Over the past few days, I put down a wood floor in the family room (26′x14′!), took approx. 175 bags of construction trash (no, that’s not a typo) to the dump, painted the master bathroom and powder room, moved six bookcases, and cleaned. Which means that I’ve listened to a LOT of Teaching Co. lectures because that’s what keeps me sane. 
Classical Archeology of Ancient Greece and Rome - Hale - I debated whether to get this, and I finally decided that I would. I am VERY glad I did! This is really a kind of a social history of the classical world combined with the history of archeology, and both are very compelling. I was already familiar with the histories of the biggest sites covered, but I wasn’t bored for a minute. Hale is VERY well-educated (and I mean that in the most global sense), and it is a delight to listen to his intelligent synthesis of various strands of history in a way that is very rare for, well, anyone. He is also quite competant when talking about areas of history outside his concentration, enabling him to make come good parallels–something equally rare, He also has a good sense of humor, is good at telling stories, and just is plain fun to listen to. He only made one mistake and one, I would claim, serious misinterpretation that I caught. He thinks that winter weat is not planted in the US, and his analysis of the role of women, particularly in ancient Greece, is really poorly constructed–he calls for a rewriting of portrayals of ancient women without, apparently, knowing what the current portrayals say. (Even the elementary-aimed ones that I’ve seen take the data he presents as revolutionary into *full* account!) These, however, are minor quibbles in an otherwise really wonderful course. BTW, I’d recommending doing the histories of Greece and Rome first, before this. It’ll make a lot more sense!
African Experience: From “Lucy” to Mandela - Vickery - I have to admit…. At first, I was VERY impatient with this course. It is at a very basic level, and the prof speaks so slowly and repeats himself a lot. (I swear he spent 10 or 15 minutes explaining matrilineality. *makes face*) In addition, he makes some very fuzzy declarations at the beginning of the course (Kush influenced Egypt, and Egypt influenced Kush!–as if it were at all equal), as well as one horrific howler (that the word “slave” comes from “Slav”–a little bit of bigoted folk etymology if there ever was one) that made me wonder if I should give up right there, especially since I had learned more about Great Zimbabwe, Mali, Ghana, and Kush from my 7th grade social studies class than he covered in his lectures! But I was encouraged from the beginning by his levelheaded and insightful treatment of race and racial issues, including the KEY identity that modern constructions of race don’t make any sense in many historical contexts, and a very good treatment of the Atlantic slave trade kept me going. (Conversely, he very much underplays the Islamic slave trade–which involved more people total but over a much longer period of time–and completely neglects the role of sub-Saharan African countries who are seeking a modern identity in the Muslim world, concentrating solely upon those countries who are oriented toward Western/Soviet directions, which really fails to put into context many of the recent conflicts, bar Rwanda.) I found the lectures about the period from 1840 to the present quite interesting, as the information was mostly new to me, and I think these lectures are a very good starting-off point for someone interested in Africa who doesn’t know all that much. If you already know a lot–and I don’t–these lectures will likely hold nothing new. In fact, in a lot of ways, the less you know, the more you’ll get out of this course–Vickery will give you a very good foundation. Something I found interesting is that Vickery dislikes the term “civilization” because of its full meaning well into our present century, whereas I find someone seriously arguing against the term in the here-and-now rather antiquated and quaint. This is entirely, I feel, a generation gap issue! His arguments are very pointed for the age in which he came into academia, but for someone my age, it seems to be dredging up something quite belonging to the past.
The Long 19th Century - Weiner - If you don’t already have a fairly decent grounding in the 19th-c. European world, don’t try this! You’ll be lost in a mess of names and countries, political strategies and shifting alliances. The professor is an excellent speaker and presents a good amount of information, and he is generally very insightful, particularly in areas that he has personally researched, which add a lot to the course and make it quite valuable. He is strongly socialist–in the European sense–and this heavy bias should be balanced by reading something like The Road to Serfdom, especially as he makes the link from nationalism to the two great wars but fails to make the link between socialism and any *international* tendencies of the age. He also sees socialist tendencies as unmitigatedly positive and simply perverted in the Russian Revolution. Weirdly, perhaps, I think African Experience is also a good one to use with this because African Experience reveals a much better insight into racial constructions of the age, which Weiner seems to want to make somehow a mutation of a throwback but that Vickery understands–accurately–as something as modern as any other trend, however reprehensible. Overall, I highly recommend this series as well, though for the later lectures, you can’t let your mind wander or you’ll miss some convoluted political twist! *g* As I tend to be Anglocentric in my readings, I really like the balance that Weiner provides, and I think his covering of British trends (which I know pretty well) is very good. A further caveat, though, is that most of what he says about the Middle Ages is, at best, grossly oversimplified if not just flat wrong. I’ve found this to be almost universally the case, though, in people who study anything later than the Rennaisance, so this is not much of a negative. He DOES tend to be a bit dry, so beware of that–if you’re not already interested, you probably won’t be made interested. But I really enjoyed it and would recommend it heartily.
History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts - Bucholz - I highly, highly recommend this series for the scholarship, accuracy, and the directedness and clarity of the presentation. (For some reason it’s in the Ancient & Medieval section…oh-kay….) The prof understands the time period, and the only times I don’t find his arguments wholly convincing and logical are on issues that are extremely hotly debated and don’t really have much of a consensus at all about them or even, really, one or two well-defined camps. (For example, the witch-scares of the early modern period–I’ve yet to be wholly satisfied with any explanation, though some of them do seem to address at least part of what was going on.) Also, the professor is quite enjoyable to listen to and has a dry sense of humor and an engaging bluntness. His harping about the continuing inequities are, I think, don’t take enough of the anachronism of his/our views into account–I am NO relativist, but his attitude seems a little…well..unrealistic to me. But overall, I really like the balance of political and social aspects,a nd I can scarcely fault him. The clarity of changes in society is especially welcome–my ONLY criticism there is that he seems not to know quite how profound the agricultural revolution really was. (It was produced something like 6 times the crops from the same amount of land–I don’t think he knows how enormous the increase was, and he doesn’t seem to recognize that this made the great urbanization and possibly even the Industrial Rev. possible, whish is a shame.) Overall, his analysis of the monarchs is excellent and sufficiently sympathetic to the personalities of each without ever losing sight of the big picture. MUCH recommended.
Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations - There are good parts to the series. First, his treatment of the change from the Middle Ages to the Ren. is better than that of must people who concentrate on the early modern/Renaissance word. His treatment of the Dutch Republic is really quite good. I also liked how he went into various sects at the time of the Reformation. However, he VERY frequently says things that are 40%-60% correct and a number of things that are so off the wall that I thought either he or I must be crazy–and it’s not me, because Bulcholz, Weiner, and Vickery all support what I thought I already knew. His preatment of England is particularly bizarre to me and is often contra-historical. I hate to say it, but this is a course that I DO not recommend simply because of the incredibly mass of errors that it contains. (And, yes, I did look up a lot of them to see if I was wrong, and I was right each time I checked.) Which is a shame because he’s a more interesting teacher than, say, Weiner! This is NOT an area of my strength, so it makes me wonder how many more I missed!
It’s due to the gap between Whispers and Voices, which was a Very Good Thing because it meant I got bumped up the list, even if it was awkward for readers.)
