Curated Video
Learning to Fly: Setting
Learning to Fly: Setting describes the setting of a story as time and place, or when and where the story occurs.
Curated Video
Archival Panic and Increasing Specialization
Historian Teofilo Ruiz (UCLA) gives valuable advice to young and aspiring historians and muses on some intriguing aspects of the sociology of the professional historical community.
Curated Video
Unexpected Windows
Intellectual historian Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth) describes the benefits of engaging in intellectual history.
Curated Video
The Secular Enlightenment
Historian Margaret Jacob (UCLA) gives us a first-hand account of what's going through the mind of an experienced historian as she tackles the complex question of secularization in the Enlightenment from a variety of innovative perspectives.
Curated Video
Hester Prynne: Strength and Resilience
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, "The Scarlet Letter," Hester Prynne is a strong and resilient young woman who faces public condemnation in Puritan Massachusetts for committing adultery. Despite her punishment, Hester refuses to reveal...
Curated Video
Exploring Themes in The Scarlet Letter
"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a dark novel set in Puritan Massachusetts. It explores themes of sin, guilt, and the corrupting influence of society on individuals. Through the characters of Hester Prynne, Reverend Arthur...
Curated Video
Now and Then
University of Oxford historian Sir John Elliott describes why the search for historical objectivity implies that it is important for all historians to have one foot in the past and one foot in the present.
Curated Video
Tracing A Path
Intellectual historian Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth) details how investigating the etymology of "genius" naturally led him to a deeper understanding of what he had previously thought was primarily an 18th-century phenomenon.
Curated Video
Spurious Clarity
Historian David Armitage (Harvard) tackles the tricky question of how historical inquiry can better inform public policy.
Curated Video
Redefining "Classic"
QMUL historian Miri Rubin relates her initial misgivings about her translation of the notorious antisemitic work of Thomas of Monmouth becoming a "classic."
Curated Video
In Need of Revision
UCLA historian Margaret Jacob describes how, in her view, much of what scholars currently say about Unitarianism is wrong and that the time is ripe for a rigorous historical analysis of its intellectual origins and influences.
Curated Video
Divining the Date
Classicist Richard Janko, University of Michigan, relates how scholars have dated the Derveni Papyrus, found half-burned on the remains of a funeral pyre in 1962, to roughly 350 BCE, while he believes instead that the first version of...
Curated Video
Challenging Clichés
Cambridge intellectual historian Stefan Collini tangibly demonstrates his critical thinking skills in examining the role of universities in contemporary society.
Curated Video
A Two-Way Street
Stanford University classicist and political scientist Josiah Ober relates how the interests of elites and the general population were intertwined in classical Athens, and how we might be able to harness some of those ancient concepts in...
Curated Video
Towards Better Explanations
Historian David Cannadine, Princeton University, describes how, while identity categorisations such as class, gender and race have provided us with important tools to interpret the past, deeper historical understanding will involve the...
Curated Video
The Rhetoric Wars
Intellectual historian Quentin Skinner (QMUL), describes the tensions between the Renaissance's rhetorical culture and the Scientific Revolution’s pursuit of absolute truth.
Curated Video
Revolution or Civil War?
Historian David Armitage (Harvard) describes how the terms "revolution" and "civil war" are often far less clear cut than we might imagine.
Curated Video
Opening Up Sightlines
Intellectual historian Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth College) gives us a personal taste of what intellectual history is uniquely qualified to address, and what attracts him to the field.
Curated Video
On The Ground
Historian and social anthropologist Nile Green, UCLA, describes how he has been consistently struck by the distinction between the “top-down” books he was reading, and the particular human situations he was encountering on the ground.
Curated Video
Inhibiting Idealizations
Classicist Richard Janko (Michigan) speculates that our love of Athenian democracy sometimes prevents us from taking a more objective view of their society.
Curated Video
From the Present to the Past
Historian Nile Green (UCLA) describes how he applies his present work in the field to give him a deeper historical understanding.
Curated Video
Enumerating Possibilities
Historian David Armitage (Harvard) uses the example of international intervention to show how history can help us guide today's decisions.
Curated Video
Enlarging The Conversation
Historian David Cannadine, University of Princeton, describes how he believes the time is ripe for historians to increasingly interact with geneticists and neuroscientists in an attempt to better address the fundamental question of what...
Curated Video
An Overlooked Millennium
Historian Maria Mavroudi (UC Berkeley) highlights the appeal of Byzantium.