The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say,...

By the middle of the 20th century, the epicenter of American theater, the Broadway theater district in New York, was getting to be a pretty staid and commercial place. There was a lot of money to be made from prestige plays and dancing...

The Irish Renaissance in the early 20th century included a wealth of new plays written both in Ireland, and by Irish ex-patriots elsewhere. W.B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, and J.M. Synge were creating a new national theater of Ireland...

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, theater was evolving rapidly in Europe. Impresarios like Georg II, Duke of the Duchy of Saxe Meinengen (in what is now Germany), were pushing theater troupes to new heights of realism. New...

Pop culture is changing thanks to a different kind of storytelling, says digital strategist Hyeonmi Kim. They're called webtoons: comic-like illustrations published in short segments and meant to be read on a smartphone in five to 10...

From populist demagogues, we will learn the indispensability of democracy, says novelist elif Shafak. "From isolationists, we will learn the need for global solidarity. And from tribalists, we will learn the beauty of cosmopolitanism." A...

Every act of communication is, in some way, an act of translation. Writer Chris Bliss talks about the way that great comedy can translate deep truths for a mass audience.

How does Hollywood choose what stories get told on-screen? Too often, it's groupthink informed by a narrow set of ideas about what sells at the box office. As a producer, Franklin Leonard saw too many great screenplays never get made...

Few mistakes sour good writing like nominalizations, or, as Helen Sword likes to call them, zombie nouns. Zombie nouns transform simple and straightforward prose into verbose and often confusing writing. Keep your nouns away from...

To those who feel like they don't belong: there is beauty in being a misfit. Author Lidia Yuknavitch shares her own wayward journey in an intimate recollection of patchwork stories about loss, shame and the slow process of...

The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say,...

His reign marked the beginning of one of history's greatest empires . . . and the end of one of its first republics. Was Rome's first emperor a visionary leader who guaranteed his civilization's place in history, or a tyrant who...

Today, Clint Smith will teach you about the legendary writer Toni Morrison. Morrison is best known for her novels which chronicle the experiences of Black Americans throughout history. She was the first Black American Woman to win a...

The Harlem Renaissance was one of the richest, most vibrant, and most culturally generative artistic periods in American history and the work that emerged from that period continues to shape the landscape of American arts and letters...

An outline of how we make our videos.

In our final episode of Crash Course Film Production, it's time to take a look at television production and how it differs from feature film production. It's subtle but it has a lot to do with how television shows make money for their...

In which John Green teaches you about the poetry of Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was a poet and playwright in the first half of the 20th century, and he was involved in the Harlem Renaissance, which was a cultural movement among...

In which Mike delves into the theater of ancient Rome. It wasn't all gladiators and Christian-killing, you know. There was theater, too. Roman drama drew heavily on Greek drama. So heavily, in fact, that many of the stories and...

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or...

Story Mapping – Francesca Simon

The Garden of Eden Garden Centre

This video discusses various narrative techniques, such as flashback, foreshadowing, description, dialogue, and multiple plot lines.

This video discusses verbal, situational, and dramatic irony as well as omniscient point of view.

Learning to vary sentence types to improve writing.