Europe
35 The
Chivalrous Society
36 Medieval
Political Traditions, I
37 Medieval
Political Traditions, II
38 Scholastic
Culture
39 Vernacular
Culture
40 The Crisis
of Renaissance Europe
41 The
Renaissance Problem
42 Renaissance
Portraits
43 The Northern
Renaissance
44 The
Protestant Reformation—Martin Luther
45 The
Protestant Reformation—John Calvin
46 Catholic
Reforms and "Confessionalization"
47 Exploration
and Empire
48 What
Challenges Remain?
ABOUT THE
PROFESSOR
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Professor
Thomas F. X. Noble
University of
Notre DamePh.D., Michigan State University
Dr. Thomas F.
X. Noble is Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
He earned his B.A. in History from Ohio University and his M.A. and
Ph.D. in Medieval History from Michigan State
University.
Professor Noble
has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and research grants from the American Philosophical Society. In
2008 he received the Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence
in Teaching from Notre Dame. In 1999 he was awarded the Alumni
Distinguished Professor Award and a David Harrison III Award for
outstanding undergraduate advising, both from the University of
Virginia.
Professor Noble
is the author, coauthor, or editor of 10 books and has published
more than 40 articles, chapters, and essays. His coauthored
textbook, Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment, is in
its 5th edition. His research has concentrated on late antiquity
and the early Middle Ages, focusing on the history of the city of
Rome, the history of the papacy, and the age of
Charlemagne.
FULL COURSE
DESCRIPTION
You can
discover the essential nature, evolution, and perceptions of
Western civilization from its humble beginnings in the great river
valleys of Iraq and Egypt to the dawn of the modern world. With
these 48 lectures on the people, places, ideas, and events that
make up The Foundations of Western Civilization, award-winning
scholar and teacher Thomas F. X. Noble of the University of Notre
Dame invites you to explore the vast and rich territory of Western
civilization.
Grasp
History over Thousands of Years
From the late
stages of the Agricultural Revolution to the doorstep of the
Scientific Revolution, your learning in this course will cover
roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1600, when the "foundations" of the
modern West come into view.
Professor
Noble's goal is to offer a history of what has been fundamental
across millennia in the West, that most unusual of world
civilizations.
"Throughout the
course, we will pause to reflect on where Western civilization
finds its primary locus at any given moment," he says. "But Western
civilization is much more than human and political
geography.
"We will
explore the myriad forms of political and institutional structures
by means of which Western peoples have organized themselves and
their societies. These include monarchies of several distinct
types, as well as participatory republics.
"Looking at
institutions will draw us to inquire about the Western tradition of
political discourse. Who should participate in any given society?
Why? How have societies resolved the tension between individual
self-interest and the common good?"
Your learning
will follow a timeline and order to cover vast amounts of territory
and thousands of years:
- Begin in the ancient Near East and move to Greece, then to Rome
- Explore the shape and impact of large ancient empires, including those of Persia, Alexander the Great, and Rome
- Consider Western Europe to watch Europe gradually expand physically and culturally
- Examine the globalization of Western civilization with the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration and discovery.
Discover a
Treasure of Rich Historical Detail
This course
rewards the desire for useful generalization and theory. But it
also highlights the telling detail on which history can turn.
Professor Noble's guidance allows you to comprehend the ongoing
presence of the Roman Empire, the ceaseless influence of a 20-year
golden age in Athens, the living struggle between Abraham's three
great religions, and much more.
Professor Noble
seeks to delight the mind with the "Aha!" experience: "That's why
we do that!" "That's where that word came from!" "That's why those
people won!" (In the last revelation, metals and horses figure more
prominently than social virtues.)
And the course
is a lavish treasure of rich detail. For
example:
- The Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100 to 700 B.C.) went "dark," at least in part, because the Greeks forgot how to write—the only people in human history known to have lost literacy after having once attained it.
- The architects of the Parthenon, to achieve the optical illusion of perfect straightness, subtly angled the building's columns so that, if extended, they would meet a mile and a quarter above the temple's roof—over its exact center.
- Although fewer than 200 books (including classical texts) survive from before the year 800, the 9th century—meaning the literate monastic establishment fostered by Charlemagne—has left us more than 6,000.
- The city of Florence, at the height of the Renaissance, had no university, but this was compensated somewhat by Lorenzo de'Medici, who was spending 50 percent of the city's annual budget on books for his Medicean Academy's library.
- Christopher Columbus, in what was perhaps a bit of "spin" from a practiced self-promoter, based his plan for reaching the East Indies by sailing west partly on suppositions about the Earth's size that had been known to be false since Hellenistic times.
A Learning
Experience Built around Powerful Organizing
Themes
This broad and
panoramic series will help you pull an enormous sweep of history
together into one coherent—though by no means
closed—framework.
Professor Noble
walks you through history as it develops, taking into account:
ecology, geography, and climate; government and economics;
religion; work and leisure; philosophy; literature; art and
architecture; and even virtues, values, and
aesthetics.
You will find
everything from a thumbnail sketch of the Assyrians (cruel
practitioners of state terror) to a detailed analysis of how the
Roman constitution worked. For example, the word veto, which means
"I forbid," was literally shouted into the Senate chamber by Roman
tribunes listening from just outside the door.
In addition to
such detailed, anecdotal information, another way you will gain a
more vivid sense of the past from these lectures is from the number
of memorable sketches of individuals and great works of Western
culture. You will:
Ponder the view
of life in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh
Review the
impressive amount of historical information preserved in the
Iliad
Listen to
selections from the great poets of ancient Rome, including not only
Virgil and Ovid but Sallust, Juvenal, and
Martial
Encounter
amazing figures such as Charlemagne's lieutenant Theodulf, who was
not only a bishop but an imperial diplomat and administrator, a
theologian and scholar of the Hebrew Bible, a poet, and an
architect who designed an exquisite chapel at
Germigny.
The
Importance of Material Factors
Professor Noble
is careful never to neglect the environmental and technological
factors that also shape history.
You will
examine how a sustained period of favorable weather around the 10th
and 11th centuries allowed western Europe to become more populous,
found and rebuild cities, increase trade, and go from being a
target of outside invasions by Vikings, Huns, Mongols, and Arabs to
launching incursions of its own: The Crusades, which began in
1095.
And delving
even deeper into the story, you will learn how a seemingly humble
item, the horse collar, contributed so powerfully to this trend. If
it were not for the invention of the horse collar, there may have
been no Crusades at all.
Illuminating
Questions about Familiar Categories
Professor Noble
suggests that many conventional historical categories and concepts
can obscure as much as they reveal. By setting aside these ideas,
you can open your mind to a broader and perhaps more accurate
picture of history.
Did the Roman
Empire really "fall"? What did people at the time experience? What
exactly was being reborn in the Renaissance? Is it historically
accurate to speak of the "Protestant Reformation"? Why do we think
of the Middle Ages as just that—i.e., a time somehow sandwiched
between two other (and presumably superior) times? Did the
brilliant intellectuals and writers who clustered around the court
of Charlemagne see it that way?
No other
civilization has achieved the global reach of the West. By
surveying Mesopotamia to modernity and everything in between, you
will pursue answers to the questions of what "the West" most
essentially is or has been thought to be, and what distinguishes it
from other world civilizations—not necessarily better in all ways
but surely unique.
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