El mundo islámico comprende una compleja herencia religiosa, artística y arquitectónica extendida a lo largo de grandes porciones de Asia, África y Europa. A pesar de lo que aparentan las descripciones exóticas de los viajeros del siglo XIX y los relatos de las mil y una noches, las tradiciones arabo-islámicas no están desconectadas del resto de corrientes culturales, sino íntimamente conectadas con ellas. Su influencia se extiende más allá del Océano Atlántico y forma hoy parte inseparable del patrimonio iberoamericano. Gracias a este curso comprenderás los principios básicos de la cultura islámica y su traducción en espacios y técnicas arquitectónicas. Descubrirás las claves de las medinas amuralladas y su urbanismo orgánico. También identificarás estrategias arquitectónicas utilizadas en proyectos contemporáneos de prestigio internacional de los siglos XX y XXI. Aprende acompañado de Manuel Sánchez García, un experto formado en la Universidad de Granada, la ciudad de la Alhambra, uno de los centros de estudios islámicos más reconocidos del mundo. Sus experiencias docentes e investigadoras en Iberoamérica conectan la cultura latina con la herencia islámica, aportando una perspectiva global acorde con la perspectivas histórica y cultural defendidas por instituciones académicas de primer nivel. El curso se ha diseñado en un lenguaje sencillo e introductorio, apto para todos los públicos. No necesitas ninguna formación ni experiencia previa en arquitectura o historia del arte. Si te estás introduciendo a los estudios universitarios, este curso te descubrirá nuevas corrientes artísticas que abrirán tus horizontes. Si ya cuentas con una trayectoria profesional, este curso te permitirá renovar tu actividad a través nuevos referentes, conexiones históricas y recursos de diseño que podrás aplicar a tus proyectos futuros.

Want to listen to an opera for the first time? Have you been listening to opera for your entire life? This course is suited for beginners and advanced opera listeners alike! This course is an introduction to Italian opera, focusing on giving you the tools and experiences to become better students of opera. Act I will give you a toolbox of skills to listen for specific moments and gestures in opera. Act II will focus applying these skills to listening activities with your favorite Italian composers. At the end of the course, we will help you to carry these experiences beyond the course, encouraging you to become lifelong listeners and lovers of opera. No previous knowledge of music or opera is necessary. Join us as we embark upon this community-focused journey to explore the wonders of Italian opera as it touches upon the human experience!

Este curso aportará una visión expandida de la moda en Latinoamérica a través de prendas específicas que acercarán al estudiante a su propia identidad, así mismo generará curiosidad sobre el mundo sartorial que lo rodea, cuestionando su historia y función. Partiendo de la definición y amplia visión de prendas básicas y accesorios que visten nuestro cuerpo desde tiempos ancestrales, se hará un recorrido por Colombia y Latinoamérica señalando la influencia que estas han tenido en la actualidad: Comenzando con los accesorios como extensión del cuerpo y el pensamiento, veremos cómo el turbante, la mochila o el sombrero hacen parte de la cosmogonía de nuestra realidad. El acercamiento a la ruana nos permitirá establecer un recorrido geográfico, conceptual e histórico y las influencias climáticas, sociales y de estilo. Observaremos también mediante una prenda como la falda, las transformaciones conceptuales, de género y sus derivados. Por último, incluyendo los zapatos, específicamente las alpargatas, prenda que ha acompañado la historia latina desde sus inicios, hablaremos sobre violencia, desplazamiento y su relación con el exterior.

Where is Giza? How were the Pyramids built? How did the cemeteries and hundreds of decorated tombs around them develop? What was Giza’s contribution to this first great age of ancient Egyptian civilization, the Old Kingdom? The Giza Plateau and its cemeteries — including the majestic Pyramids and the Great Sphinx — are stirring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture and culture. They provide windows into ancient Egyptian society, but also contain mysteries waiting to be solved. The Egyptian Pyramids at Giza provide an opportunity to explore the history of archaeology and to learn about some of the modern methods shaping the discipline today. This introductory course will explore the art, archaeology, and history surrounding the Giza Pyramids. We will learn about Egyptian pharaohs and high officials of the Pyramid Age, follow in the footsteps of the great 20th-century expeditions, and discover how cutting-edge digital tools like 3D-modeling are reshaping the discipline of Egyptology. Join us on this online journey to ancient Egypt’s most famous archaeological site as we uncover the history and significance of Giza, and use new digital techniques to unravel the mysteries of its ancient tombs and temples.

In this course, you will learn about New Zealand’s water, or 'wai', and the cultural identities attached to them. We'll explore the lives and identities of Indigenous Māori people who can trace their ancestry to their awa, or river, as well as the European, Pākehā perspectives on water. Discussing how the different cultures interpret and relate to water. We will delve below the surface to look at the unique geology that has created our watery nation, and the taonga (culturally prized possession) found within these waters. While also investigating the political, cultural and economic dynamics of our waterways. New Zealand is a bicultural nation, and colonisation by the British in the nineteenth century produced a complex history and competing cultural ideas about landscape. The place of water in European culture led to conflicting beliefs about the ownership and status of water. This has implications today for the management of water resources, and how this can be done to ensure that cultural, economic and environmental imperatives are respected in Aotearoa New Zealand. You will hear about the Māori world view from Dr Maria Bargh (Te Arawa and Ngāti Awa), who teaches Māori culture and politics at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Professor Lydia Wevers will introduce you to Pākehā, or European, New Zealand culture. Featuring guest appearances from other experts, this course will encourage you to think about landscape as an expression of culture, and allow you to transfer these ideas to the landscape you live in.

Pow! Bang! Kaboom! Superhero stories, first arriving on the scene in the late 1930s, are now among the most popular forms of global entertainment. The study of philosophy has been around for centuries. Power and Responsibility: Doing Philosophy with Superheroes, a SmithsonianX and Harvard Division of Continuing Education course, blends these superheroes narratives with the core areas of philosophy. SmithsonianX has partnered with the Harvard Division of Continuing Education to bring this course from the Harvard Extension School to edX. This introductory philosophy course, led by Professor Christopher Robichaud of the Harvard Kennedy School, offers an exciting lens to interpret key philosophical ideas — metaphysics and epistemology, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, existentialism, moral relativism, and much more. From Superman's embrace of truth, justice, and the American way to Wonder Woman's efforts at promoting peace rather than war, from Spider-Man's personal struggles at balancing his romantic life with his crime fighting exploits to the X-Men's social struggles with combating prejudice, Power and Responsibility: Doing Philosophy with Superheroes will give you the chance to explore philosophy through the many superhero narratives via videos, readings, and a meaningful course community. We invite both those new to philosophy and philosophy lovers to join us on this journey!

How do we deal with the challenges and threats to vernacular architecture and make sure that it is sustained in this modern urbanized world? This is the key question we will try to answer in this course. This architecture course takes you on a journey of understanding and appreciating the value of our everyday built environment. In the first two modules, we will explore the deeper socio-cultural meaning of rural vernacular architecture and look at the urban vernacular and challenges of people migrating from villages to live in cities; in module 3, we will focus on what we call ‘informal settlements’ in Asian cities; and in the final two modules, we will explore answers to a few questions that are very relevant to the current status and future development of vernacular architecture, such as: How can we conserve and sustain our vernacular cultural heritage? How can we reconcile tradition with modernity and originality? We will also cast our eyes into the future, and discuss how the field of vernacular architecture might evolve and develop in the years to come. Ultimately, the goal of this 5-week course is to help you establish your own viewpoints about the more complex or even contradictory issues in vernacular architecture, so you can make informed decisions regarding the protection and conservation of your local vernacular environments. Special note: This course can be taken independently from The Search of Vernacular Architecture of Asia, Part 1 . 我们要如何应对本土建筑面临的挑战和威胁？并确保本土建筑在这个现代城市化的世界中持续存在？ 我们在本课程中将解决這些问题。 本建筑课程将带领你理解和欣赏我们日常建筑环境。前两个单元，我们将探索农村本土建筑的深层社会文化意义，并了解城市本土建筑和从农村移居到城市的人们所面临的挑战；第三单元，我们将专注于亚洲几大城市中，我们所谓的“非正式定居点”；最后两个单元，我们将探索与本土建筑当前形势和未来发展相关的几个问题，例如：我们如何保护和维持我们的本土文化遗产？我们如何平衡传统与现代性和原真性？我们也将放眼未来，讨论本土建筑领域可能会往哪个方向演变，在未来几年可能会有怎样的发展。這5周的课程旨在帮助你在本土建筑领域一些更為复杂或更深層次的问题上形成你自己的见解，便于你能夠在本土环境的保护和保育方面做出明智的决定。 特别说明：本课程可独立于“亚洲乡土建筑研究（第一部分）”，单独选修。

This MITx course was developed in collaboration with HarvardX and is co-taught by MIT, Harvard, and Duke historians. You will examine Japanese history in a new way—through the images created by those who were there—and the skills and questions involved in reading history through images in the digital format. The introductory module considers methodologies historians use to “visualize” the past, followed by three modules that explore the themes of Westernization, in Commodore Perry’s 1853-54 expedition to Japan; social protest, in Tokyo’s 1905 Hibiya Riot; and modernity, as seen in the archives of the major Japanese cosmetics company, Shiseido. VJxwill cover the following topics in four modules: Module 0: Introduction: New Historical Sources for a Digital Age (Professors Dower, Gordon, Miyagawa). Digitization has dramatically altered historians' access to primary sources, making large databases of the visual record readily accessible. How is historical methodology changing in response to this seismic shift? How can scholars, students, and the general public make optimal use of these new digital resources? Module 1: Black Ships & Samurai (Professor Dower). Commodore Matthew Perry's 1853-54 expedition to force Japan to open its doors to the outside world is an extraordinary moment to look at by examining and comparing the visual representations left to us by both the American and Japanese sides of this encounter. This module also addresses the rapid Westernization undertaken by Japan in the half century following the Perry mission. Module 2: Social Protest in Imperial Japan: The Hibiya Riot of 1905 (Professor Gordon). The dramatic daily reports from participants in the massive "Hibiya Riot" in 1905, the first major social protest in the age of "imperial democracy" in Japan, offer a vivid and fresh perspective on the contentious domestic politics of an emerging imperial power. Module 3: Modernity in Interwar Japan: Shiseido & Consumer Culture (Professors Dower, Gordon, Weisenfeld). Exploring the vast archives of the Shiseido cosmetics company opens a fascinating window on the emergence of consumer culture, modern roles for women, and global cosmopolitanism from the 'teens through the 1920s and even into the era of Japanese militarism and aggression in the 1930s. This module will also tap other Visualizing Cultures units on modernization and modernity.

We tend to think of art and technology as two separate, almost opposite things. But what if we showed you that the development of technology owes its debt to artists? And that art would not be what it is, without technology ? "The digital age", born out of the scientific and technological revolutions of the last 500 years, exposes the artificial divergence of disciplinary categories. It is an exciting moment in art and design history. On the one hand, technological tools change what we are capable of doing – and contemporary artists/designers indeed use those technologies with much imagination: from image processing to immersive virtual environments; from social networks to flash mobs and cyber-attacks; from fake news to surveillance systems - art had never had so many tools to play while directly interacting with us within our social realities. On the other hand, art does so while examining, distorting, criticizing and inventing new technologies as it allows us to imagine the furthest frontiers of what technology may be able to do. This course aims to look at these inter-disciplinary cross-overs between art, design and technology while asking: how does this new technological age is changing our culture, society and life? What do these teach us about ourselves? How can we reflect through it about our pasts, presents and futures? The course is aimed at anyone who is curious about what it means to be born and to live in "the digital age". The course combines lectures, interviews with theoreticians and artists, artwork analysis, case studies and stimulating discussions. The course also offers some practical exercises that will introduce you to basics in programming, digital image processing and 3D printing. You would not need preliminary knowledge of art history, but such knowledge may be helpful. This course was created and produced by Shenkar - Engineering. Design. Art.

This MITx course was developed in collaboration with HarvardX and is co-taught by MIT, Harvard, and Duke historians. You will examine Japanese history in a new way—through the images created by those who were there—and the skills and questions involved in reading history through images in the digital format. The introductory module considers methodologies historians use to “visualize” the past, followed by three modules that explore the themes of Westernization, in Commodore Perry’s 1853-54 expedition to Japan; social protest, in Tokyo’s 1905 Hibiya Riot; and modernity, as seen in the archives of the major Japanese cosmetics company, Shiseido. VJxwill cover the following topics in four modules: Module 0: Introduction: New Historical Sources for a Digital Age (Professors Dower, Gordon, Miyagawa). Digitization has dramatically altered historians' access to primary sources, making large databases of the visual record readily accessible. How is historical methodology changing in response to this seismic shift? How can scholars, students, and the general public make optimal use of these new digital resources? Module 1: Black Ships & Samurai (Professor Dower). Commodore Matthew Perry's 1853-54 expedition to force Japan to open its doors to the outside world is an extraordinary moment to look at by examining and comparing the visual representations left to us by both the American and Japanese sides of this encounter. This module also addresses the rapid Westernization undertaken by Japan in the half century following the Perry mission. Module 2: Social Protest in Imperial Japan: The Hibiya Riot of 1905 (Professor Gordon). The dramatic daily reports from participants in the massive "Hibiya Riot" in 1905, the first major social protest in the age of "imperial democracy" in Japan, offer a vivid and fresh perspective on the contentious domestic politics of an emerging imperial power. Module 3: Modernity in Interwar Japan: Shiseido & Consumer Culture (Professors Dower, Gordon, Weisenfeld). Exploring the vast archives of the Shiseido cosmetics company opens a fascinating window on the emergence of consumer culture, modern roles for women, and global cosmopolitanism from the 'teens through the 1920s and even into the era of Japanese militarism and aggression in the 1930s. This module will also tap other Visualizing Cultures units on modernization and modernity. Other Visualizing Cultures courses you may be interested in: Visualizing the Birth of Modern Tokyo (VTx)