The Great Courses

 

I’m a big fan of The Great Courses, a series of college-level audio and video courses produced and distributed by The Teaching Company. Topics include history, linguistics, forensics, how to play piano, writing...and the list goes on. Each of the lessons is about half an hour so it’s not that hard to fit a lesson into a day here and there. Rick mentioned them awhile back in one of his posts.

I’ve watched or listened to courses courtesy of several local library systems in my area via Overdrive/Libby, Hoopladigital and Kanopy. What you have access to depends on what your library subscribes to.

They’re convenenient ways to do research for stories. I’ve gotten a few ideas from watching or listening to them.

As with anything, some are better than others. Some instructors are better than others. For some of them, the audio versions are adequate, for others you’ll get a little more out of them if you watch the video versions. Here are 10 of my favorite courses, in no particular order.

1) Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us – Douglas O. Linder, J.D., professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. 24 lectures on trials from Socrates through the Nuremberg trials and ends at O.J. Simpson.

2) Forensic History : Crimes, Frauds and Scandals – Elizabeth A. Murray, Ph.D. Dr. Murray is a forensic anthropologist and teaches at Mount St. Joseph University. 24 lectures. 

3) Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works – also Elizabeth A. Murray, Ph.D. 36 lectures. All kinds of forensic topics from toxicology to computer forensics to...the list goes on. Pretty much touches on every topic in forensics as far as I can tell. 

4) The Secret Life of Words – Anne Curzan, Ph.D. Dean of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan 36 lectures. Lots of interesting stuff on English words, how they change, how new ones come into being... 

5) The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague – Dorsey Armstrong, Ph.D., professor of English and Medieval Literature at Purdue. 24 lectures. Okay, I freely admit that I’ve listened to the audio version as well as watched the video version. For whatever reason I find this subject fascinating. And, no my viewing this had nothing to do with Covid-19. I did my viewing/listening before Covid reared its ugly head. 

6) The Rise of Rome – Gregory S. Aldrete, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of History at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 24 lectures

7) The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome – Gregory S. Aldrete, Ph.D. 24 lectures. The follow-up course to The Rise of Rome. 

8) Language Families of the World – John McWhorter, Ph.D., American linguist, teaches at Columbia University, 34 lectures 

9) Myths of Language Usage – John McWhorter, Ph.D. 24 lectures 

10) Languages A to Z – John McWhorter, Ph.D. 24 lectures 

Can you tell that I enjoy Professor McWhorter’s lectures? Anybody else listen/watch The Great Courses? Any favorite ones?