Thursday, May 28, 2009

MMW 3 by Matthew Herbst - UCSD history lectures

The University of California San Diego, as pointed out so many times, takes podcast lecture series off line as soon as they are finished. Here is a reason to go out and get the series MMW 3 The Medieval Heritage delivered by the great professor Matthew Herbst. MMW, on a side note, stands for The Making of the Modern World and as such is a six-fold series that intends to cover the entirety of World History, in which series 3 covers roughly 100 BCE to 1200 CE.

I love Herbst's approach to both history and lecturing. It makes for a very exciting and accessible series. In addition to that, MMW 3 delivers world history with much less emphasis on western history as most lecture series and other podcasts do. There is ample room for China, India and also Africa, Armenia and a lecture (number 5) placing Persia on the map - something I have been looking for.

While we are at it, notice that the first two lecture are missing, so you will rather abruptly fall into the course picking up on Greeks, Romans and the rise of Christianity. As said in lecture 5 you can learn about Persia and also about Armenia. What follows is China (6, 8 and 10), India (7) and a lot of Islam, as of lecture 11 - where I am listening right now. Lecture 9 is to be skipped, this is the mid term exam.

More MMW:
UCSD's lecture podcasts,
MMW 2,
MMW 4,
MMW 6,
MMW 3.