In this 1998 interview, Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Faisal Husseini, one of the leading figures in the Palestinian national movement and Yossi Beilin, a leading Israeli political figure, for a discussion of how their mutual dialogue set in motion the Oslo Peace Accord. Both Husseini and Beilin talk about their lives and how their perceptions of the other took an important turn toward peace. (50 min)

Conversations with History host Harry Kreisler welcomes Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations for a discussion of the Anglo American maritime system—its origins, development, and impact on the world. The conversation touches on the unique synergy between Protestant religion and capitalism, the consolidation of Anglo American power in the process of transforming the international system, the importance of culture in international politics, and the need for a dialogue of civilizations in the 21st century. (57 minutes)

Conversations Host Harry Kreisler welcomes historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson for a discussion of the Peloponnesian War and its lessons for today. He compares that conflict with the war in Iraq. He talks about imperial ambition, the conflict between civilizations, and military power as an instrument to achieve democratization in the struggle between modernity and tradition. (53 min)

Host Harry Kreisler welcomes British historian Niall Ferguson for a discussion of the dynamics of money and power in international politics, the British Empire, and the U.S. role in world affairs. (56 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes His Excellency Kenneth D. Kaunda, the First President of Zambia (1964-1991). President Kaunda discusses the national and international challenges he confronted as a national leader. He also reflects on his current work with NGOs in the global fight to fight disease, poverty and inequality. (54 minutes)

Former United Nations secretary General Sir Brian Urquhart in conversation with UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler looks back on his distinguished career as a soldier, diplomat, and international statesman. (57 min)

Washington Post reporter John Pomfret discusses his new book, "Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China." (55 minutes)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Harvard historian Niall Ferguson for a discussion of his book ŇThe War of the World.Ó Ferguson analyzes the role of ethnic conflict, economic volatility, and the decline of empires in making the twentieth century the most violent one in human history. (57 min)

This OER explores the debates over the solar system in the seventeenth century, focusing on the relationship between models and data during this time period. It contains both an activity as well as resources for further exploration. It is a product of the OU Academy of the Lynx, developed in conjunction with the Galileo's World Exhibition at the University of Oklahoma.

This seminar considers "difference" and "sameness" as they have been conceived, experienced, and regulated by peoples of the Middle East, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. The first half discusses the Ottoman Empire by exploring how this multiethnic, polyglot empire survived for several relatively peaceful centuries and what happened when its formula for existence was challenged by politics based on mono-ethnic states. The second half of the course focuses on post-Ottoman nation-states, such as Turkey and Egypt, and Western-mandated Arab states, such as Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq. Finally, the course concludes with a case analysis of Israel.

Diego Rivera’s, “The History of Mexico: An Epic of the Mexican,” is one of his masterpieces. The fresco mural tells more than 2,000 years of Mexican History, but there’s an emphasis on the last 700 years of Mexican History. The mural discusses more than 230 historical figures and historical events within 554 meters at the north stairwell at the National Palace in Mexico City - Palacio Nacional.

This presentation offers resources and strategies to encourage the use of digital and environmental approaches to teaching World History including the use of contemporary and historical maps to foster spatial reasoning skills; assigning students to create interactive maps and virtual globes; and using visualization tools that show environmental change over time.

This course examines European music from the early Middle Ages until the end of the Renaissance. It includes a chronological survey and intensive study of three topics: chant and its development, music in Italy 1340-1420, and music in Elizabethan England. Instruction focuses on methods and pitfalls in studying music of the distant past. Students' papers, problem sets, and presentations explore lives, genres, and works in depth. Works are studied in facsimile of original notation, and from original manuscripts at MIT, where possible.

This subject examines the interactions of East Asia with the rest of the world and the relationships of each of the East Asian countries with each other, from ca. 1500 to 2000 A.D. Primary focus on China and Japan, with some reference to Korea, Vietnam, and Central Asia. Asks how international diplomatic, commercial, military, religious, and cultural relationships joined with internal processes to direct the development of East Asian societies. Subject addresses perceptions and misperceptions among East Asians and foreigners.

When John Locke declared (in the 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding) that knowledge was derived solely from experience, he raised the possibility that human understanding and identity were not the products of God's will or of immutable laws of nature so much as of one's personal history and background. If on the one hand Locke's theory led some to pronounce that individuals could determine the course of their own lives, however, the idea that we are the products of our experience just as readily supported the conviction that we are nothing more than machines acting out lives whose destinies we do not control. This course will track the formulation of that problem, and a variety of responses to it, in the literature of the "long eighteenth century." Readings will range widely across genre, from lyric poetry and the novel to diary entries, philosophical prose, and political essays, including texts by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Mary Astell, David Hume, Laurence Sterne, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Hays, and Mary Shelley. Topics to be discussed include the construction of gender identities; the individual in society; imagination and the poet's work. There will be two essays, one 5-6 pages and one 8-10 pages in length, and required presentations.

This course surveys the social, cultural, and political development of western Europe between 500 and 1350. A number of topics are incorporated into the broad chronological sweep of the course, including: the Germanic conquest of the ancient Mediterranean world; the rise of a distinct northern culture and the Carolingian Renaissance; the emergence of feudalism and the breakdown of political order; contact with the Byzantine and Islamic East and the Crusading movement; the quality of religious life; the vitality of the high medieval economy and culture; and the catastrophes of the fourteenth century.

This course is an investigation of the Roman empire of Augustus, the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, and the English empire in the age of the Hundred Years War. Students examine different types of evidence, read across a variety of disciplines, and develop skills to identify continuities and changes in ancient and medieval societies. Each term this course is different, looking at different materials from a variety of domains to explore ancient and mideveal studies. This version is a capture of the course as it was taught in 2012, and does not reflect how it is taught currently.

The purpose of this course is to familiarize undergraduate students with environmental history as a discipline, as well as introduce them to the Atlantic World as a region of study by focusing on the late fifteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. This course does not assume previous experience with history courses and is intended to be a broad survey that encompasses several global regions. The course is arranged both thematically and geographically and emphasizes environmental change in the context of the eastern and southern coasts of the United States, the Caribbean, central and southeastern Mexico, Brazil, West Africa, and the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe throughout the early modern period. 

This video offers a summary and analysis of the main themes in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The world’s first recorded epic poem, from Mesopotamia, explores important questions: can humans defy aging and conquer death?

This project discovers the history of Modern Europe, starting at the Hundred Years War and ending at the present time.
A chronological perspective of history is attempted within this text. Although this is the case, it is also important to understand patterns within European History, therefore chapters will attempt to cover a breadth of material even though their titles might be that of a specific pattern in history rather than a time period.