Innovations in music rank among America’s most significant contributions to global culture, none more so than jazz. From its humble beginnings as dance hall entertainment, jazz is now embraced as an art form, respected and imitated the world over. This music course addresses jazz from a listener’s perspective, but calls on professional jazz musicians to help us engage with this often mysterious aural experience. This six-week course will enable interaction with the basic components of jazz (swing, improvisation, structure and personal expression) while providing an inside connection to the artists who perform it. Content includes excerpts from the 300+ video interviews gathered with jazz personalities for the Fillius Jazz Archive, select scholarly readings and demonstrations offered by the instructor, a working musician. Students will engage in user-friendly activities that include listening, responding, counting, and internalizing the concepts that make jazz work. Rarely heard stories and anecdotes offered by our interviewees will stimulate the imagination and provide rich content for open discussion. We will celebrate the completion of the course with a live concert, streamed to participants of the course, who will also have an opportunity to interact with Monk. Jazz: The Music, The Stories, The Players will appeal equally to the casual listener, the avid fan and the proficient jazz player.

In modern history of the development of China, Japan more than any country in the world, has made the largest influence on China. It cannot be underestimated that, the influence from Japan on China’s teenagers covers from their character formations, cultural identities, and even values. So observing the Japanese social life could help us looking back to ourselves. Re-understanding Japan and Japanese, can help Chinese distinguishing the most fundamental contradiction between China and Japan, which is the differences in "insular" and "mainland farming nation". It is more important to understand a national culture than to master its language. In this course, the introduction and analysis of Japanese culture and daily social lives are rubbed into more than ever. 在中国近代史发展的进程中，日本超过世界上任何一个国家，成为了对中国影响最大的国家。日本文化对中国青少年的性格形成乃至文化认同感、价值观塑造方面所起到的影响不容小觑。从日本社会生活现象中学习并反观中国社会。重新认识日本国和日本人，从中日两国现代交往的种种矛盾现象中看清楚“岛国根性”与“大陆农耕民族”最根本的差异所在。对于一个国家的了解、与其交流或者认知，掌握这个国家、民族的文化甚至比单纯掌握这个国家的语言更为重要。在日语基础的学习过程中，比以往课堂教学更多地揉入对日本社会生活中的文化现象予以介绍和分析。

Do you want to know what happens behind the scenes of museums, archives and libraries? Have you ever wondered what these organisations do to share their collections with audiences? Would you like to learn how to build a strong digital community for cultural heritage? If your answer is yes, then this MOOC is for you! In this course, professionals and volunteers in cultural heritage institutions, as well as teachers, students and amateurs, can learn how to create user engagement with digital cultural heritage. We will teach you about digital curation and annotation. You will learn how to use online repositories, cutting-edge tools and digital strategies, in order to stimulate true interaction and dialogue. At the end of this program, you will be able to help others to discover and enjoy the benefits of cultural heritage. Among many other examples, we take a look at the use case of Europeana, the digital portal for European cultural heritage content. After following the main module that teaches you all about user engagement, you will bring theory into practice by diving deeper into specific examples. Apart from the introduction and the recommended module on user engagement, you are able to craft your own path in this MOOC by picking and choosing between modules. They cover topics such as photography, museums, and dance. These domains offer many possibilities for innovative user engagement strategies. Furthermore, they all form interesting links to perception and memory, enabling them to be used to foster dialogue around cultural heritage. Do you want to acquire knowledge of user engagement theory? Would you like to learn how to apply these ideas and strategies to cultural heritage contexts? Have you ever wondered how to use digital collections to create new ways of engaging and inspiring audiences? Enroll now and start learning! This MOOC is developed by the Fifties in Europe - Kaleidoscope and CultureMoves projects, which are co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.

The purpose of this course ： is to improve students' understanding of the essence of Chinese landscape painting in the process of exploring the aesthetic interests and performance methods of Chinese landscape painting. Through the practice of brush and ink, students can improve their understanding and performance in material using and brush-ink structures. At the same time, it will improve the appreciation level of Chinese painting and lay the foundation for the innovative development of Chinese painting.

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)

Reading enriches our life and writing enables us to express our thoughts. Being skillful in reading and writing allows you to better acquire and communicate information. This course focuses on 8 themes: learning university culture city education behavior theory communication meaning of life For each theme, there are two texts, key words analysis, reading skills, guest interviews, composition tutorials, writing workshops, and literature tutors. Join us and understand the beauty of language. 作为一门语言非常重要的两个方面，阅读可以让我们获取丰富的知识，写作可以让我们表达内心的思想。掌握正确的阅读技巧和写作技巧，能够让我们更好地获取信息和表达信息。本课程由中外教师及清华学生带领大家在真实的生活场景中畅游英语世界。 本课程从学习、大学、文化、城市、教育、行为论、人际交流和人生的意义等八个主题展开，每个主题由主题课文（两篇）、重点词句讲解、阅读技巧讲解、嘉宾访谈、作文批改和写作技巧讲解、英语学习方法介绍、文学赏析等模块构成。主题课文模块围绕精心挑选的主题展开，带你体验丰富多彩的文化，拓宽视野，同时配有相应的重点词句讲解，让你的英语知识库更庞大；阅读技巧模块以师生互动的形式展开，由老师和英语专业研究生带大家从学习者的角度一起探讨英语阅读的秘诀所在；嘉宾访谈模块邀请了三位嘉宾老师，分别在学习、文化等方面进行了介绍和分享；写作部分包括作文批改和写作技巧讲解，选取与主题相关的四六级作文考题，并各配以两篇学生真实写作案例，通过批改作文的形式讲解写作技巧；英语学习方法模块以访谈形式展开，由留学生助教为大家分享英语学习经验；文学赏析模块精选了八篇文学名著，让学习者在师生互动中遨游文学的海洋。 和我们一起感受语言的魅力，让我们一起实现一次英语读写的飞跃！