Examines interactions across the Eurasian continent between Russians, Chinese, Mongolian nomads, and Turkic oasis dwellers during the last millennium and a half. As empires rose and fell, religions, trade, and war flowed back and forth continuously across this vast space. Britain and Russia competed for power over Eurasia in the "Great Game" of geopolitics in the nineteenth century, just as China, Russia, and others did in the twentieth century. Today, the fall of the Soviet Union and China's reforms have opened new opportunities for cultural interaction. Topics include: the religious traditions of Central Asian Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism; caravans and travelers like Marco Polo and Rabban Sauma, the first Chinese to travel to the West; and nomadic conquest and imperialist competition, past and present. Source materials include primary documents, travelogues, films, music, and museum visits.

This subject explores the legal history of the United States as a gendered system. It examines how women have shaped the meanings of American citizenship through pursuit of political rights such as suffrage, jury duty, and military service, how those political struggles have varied for across race, religion, and class, as well as how the legal system has shaped gender relations for both women and men through regulation of such issues as marriage, divorce, work, reproduction, and the family. The course readings will draw from primary and secondary materials in American history, as well as some court cases. However, the focus of the class is on the broader relationship between law and society, and no technical legal knowledge is required or assumed.

" This class explores the political and aesthetic foundations of hip hop. Students trace the musical, corporeal, visual, spoken word, and literary manifestations of hip hop over its 30 year presence in the American cultural imagery. Students also investigate specific black cultural practices that have given rise to its various idioms. Students create material culture related to each thematic section of the course. Scheduled work in performance studio helps students understand how hip hop is created and assessed."

You are welcome to this Module in History of Education, which covers part of the course in Professional Education Studies. To understand the meaning of History of education, you need to know the key words, History and Education. Perhaps you are aware that History is a study of past events and developments some of which may have occurred many years of ago or might have taken place in the recent times. On the other hand, education can be defined as a process of teaching and learning. More about this will be examined in the module later. History of education is therefore a study of the past that focuses on educational issues. These include education systems, institutions, theories, themes and other related phenomena.

This course focuses on an in-depth reading of Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis by Isaac Newton, as well as several related commentaries and historical philosophical texts.

This class examines the history and theory of historic preservation, focusing on the United States, but with reference to traditions and practices in other countries. The class is designed to examine the largely untold history of the historic preservation movement in this country, and explore what laws, public policies and cultural attitudes shape how we preserve or do not preserve the built environment. The class will give students a grounding in the history, theory and practice of historic preservation, but is not an applied, technical course.

This course introduces the history of Africa from 300,000 BCE to the era of European imperialism in the nineteenth century. The story continues in HIST 252, which covers the last 120 years of African history. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: locate major regions, geographic features, and populations in Africa and label them on a map; identify major events and trends in the history of Africa prior to 1890 that describe change over time; demonstrate the impact of the African environment on human history in Africa and explain how humans in turn changed that environment; compare and contrast the diverse social and political structures and systems devised by Africans; summarize the connections between Africans and other peoples of the world and the ways in which those connections changed over time; demonstrate the usefulness, best practices, and limitations of different types of sources for understanding the African past; appraise various conceptions of the African past given the evidence from that past; assess the degree to which there can be said to be one, shared African history before 1890. This free course may be completed online at any time. (History 251)

This textbook is designed to to meet the needs of History of Applied Science and Technology courses at colleges and universities around the world. Chapters will be organized around the theme of the transformative impact of technological and epistemological changes on worldview and human behavior as they relate to everyday life and global choices. We believe this textbook is the first History of Applied Science and Technology textbook to take a global approach, addressing persistent gaps in coverage in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This is a collaborative, open access project.

Table of Contents:
I. Chapter 1 - Ancient Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent (Prehistory - ca 1750 BCE)
II. Chapter 2 - The Ancient World (before 500 BCE) – Farmers to Pharaohs
III. Chapter 5 - The Medieval Period (500 to 1400 CE) – Europe
IV. Chapter 8 - The Early Modern Period (1500-1600) – Europe – Phase I: Breakthroughs in Scientific Thought & Technological Application
V. Chapter 9 - The Early Modern Period (1600-1750) – Europe – Phase 2: The New Science of the Seventeenth Century & The Enlightenment
VI. Chapter 12 - The New Scientific Revolution - The Long 19th Century
VII. Chapter 14 - Earth Sciences and Revolution in Biology and Genetics – the Long 19th Century
VIII. Editors
IX. Authors
X. Cover & Book Design
XI. Section Editors

Examines the development of computing techniques and technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly critical evaluation of how the very idea of "computer" changes and evolves over time. Emphasis is on technical innovation, industrial development, social context, and the role of government. Topics include Babbage, Hollerith, differential analyzers, control systems, ENIAC, radar, operations research, computers as scientific instruments, the rise of "computer science," artificial intelligence, personal computers, and networks. Includes class visits by members of the MIT community who have made important historical contributions. This course focuses on one particular aspect of the history of computing: the use of the computer as a scientific instrument. The electronic digital computer was invented to do science, and its applications range from physics to mathematics to biology to the humanities. What has been the impact of computing on the practice of science? Is the computer different from other scientific instruments? Is computer simulation a valid form of scientific experiment? Can computer models be viewed as surrogate theories? How does the computer change the way scientists approach the notions of proof, expertise, and discovery? No comprehensive history of scientific computing has yet been written. This seminar examines scientific articles, participants' memoirs, and works by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to provide multiple perspectives on the use of computers in diverse fields of physical, biological, and social sciences and the humanities. We explore how the computer transformed scientific practice, and how the culture of computing was influenced, in turn, by scientific applications.

This textbook pioneers a new approach to the study of international relations by historicizing the material traditionally taught in international relations courses and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates, and issues. The volume is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the international systems that traditionally existed in Europe, East Asia, pre-Columbian Central and South America, Africa, and Polynesia. The second part discusses the ways in which these international systems were brought into contact with each other through the agency of Mongols in Central Asia, Arabs in the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, Indic, and Sinic societies in South East Asia, and the Europeans through their travels and colonial expansion. The concluding section concerns contemporary issues: the processes of decolonization, neo-colonialism, and globalization — and their consequences on contemporary society.

Where did we come from? What were our ancestors like? Why do we differ from other animals? How do scientists trace and construct our evolutionary history? The History of Our Tribe: Hominini provides answers to these questions and more. The book explores the field of paleoanthropology past and present. Beginning over 65 million years ago, Welker traces the evolution of our species, the environments and selective forces that shaped our ancestors, their physical and cultural adaptations, and the people and places involved with their discovery and study. It is designed as a textbook for a course on Human Evolution but can also serve as an introductory text for relevant sections of courses in Biological or General Anthropology or general interest. It is both a comprehensive technical reference for relevant terms, theories, methods, and species and an overview of the people, places, and discoveries that have imbued paleoanthropology with such fascination, romance, and mystery.

A survey of major technological developments from ancient to modern times with particular attention to social, political, and cultural contexts in Europe and the United States.

Examines the development of the western intellectual tradition from the fall of the Roman Empire through the High Middle Ages. Basic premise is that the triumph of Christianity in Europe was not the inevitable outcome it appears from hindsight. Attention is therefore focused not only on the development of Christian thought and practice, but on its challengers as well. Particular emphasis devoted to Nordic paganism, the rise of Islam, Byzantine orthodoxy, indigenous heretical movements, and the ambiguous position of Jews in European society.

Subject studies how and why machines work, how they are conceived, how they are developed (drawn), and how they are utilized. Students learn from the hands-on experiences of taking things apart mentally and physically, drawing (sketching, 3D CAD) what they envision and observe, taking occasional field trips, and completing an individual term project (concept, creation, and presentation). Emphasis on understanding the physics and history of machines.

Archaeology reconstructs ancient human activities and their environmental contexts. Drawing on case studies in contrasting environmental settings from the Near East and Mesoamerica, considers these activities and the forces that shaped them. In laboratory sessions students encounter various classes of archaeological data and analyze archaeological artifacts made from materials such as stone, bone, ceramics, glass, and metal. These analyses help reconstruct the past. This class introduces the multidisciplinary nature of archaeology, both in theory and practice. Lectures provide a comparative examination of the origins of agriculture and the rise of early civilizations in the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica. The laboratory sessions provide practical experience in aspects of archaeological field methods and analytical techniques including the examination of stone, ceramic, and metal artifacts and bone materials. Lab sessions have occasional problem sets which are completed outside of class.

Course DescriptionHuman rights, an idea that has come to mean a set of core practices and values that society believes are inherent to each and every individual, was not a construct that sprang from a vacuum. In this course we will address the development of the term human rights, from ancient times through to the present day. As a class, we will focus on the religious, moral, and social implications of believing in such inalienable rights, the development of the concept of individual rights and responsibilities, the conflicts and complications that made contemporary human rights what they, and the 20th and 21st century struggles that have pushed human rights near to a breaking point.As a history course covering a single topic on a global scale, this course will entail a significant amount of reading, and will focus on the tools and practices necessary for successful comprehension of historical materials, both in the primary and secondary form. Through this class, students will learn to differentiate between primary and secondary historical sources, successfully deconstruct both sets of materials, and understand how to summarize and integrate individual sources with the larger historical narrative of human rights. Finally, this course will rely solely on Open-Source Educational Materials, grounding the importance of the democratization of knowledge.

" This seminar has three purposes. One, it inquires into the causes of military innovation by examining a number of the most outstanding historical cases. Two, it views military innovations through the lens of organization theory to develop generalizations about the innovation process within militaries. Three, it uses the empirical study of military innovations as a way to examine the strength and credibility of hypotheses that organization theorists have generated about innovation in non-military organizations."

The aim of this course is to introduce and analyze the international relations of East Asia. With four great powers, three nuclear weapons states, and two of the world's largest economies, East Asia is one of the most dynamic and consequential regions in world politics. This course will examine the sources of conflict and cooperation in both periods, assessing competing explanations for key events in East Asia's international relations. Readings will be drawn from international relations theory, political science and history.

International Women's Voices has several objectives. It introduces students to a variety of works by contemporary women writers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The emphasis is on non-western writers. The readings are chosen to encourage students to think about how each author's work reflects a distinct cultural heritage and to what extent, if any, we can identify a female voice that transcends national cultures. In lectures and readings distributed in class, students learn about the history and culture of each of the countries these authors represent. The way in which colonialism, religion, nation formation and language influence each writer is a major concern of this course. In addition, students examine the patterns of socialization of women in patriarchal cultures, and how, in the imaginary world, authors resolve or understand the relationship of the characters to love, work, identity, sex roles, marriage and politics.This class is a communication intensive course. In addition to becoming more thoughtful readers, students are expected to become a more able and more confident writers. Assignments are designed to allow for revision of each paper. The class will also offer opportunities for speaking and debating so that students can build oral presentation skills that are essential for success once they leave MIT. The class is limited to 25 students and there is substantial classroom discussion.

This site includes a collection of public domain texts, mainly Greco-Roman works (some Chinese and Persian), all in English translation.