Course: The Tudors
Length: 6 weeks, 5 hrs/wk
School/platform: University of Roehampton, London/Futurelearn
Instructor: Suzannah Lipscomb, et al
Quote:
From magnificence and martyrs to weddings and war, the Tudor period was one of the most eventful in British history. The reigns of the five (or was it six?) monarchs during the late fifteenth to seventeenth century has enthralled historians, students and television and film producers alike.
On this course you will compare the rule of the Tudor monarchs and examine the significant political, religious and cultural changes of the period. You will be taught by renowned scholars on Tudor England from the University of Roehampton who will reveal how this era has shaped modern-day British politics.
I recently read the S. J. Parris novel Heresy, a work of historical fiction primarily featuring Giordano Bruno but firmly set in the reign of Elizabeth I in 1583. Unlike many fellow USAians who find the monarchy to be romantic and intriguing, I’ve always been bewildered by it, particularly by the roll call of monarchs. So many Henrys! Georges and Richards in triplets! And, in the period of the book, one too many Marys. Maybe two too many, or maybe just two too many names.
In any case, I thought, having discovered spymaster Walsingham and poet Philip Sydney via the Parris book, I might be ready for a more formal look at the period. I was delighted to find a mooc all about the Tudors on Futurelearn, the UK answer to Coursera.
The course starts with the turnover from Richard III to Henry VII and proceeds through the death of Elizabeth I and the ascension of the Stuarts via James I. Or IV, depending on what country you’re in. It’s complicated. That’s the problem, it’s all very complicated, with lots of fighting about who’s a legitimate heir and who’s a bastard child and who’s the right religion and who’s going to the Tower. We also meet a lot of side players, advisors, councilors, dukes and lords and all those things that bewilder me.
In addition to the marriages, beheadings, religious conversions, and such that make up the actual historical accounts, the course looks at how this period has been recorded in the arts: portraiture, architecture, literature, plays, and, most recently, films. The possible skewing of these forms is discussed: some people get the hero treatment, others are played as the villain, and while sometimes those roles are deserved, sometimes they aren’t.
I took this recreationally, so perhaps I didn’t work hard enough, but I found a lot of the material might have been easier had I grown up in the culture that grew from this period. Some people – earls and such – are referred to by various names reflecting their titles or their given names. Thanks to having been prepped by Parris, I was better able to follow the sense of threat felt by the Elizabethan court over the persistence of Catholic orthodoxy in the country.
One amusing aside: having watched the Netflix series The Crown, I was gratified to finally hear about the Cecils, only to find that the reference in the series – “History teaches: Never trust a Cecil” – was an anachronism. But the familiarity helped me recognize Elizabeth I’s two Cecils.
The course consists mostly of articles – short readings – with a few videos scattered throughout each of the six units. Discussion forums follow each step; most courses have a “live” period when a facilitator monitors the boards and answers questions, but this was an in-between period. An ungraded quiz of two to four questions appears once or twice in a unit. I took the audit version; it’s my understanding that those who pay $27.99/month for Unlimited access to much of the Futurelearn catalog, or who pay $64 for permanent access to this particular course, can receive grades, or at least certificates of achievement.
I found the course very helpful in getting a better handle on this period of English history, both in terms of the succession of monarch, and in understanding, at least in a general way, the most important issues of the day.
Three months, one thousand pages of source text, two additional critical/historical texts, one mooc and one OCW later – I have some idea of how that madness feels.
of academic essays on various literary aspects of the novel (which was great), plus a 
And oh by the way… since I was watching both OSP and the Yale lectures on Youtube, other Don Quixote videos cropped up, and I discovered a 
Contemporary editions of DQ almost always include both Parts I and II, but Prof. González points out that Cervantes did not originally intend to write a second book. Given how well Part II recapitulates, and un-enchants (I’ll get to this), part I, it’s hard to believe this was not in the works, but he finished Part I and did some other things before realizing he’d written a best-seller, and a sequel might be a good idea. They were published ten years apart, but another writer, using the pseudonym Alonzo Fernandez de Avellaneda, wrote a “False Quixote” in between. Cervantes became aware of this as he was writing Part II, and – this is where I get goosebumps – references it several times. It’s part of the self-reflexivity of the novel, a feature I particularly enjoyed.
I love the layered narration. The text has a narrator, of course. But this narrator, at the end of Part I, Chapter 8 (remember, Part I has 52 chapters) announces that “at this very point the author of this history leaves the battle unfinished, excusing himself on the ground that he hasn’t found anything more written about these exploits of Don Quixote than what he has narrated.” In Chapter 9, this narrator tells us he came across a street vendor selling notebooks written in Arabic. A Moorish passerby translated the title: History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian – a relative of whom, by the way, may be one of the minor characters in one chapter. Our in-story narrator hired the anonymous Moor to translate the whole thing, which the narrator has set down. And of course all of this is written by Cervantes. It raises the question of the God-like status of writers creating worlds, and also leads to the question, so who, or Who, wrote Cervantes? From the little I’ve read about it, this technique features prominently in the Rushdie work as well.
This narrative technique, linked to the Master Pedro puppet show (II.25-26) is featured in the George Haley essay in the Casebook, appropriately titled “The Narrator in Don Quixote: Maesa Pedro’s Puppet Show.” Prof. González also put a little sketch on the board in his 
There’s so much more. Every aspect of Spanish political, religious, social, and economic culture is brought into the tale, either symbolically or literally. Sancho turns out to be a natural logician, as he solves a problem closely resembling the Liar’s Paradox. Don Quixote offers a good deal of advice to writers in various places, mostly following Aristotle, which is particularly ironic since Cervantes left Aristotle in the dust. The Cave of Montesinos as an analog of Dante’s Inferno; Sancho’s ceremony at Altisadora’s catafalque as an analog of the Inquisition. George Mason Professor of Spanish Literature 
Antonio Carreño-Rodríguez’ paper (“Costello + Panza = Costanza: Paradigmatic Pairs in Don Quixote and American Popular Culture”) citing DQ and Sancho as the original comedy team, leading to Abbott & Costello, and later, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. The death of Don Quixote, which Borges considers the reason for the entire book. And the opening question: can books drive one insane?
Course: 
The first course on the Hebrew Bible was more or less formal lecture and covered the expected material: the J, P, D, and E sources, which prophets were Northern Kingdom and which were Southern, who was pre-exile, post-exile, and trans-exile, etc. The instructor demonstrated great fondness for the texts, and made convincing arguments that, contrary to later opinion in Christian culture, Judaism was not all about law and rules. The origin of some of the most familiar Biblical stories in ancient mythologies from around the middle East, the changing covenant with God from suzerainty to a more Zionist approach to the less concrete displayed in Job are outlined, along with the history that provoked these changes. I always thought the book of Job was one of the earliest in the Bible; turns out, the basic story is very old, but the philosophical construction reflects a much later period in ancient Israel’s history.
The New Testament instructor took a more casual, interactive approach, injecting frequent humor and asking for input from the in-person class. The formation of the Canon was a running theme, as was the wide variety of Christianities that existed in the first two centuries and the texts that were winnowed from what has now become the standard Bible. Viewing the Bible as a library, rather than as a single book, was a helpful way of dealing with some of the contradictions found between different books. Different views of Jesus as seen through different Gospels – including a few that aren’t in most contemporary Christian canons – were lined up with possible authorships. Paul’s letters were thoroughly covered, as well as the pretend-Paul letters and other letters that show various types of Christianity in the first couple of centuries after Christ.
Course: 
Each week looks at a different aspect, and shows what cases and decisions were crucial in forming what we more or less take for granted now. It’s all very accessible; even the cases are available in full legalistic glory, or in for-the-rest-of-us form. Though it’s large-class lecture, there’s some interaction, which always makes a course more interesting. 
Each lecture started with a welcome that included online students and “community auditors”. I was curious about that, so I went looking: it seems that, for $200, pretty much anyone can sit in on most Princeton lectures in person, as long as they sit in the back and don’t say anything unless expressly invited (keep out of the way of the “real” students, so to speak). And then there are moocers, who get much the same deal for free. While edX has upped the pressure to pay – audit courses are no longer available indefinitely, and graded materials aren’t available – Princeton says, screw that, and somehow carved out its own deal. Grades were calculated, the course is available in archive, and they even email a Certificate to everyone who passes. Now that’s open. 
Course: 
where France and England came from, though I confess, I still don’t understand the whole “fall” of Rome; I think I’m taking the word too seriously, maybe I should go with “decline”. In any case, Gibbon’s six-volume history seems to have lost its lustre; I’m glad I never got around to reading it. 
Courses:
The first mooc examines a pair of manuscripts describing the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the Tabernacle (a temporary and portable version used before the Temple was built, particularly during the forty years the Hebrews wandered around the Sinai). The second mooc looks at a codex with three different manuscripts on medieval medical practices, and uses these as a way to trace the flow of ideas from Galen to the Islamicate to Europe. 
end-page glossaries include local dialect vocabularies for practitioners who need to buy these substances from Italian vendors. 
renowned physician/philosopher Avicenna came along and wrote an even better text, overshadowing Majusi’s work and pushing him into relative historic obscurity. 
pertinent sections of the manuscript are embedded in the videos. Links to the complete digitized manuscripts from the Penn collection are hard to find, but they’re there (check the Syllabus). 
I almost missed these offerings entirely. edX hasn’t publicized the current Tabernacle course at all (I saw it on a tweet by Class Central), and it was only through the Syllabus that I learned about the Jewish Medicine course. That’s a shame, since they’re terrific. I’ve been a bit of a snob about mini-moocs (I’ve called them “Youtube plus a quiz”) but I have to re-think that. For anyone interested in Jewish cultural history, medieval medicine, or manuscript studies, these are tiny little gems. 
survey courses, that I prefer depth to breadth. Still, while there were a few “catalog lectures” early on (this god does that, this demon does the other thing), I found many of the units quite interesting – and last three weeks were great.
adaptations, was particularly rich in this. I was a bit surprised gods, angels, and demons weren’t explicitly connected across cultures (the nature theme, for example), since it seemed to me there were obvious similarities and differences. I probably should have been more active on the forums to discuss these.
the way). I found the lectures on Buddhism to be nearly incomprehensible (I stuck with my interpretation – Buddha was an agnostic who incorporated Hindu gods as a marketing tool – and moved on), but 23 out of 24 is still excellent any way you cut it. 
evolving story of the acheiropoieton, the miraculous portrait of Jesus “not painted by human hands”, to be of great interest. I also loved the last week, a more in-depth case study of another continuing saga of a miracle, this one from Coptic Egypt involving the moving of a mountain. Manuscripts got into the act, and, well, manuscripts, what else can I say. I feel like I finally have some understanding of Copts beyond “Egyptian Christians.” That, to me, is the real value of these types of courses: we feel more connected to places we’ll probably never go, places like the Muqattam area of Cairo, Ise in Japan, Armenia, and Georgia. These days, we need all the connection we can get. 
including archaeology, history in general, the history of ideas, the history of religions, the history of literature, and the branch of philology called textual criticism or (in a larger sense), textual scholarship.” Oooh, now there’s a mooc I want to take! We got a glimpse of this during the last two weeks, in the tracing of the miraculous portrait and the moving of the mountain. I hope to discover more along those lines in future moocs. 
Each of the 13 weekly lessons consisted of two or three academic papers, and about 45 minutes of lecture divided into two videos. The videos were mostly voice-overs covering prepared slides (available as a separate download). You could read the transcripts, download the slides, and read the articles without watching the videos at all. The lectures were well-organized and followed the slides very closely.
Week 1 started with a general look at human rights. Week 2 got into Locke, Hobbes, Marx, and all of the usual suspects (I’ve taken several political philosophy OCWs and the same crew always shows up), negative and positive rights. Mary Wollstonecraft was included, which was nice, since all lectures included the caveat that rights, as declared by the “classic liberals”, were for white property-owning men only (Jeet Heer would approve). In Week 3 the process of drafting and approving the UN Declaration on Human Rights was covered, along with its major provisions.
All of these held interesting material. For example, the indigenous section was taught by Carol Dowling, a professor of aboriginal descent whose twin sister Julie is an artist painting pieces that the experience of the Australian aboriginal peoples and their family specifically. The section on rights for the Disabled included a TED talk by journalist/teacher/comedian Stella Young, who I’ve seen before in several venues; she passed away in 2014. The week on asylum seekers and refugees was heart-wrenching, given the frustration level I and so many Americans feel about our current administration’s refusal to provide more assistance.
their entirety, the course focused on specific sections as exemplars of various points; individual chapters or short groups of chapters were the only assigned reading. 
And yes, since there were a lot of unfamiliar names, and since this was material I want to retain long-term, I used Cerego, so I’ll be getting questions about “Handing Grettir Around” periodically over the next year (you’ll have to take the course to see why that’s such a delightfully amusing prospect). This was particularly helpful when the final exam rolled around, since I’d been seeing the material at various intervals all along. 
so few profs can pull off), in the podcasts he and Beth came across as real people, and delightful, fun people at that. Because manuscripts are of particular interest to me, I found the W2 episode most helpful with course material, but later episodes were great fun, featured saga/Viking re-enactors, musicians, craftspeople, and a host of off-the-cuff topics (such as reactions when people hear Beth’s dissertation is on dairy products in Scandinavian literature. Turns out, skyr is pretty interesting, and I wish Iceland luck in promoting it as a substitute for Greek yogurt (if they can produce a fat-free, sugar-free, 80-calorie, 12-grams-of-protein, fruity version for under $1 a serving, I’m in). I discovered the podcasts a bit late, only after Week 2, and they made a huge difference in my perception of the course as a whole. 
I wish there had been a “preview podcast” available from the start in the course material; I think I would have had an easier time with Week 1, a general introduction to Icelandic sagas. I found this week to be the most difficult, probably because I had no background to rely on. I briefly considered giving up at some point, but I really wanted to get to W2, which focused on manuscripts. I had more background here and was able to get a better footing. From there I was hooked, through weeks on the role of landscape in the sagas, how women were portrayed, the depictions of paganism and the Church and the importance of the conflict during conversion, and the supernatural in the sagas. 
The forums were active and well-supported, with questions suggested for each week. I asked a few outside questions (some of them clearly outside the course material). When it worked, it was great: I asked about the “missing rubric” mentioned in a lecture, and Beth went out of her way to bring Robert, the resident manuscript expert, to the boards; I ended up with a lovely example. The course also had a Facebook page, but since I gave up on Facebook way way back when they decided they could manage my feed better than I could (and have no desire to start again, given the disclosures of recent weeks), I missed out on that.
and a half before agreeing to the Christianization of Iceland, then threw his pagan statues into Goðafoss, the waterfall of the gods. I loved learning about things like the Gráskinna, the “ gray skin” manuscript with the sealskin cover that, through subtle changes, makes Hallgerður more sympathetic to the reader; about the contemporary researchers like Jesse Byock, who excavated Mosfell in search of clues about Egils saga, and Emily Lethbridge whose SagaMap plots locations from the different sagas. 
Mongols – and much of it overlaps as groups assimilate, migrate, conquer, or get conquered. But I feel like I’ve made a solid start, and since I created a Cerego set for the course, I’ll be reminded of all of it from time to time and will retain at least the basics of who, what, when, where, why. 
maintained unity. Then we looked at cultural aspects: how people lived, religious details, the Translation Project, and the flourishing of arts and sciences in the Middle East, while keeping in mind the interplay between history and culture. 
from comments of other students, sometimes confirming and often expanding my initial impressions. It’s a handy way to provide an extra challenge in the course, since most moocs have students at every level from absolute novices to accomplished scholars. 
Emily Steiner (@PiersAtPenn) tweeted images from the Book of Kings, which we just covered this week. Combine that with Peter Adamson (@HistPhilosophy, of HoPWaG fame) being in a non-Western philosophy phase at the moment and retweeting a photo of a contemporary statue of Avicenna from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, just yesterday, and I’m really glad I took this course. In fact, I’m ready for more! 
the Pacific Rim, through the Bronze and Iron ages to Classical civilizations, across the innovations of Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern peoples reaching the European Gothic and Renaissance periods via trade, to the exploitation of New World peoples by Old World commerce, the history of our brilliance, our goodness, our stupidity and cruelty, our human-ness. It’s really quite amazing, how much is packed into these twelve weeks.
I’ll admit, I was a bit confused at first – I never expected lemurs to lead off an architecture course – and I wondered if it had simply been mistitled, and should be Archeology or Anthropology. But that was ok, too, it was interesting whatever it was, and eventually I caught on to the point: our skyscrapers, our political systems, our religious belief and the way we furnish our houses, all that proceeded from that paleolithic cave. Somewhere in the last four weeks, the quote above about cultural dramas and activating surroundings appeared, and I fully realized the value of this approach. I do think an introductory video would be a big help, however.
I’m beginning to understand that the term “architecture” encompasses more than buildings. The arrangement of places for various activities – sleeping, eating, burials, ceremonies – was prevalent in some of the early discussions of First Societies, the earliest examples of people living in groups, today exemplified by the !Kung (or San: yes, like the guy from The Gods Must Be Crazy). Yet many of their customs are still with us: eating together, forming circles, rituals for coming of age and hunting (or, as we’d put it, going to work). Prof. Jarzombek is a specialist in First Societies, so we spent a fair amount of time with the Gravettians and the Magdalenians, noting the differences between the two. 
architectures? Climate changes and environmental upheaval such as earthquakes changed trade routes, motivated invasions and migrations, and offered or shut down trade. It was all fascinating, one long story of people moving around, adapting to new conditions. Yet some major world history events were ignored: The Crusades, for example, are not mentioned. Sometimes the timeline got a little blurred, since there was necessarily some back-and-forth as the focus switched geographical areas (and I assume there’s a “Part 2” course that picks up where we left off, but that hasn’t made it to moocland yet). I felt like I understood the general flow of human history much better by the end of this course, and once I got used to the presentation style (it took a couple of weeks), I had a great time. 
And then of course there were buildings, plenty of buildings. Stonehenge, pyramids, Angkor Wat, the basilica of St. Peter, the Hagia Sofia and Dome of the Rock were all featured, but there was a great deal besides: the coastal villages of the Haida, the Maasai in Kenya and the Hammer in Ethiopia, Maltese cave temples, the roof-accessible houses of the early city at Çatal Hüyük (now Turkey), the city of Cahokia – the Native American metropolis that was larger than the London of its time, and remained the largest city in what is now the US until Philadelphia of the early 19th century – steppes, caves, shores, mountains, forests… well,I could go on, but you get the idea. From the adjoining square houses of Turkey, accessible only from the roof, to the amazing rock-cut temples in India, the beautiful mosques with fantastic arches and domes to Hindu and Buddhist shrines and Greek temples and Christian basilicas and Gothic cathedrals to Versailles, it was just amazing to see what people come up with no matter what their level of technology. 
originally pagan temples became churches, mosques, synagogues as populations changed. Then we looked at issues of restoration and preservation. Interesting questions about authenticity came up. And then there’s the amazing approach of Jorge Otero-Pailos, who, among other things, removes layers of dirt from buildings using a special rubber compound, then 
I’m pretty sure this was a pre-existing OCW recycled as a mooc. Sometimes this repackaging works, sometimes it doesn’t; here, I think it did, although I have to admit the content had far more to do with my enthusiasm than the presentation. The ‘live” in-class lecture approach is a bit less polished than a multiple-take video, but I still prefer it, as read-to-camera so often comes off as stilted and nervous. The professor’s enthusiasm and off-the-cuff commentary more than made up for image quality and occasionally confusing syntax. 
The lectures were basically slide shows accompanied by narratives about a period, or descriptions of the architecture under consideration.The visuals were sometimes hard to see, but most of them are available online elsewhere, with the exception of maps drawn on Google Earth scenes, which were… pretty messy, to be honest, and not intuitive. But I understand his point about maps showing current nation boundaries being useless in this context; his maps did contain useful information about migration patterns and available resources. They’re worth getting used to. 
Each week includes two lectures, both about 90 minutes. They estimate 8 hours a week is required for the course; that sounds reasonable to me, though it took me longer because of the way I do things (and I’m slow). A free online textbook was provided; it’s huge, and I found it difficult to use, but I’m not that comfy with online books; someone more used to Kindles and such might find it much easier. A print version is available; it’s pricey, but if I were a freshman humanities student, I’d invest in it. For that matter, if I could find a used copy for $15, I’d buy it. 
I found Cerego invaluable here; there was just too much stuff to remember it all without constant reinforcement. While it’s time-consuming to enter important points from each lecture into a quiz set, it serves as studying, and it was very much worth it when the exams rolled around. And it’s still nice to see the early material cropping up, reminding me of the rest of the lecture around key points. Makes me smile. 
dislike overdirected commentary, but it does provide structure, so it’s really a matter of preference.
When I saw Oxford was now on edX, I was seriously psyched. I’ve become rather used to taking courses from Harvard and MIT at this point (and Stanford and Duke and Penn and…) but wow, Oxford? THE Oxford? I was very curious to see what they’d come up with. But… did it have to be economics? 
democracy, also struck a lot closer to home; frankly, it scared what was left of the hell out of me because it put a vocabulary and a dismal prediction to what I see snowballing every day). Things got a bit more nitty-gritty in weeks four and five, but by then I really wanted to find out how Buttonopolis (aka Qiaotou, China, where 2/3 of the world’s buttons are made) came about, or how the tiny island nation of Mauritius developed its economy via serendipitous garment manufacturing. 
first I was going to skip the discussion element, maybe even the final essay, out of a combination of intimidation and respect for the other students who came from all over and were, from what I could see, earnestly focused on learning something that would contribute to meaningful change for their countries and the world. But the course was engaging and motivating enough to convince me to give it a shot. I’m not particularly proud of the quality of my comments or essay, but I came quite a ways from less-than-zero.
learn about the world is to learn about the world, not wring my hands and whine about being stupid. I can do a quiz game to find Bahrain on a map or memorize the capital of Azerbaijan – and all that is very helpful – but it’s another thing entirely to find out why Zambia sends some of its exports through Mozambique and some through South Africa. And, in the process, learning more about being an informed and effective citizen right here at home.
Michael Sandel has been teaching the Justice course at Harvard, the basis for this mooc, for thirty years, and it operates along the same lines as the PBS series. There may well be some organic connection, given the timing and similarity.
I took a different approach to this course: because it was evident it was a back-and-forth discussion live-taped with a (very large) in-person class, I decided to forego my usual saving of video transcripts and readings. I just winged it. I’ve taken just about every philosophy course offered by both Coursera and edX, as well as a couple of Yale OCWs on political philosophy, so the material presented was familiar. A hypothetical case served as a starting point for discovering the limits of utilitarianism, libertarianism, and all the other -isms.
Each of the mooc’s 24 modules began with a Moral Dilemma poll (with a few exceptions), followed by a half-hour live-taped class session with 1000 students in the beautiful Sanders Hall. But don’t let the number put you off: the sessions have a remarkably intimate feel, as individual students answer “What would you do” questions and defend their choices, sometimes using philosophical language, sometimes just speaking off the cuff and allowing Sandel to guide them to a more formal statement of guiding principle. He asks the name of every student, and seems to remember it later on. Differences are viewed less as arguments than as multiple ways of approaching an issue. It’s really quite something to watch.
in itself led to some self-reflection: am I closed to other ideas, or have I simply thought things through carefully?
(it’s actually a suite of four, plus a couple of Additional Protocols and various Advisory Opinions, but you get the general idea). In contrast, Human Rights law is more about overarching basics and has nothing to do with war. The two are related, and that relationship took up a significant portion of the first week: how to interpret one in light of the other, and which way that works in various situations and by what principle according to whose pronouncement. It sounds simple now, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to know which was which. This first section also looked at sources of IHL, and the history of its development. 
Each week featured several videos and readings outlining individual situations and cases. The course lists a time allowance of 6 to 8 hours a week; I estimate I spent about 12 to 14 hours a week in the middle section, a bit less elsewhere. Some of that is because of my process of obsessive note-taking, but it’s not the sort of material where I can listen to a video, read a page, and be on my way; it takes multiple plays/readings, and time to understand, incorporate, and relate to prior material. I have no legal or international background other than the one prior course; others may find it much easier. Each week also featured an extended (about a half hour) discussion with practicing IHL professionals: professors at various institutions, as well as organizational, military, and diplomatic specialists, fleshing out the academic discussion with practical considerations and the realities of the real world. 
have helped to some degree to contain the suffering that comes with war, enforcement is inadequate at best. Once in a while justice can be done – we looked at tribunals regarding the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda – but mostly it’s a matter of permitting third-party attacks upon military targets in response to violations as a means of deterrence. This wasn’t glossed over in the course, by the way. 
the Human Rights Law segment, but it seems less approachable so I’ve left it for “someday”. The fourth segment is on investment law, a topic that carries no interest for me whatsoever. These four courses comprise the Louvain 
The purpose is not to get people to pay for a certificate that’s of dubious value, but to more accurately assess students who might be using the credits earned in the degree program. It’s also a creative approach to using moocs as a supplement, rather than a replacement, to higher education, making credentials more accessible to a wider field. At least, that’s my view from well outside academia.
I’ve encountered so far. That isn’t to say I was able to go much further with it, but I got a sense of what is meant by the word, anyway, and why my prior conceptualization didn’t work.
The course was divided into three modules of three to four weeks each: Form & History, The Technology Effect, and Representation & Context. A different major work was the focus for each week – Italian villas, the Pompidou Center in Paris, German factories, even Utopian city designs that were never built – with additional works brought in as supported the material. Although Dr. Hays did most of the lectures, several other instructors appeared for individual weeks. 
I didn’t really use the forums. It seemed to me there were a lot of more advanced students and I was intimidated and didn’t want to clutter things up, plus they were oddly formatted (I wish mooc designers would realize that pinning more than two or three threads is self-defeating). One comment went unnoticed, perhaps because of the forum setup, perhaps because it was too naïve for the rest of the class. This didn’t help with the intimidation factor, but that’s my problem.
conceptual images for hearth, container, framework, and wrap. I also had rather a fun time with the Barcelona Pavilion; I’m sure I missed the mark entirely, but since I come from a land of narratives, I again came up with a story of the posts pushing themselves up from the ground and being restrained from overreaching. I was a bit shocked to be reminded of this in the last week with the Berlin monument: again, a sense of reaching up from the ground, but a far more somber, and important, sense and purpose. 
provide a “democratic space” under the private space, and to allow great freedom of movement and vision. Could’ve fooled me. Did fool me. 
that means “weight”, in somewhat the same way that we know which end of an object is closer based on size differentials? 
the enormous crowds gathering from the early hours and the respectful and celebratory atmosphere, all featured generous phalanxes of soldiers and police. I looked through some images of typical Fourth of July celebrations in Washington, DC, but I wouldn’t draw any conclusions based on such a casual experiment. 
and philosophy. In spite of, or perhaps because of the strong point of view differing from the one I’ve been exposed to in the US, I enjoyed the material, particularly the more philosophical mentions of how Chinese Marxism blended in both Confucius and the Dao and evolved over time to form its own flavor of socialism. But I still think far too much was skimmed over, even for a basic overview course. 
Muslim game, carved from an elephant’s trunk so large, the curve isn’t apparent, likewise appropriated during conquest; silver dishes and gold pendants found buried by the Jews of Briviesca when their homes were burned in the (dashed) hopes they could return to claim their family treasures. I kept remembering Ta-Nehisi Coates’ theory that racism is fundamentally about plunder, and hate is just a means to that end. It was a bit creepy to be taking this course while, in the US, Jewish community centers were receiving bomb threats in escalating numbers, several Jewish cemeteries were vandalized, and at least two people were murdered because they looked Muslim (turns out, they weren’t, but that’s beside the point). Even in Canada, slaughter broke out at a mosque. This is why we must know history, because we are living it, repeating it right now, and we can change that if we are willing.
of the recommended SILReST technique (Scan, Identify easy letters, Locate common words, Recognize abbreviations, etc). I have a feeling manuscript transcription is one of those things I just have to keep doing until I get the hang of it and can “see” words instead of squiggles. I’d spent several hours working on a French poem during the previous class, but didn’t get very far so I finally found someone who could help. Google Translate is useless, since abbreviations are used frequently, the spellings are often archaic, and just figuring out which letters are written is a major challenge in the first place. 
and “i” overly compressed), which is the medieval version of ciudad, city, emphasized by its proximity to the abbreviated form of Burgos. Yes, this is what I consider fun, you got a problem with that? 
Welcome to the Cathedral of Burgos. The Cathedral is the guardian of almost 1000 years of history. The memory of long ago lives still reside here, their hopes and worries, their friendships and enmities, their commitments and broken promises. Patiently they wait, wait to commune with us. Perhaps they walk alongside of us, here in the cloister, escorting us past guarded areas, whisking us past heavy doors, carefully guiding us past the realm of natural light, step by step, an to the home of memories: to the cathedral’s archive.
By coincidence, at the same time the Citizen Scholar program was unfolding, I got an email from my local library about a similar 
concepts, that did me the most good. And reading fiction, because putting myself in someone else’s head is good practice for everything.
Wall. Lockerbie. Legal cases resulting from these events featured prominently, usually with a very narrow focus on one particular legal issue or UN action, but it would’ve helped if I’d had more background. Fortunately, there’s Google, and it’s just a matter of finding a reliable source.
WWI within barely a generation, and we still feel the aftereffects of the reshuffling of borders made in that room. We were invited to create our own image of International Law; I chose a proportional infogram of world languages. I wonder what kind of image the words will generate four years from now, given current trends and circumstances.
and how law happens to begin with. I’m not sure who the intended audience is – law students? Lawyers? Policy aides? The general public? – but I was so pleased with the course, I’ve signed up for two of the subsequent modules on International Humanitarian, and Human Rights law. I’d say that constitutes a high recommendation for those interested in the topics covered – but be prepared to work.
might have used Spanish tilework without realizing the glazing techniques and artistic styles were developed and perfected during the Islamic rule of Spain. We’ve all heard of Marco Polo, but Ibn Battuta travelled from Morocco to the Middle East to India and China and also wrote about his journeys.
A Just Recompense 