Courses tagged with "Chemokines" (562)

Thousands upon thousands of manuscripts written in Latin and other languages remain from the 12th century, when Western Europe saw an unprecedented increase in manuscript production. Of these manuscripts from the middle ages, only a small percentage have been identified, much less edited and published. To explore these fascinating texts, you need to learn the art and science of reading medieval handwriting.

This module of The Book: Histories Across Space and Time introduces students to medieval paleography, the science of reading old handwriting, with a focus on the era of the 12th century. By studying a representative hand in depth, you will learn to read 12th century Transitional Gothic script and decipher the abbreviations that set the pattern of writing for the following centuries before print. We will work with selected manuscripts from Harvard’s Houghton library and enter into the cultural world of the 12th century monasteries and schools. Assessments and quizzes will allow you to track your progress as you move through letter forms and abbreviations to read whole blocks of text.

Some knowledge of Latin will be very helpful for understanding the texts you will read, but students without the necessary language skills will still enjoy this chance to explore 12th century hands.

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

HarvardX pursues the science of learning. By registering as an online learner in an HX course, you will also participate in research about learning. Read our research statement to learn more.

Harvard University and HarvardX are committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the community is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination or harassment in our program. All members of the HarvardX community are expected to abide by Harvard policies on nondiscrimination, including sexual harassment, and the edX Terms of Service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact harvardx@harvard.edu and/or report your experience through the edX contact form.

Printing, or the capacity to reproduce text and image mechanically, has rightly been hailed as a technology with far-reaching impact. But the technology takes more than one form and originated in more than one historical context.

In this module of The Book: Histories Across Space and Time, you will learn how early printed books in mid-fifteenth century Europe were first modeled on medieval manuscripts, but soon developed new conventions that remain familiar to us today. This module also explores printing in East Asia, by wood block and movable type, and the late dominance of manuscript production in the Islamic world. 

In the first units of this module we compare and contrast manuscripts and printed books produced mainly in Europe from 1470-1700, looking at continuities and differences in layout, format, and the methods, materials, and economics of production. We also discuss examples of illustrated books and of handwritten annotations in books, including marginal annotations by readers and the marks of censors.

Two shorter units in this module focus on printing in East Asia, especially China, to highlight the features of woodblock printing which was common there, and on the Middle East, especially the Ottoman context, where a vibrant manuscript culture remained dominant until 1800. Taken together, this module gives an overview of three different contexts and technologies of book production before 1800.

Each unit features rare manuscripts and printed books in the Harvard Libraries, which viewers can investigate in more depth within the courseware and on their own.

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

HarvardX pursues the science of learning. By registering as an online learner in an HX course, you will also participate in research about learning. Read our research statement to learn more.

Harvard University and HarvardX are committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the community is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination or harassment in our program. All members of the HarvardX community are expected to abide by Harvard policies on nondiscrimination, including sexual harassment, and the edX Terms of Service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact harvardx@harvard.edu and/or report your experience through the edX contact form.

This course is an introduction to the making and use of scrolls in the European Middle Ages. The codex, with its portability and instant access to any place in the text, became the dominant container for writing after the 4th century BCE, but scrolls continued to be made. Why and how did the scroll format remain popular and relevant in the age of the codex? This course proposes four main reasons, which 

account for essentially every kind of scroll that still exists today. We will see and examine in detail a number of beautiful objects, and come to understand the thinking of those who chose the scroll format for their texts.

This module features four main units, each of which is based on one of the reasons for scroll-making:

1. Scrolls of indeterminate length
2. Scrolls in long format
3. Ceremonial and archaizing scrolls
4. Portable scrolls

Scrolls in the Age of the Book also features a guided tour of an exhibition on Harvard University’s collection of medieval scrolls, held at Houghton Library, Harvard’s special collections library, in Spring 2014. Each scroll featured in the exhibit has been fully digitized by Harvard’s Preservation Services division, and participants will have the opportunity to interact with them in unprecedented fashion using Mirador, a state-of-the-art web application developed by Harvard and Stanford Universities.

This is a module in the series The Book: Histories Across Time and Space.

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

HarvardX pursues the science of learning. By registering as an online learner in an HX course, you will also participate in research about learning. Read our research statement to learn more.

Harvard University and HarvardX are committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the community is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination or harassment in our program. All members of the HarvardX community are expected to abide by Harvard policies on nondiscrimination, including sexual harassment, and the edX Terms of Service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact harvardx@harvard.edu and/or report your experience through the edX contact form.

This module of The Book: Histories Across Time and Space focuses on the physical qualities of books, the role of books in 17th and 18th century France, and the emergence of literature as a modern form of culture.

We will focus on the importance of books as physical objects and the raw material of literature--namely, paper.  By considering the nature of paper and how it was made during the early modern period--from Gutenberg's time to the early nineteenth century--we can begin to understand the character of books and the way they worked.

This module also examines how books fit into the legal and political system of France under the Old Regime during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the French set standards imitated throughout Europe.  Before modern copyright, legal books had privileges, granted by the king, which provided a guarantee of quality as well as certification of   orthodoxy.  To qualify for a privilege, books had to be approved by censors.  Uncensored books, including most of the works of the Enlightenment, were usually produced outside France and circulated in the kingdom through a vast underground distribution system. 

In addition, this module addresses the emergence of literature as a modern form of culture, which can be studied best in eighteenth-century England.  The first copyright law (1710), a high rate of literacy, a booming consumer market, a precocious periodical industry, and entrepreneurial publishing concentrated in London led to the development of a new kind of author--the independent writer. Samuel Johnson epitomized this new phenomenon. This module will allow you to get a close look at him and everything he represented by providing access to the Hyde Collection of Johnson's books and papers in Houghton Library at Harvard.

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

HarvardX pursues the science of learning. By registering as an online learner in an HX course, you will also participate in research about learning. Read our research statement to learn more.

Harvard University and HarvardX are committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the community is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination or harassment in our program. All members of the HarvardX community are expected to abide by Harvard policies on nondiscrimination, including sexual harassment, and the edX Terms of Service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact harvardx@harvard.edu and/or report your experience through the edX contact form.

Film, images & historical interpretation in the 20th century for those who have a general interest in history that draws on photojournalism as primary evidence, and films based on historical events.

This course deals with international relations, peace and security and brings together a number of experts from the field and academia to share their perspectives. The course will help you gain insight into conflict resolution and the role organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, the African Union and NATO play in a changing world.

A House Divided: The Road to Civil War, 1850-1861 begins by examining how generations of historians have explained the crisis of the Union.  After discussing the institution of slavery and its central role in the southern and national economies, it turns to an account of the political and social history of the 1850s. It traces how the issue of the expansion of slavery came to dominate national politics, and how political leaders struggled, unsuccessfully, to resolve the growing crisis. We will examine the impact of key events such as Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and end with the dissolution of the Union in the winter of 1860-61.

This course is part of the X Series, Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation – the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. This X Series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history – how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present.

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Politics of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-1865 narrates the history of the American Civil War. While it examines individual engagements and the overall nature of the military conflict, the focus is less on the battlefield than on political, social, and economic change in the Union and the Confederacy. Central to the account are the road to emancipation, the role of black soldiers, the nature of Abraham Lincoln’s wartime leadership, internal dissent in both the North and South, the changing position of women in both societies, and the war’s long-term economic and intellectual impact. We end with a look at the beginnings of Reconstruction during the conflict.

This course is part of the XSeries, Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation – the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. This XSeries will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history – how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present.

1865-1890: The Unfinished Revolution, examines the pivotal but misunderstood era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, the first effort in American history to construct an interracial democracy. Beginning with a discussion of the dramatic change in historians’ interpretations of the period in the last two generations, the course goes on to discuss how Reconstruction turned on issues of continued relevance today. Among these are: who is an American citizen and what are citizens’ rights; what is the relationship between political and economic freedom; which has the primary responsibility for protecting Americans’ rights – the federal or state governments; and how should public authorities respond to episodes of terrorism? The course explores the rewriting of the laws and Constitution to incorporate the principle of equality regardless of race; the accomplishments and failings of Reconstruction governments in the South; the reasons for violent opposition in the South and for the northern retreat from Reconstruction; and the consolidation at the end of the nineteenth century of a new system of white supremacy.

This course is part of the XSeries, Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation – the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The XSeries will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the XSeries is what might be called the politics of history – how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present.

In ordinary life we barely notice the operations of our own minds. In The Conscious Mind - A Philosophical Road Trip, we will illuminate what we take for granted in perception, action, and interaction with others. We’ll explore this mindful awareness through demonstrations, illusions, brainteasers, thought experiments, riddles and jokes, all designed to shake you loose from your ordinary assumptions about the way consciousness works. 

You will explore your own mind and the minds of others in a new way, using a philosophical approach known as phenomenology. You’ll encounter some of the main ideas of the phenomenological tradition, through short readings by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Their ideas are provocative and will animate the online and offline conversation as we proceed. But the main approach of the course will be experiential and experimental. You’ll learn phenomenology by doing it and journeying among the structures and elements of your own conscious experience.  

Students will question for themselves the meaning of human freedom, responsibility and identity by reading and responding to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. The Comedy, which is richly steeped in the medieval culture of the 14th century, still speaks vividly to modern readers struggling with the question, “who am I?” Dante, as a Florentine, a poet, a lover, and religious believer, struggled with the same question in each facet of his life before coming to a moment of vision that wholly transformed him as a person.

As a 21st century reader, you will encounter the poem in a novel online environment that integrates knowledge from the disciplines of literature, history, psychology, philosophy, and theology with modern technology. You will be guided through the poem by means of the "MyDante" Project, an online environment developed by Professor Ambrosio in collaboration with the Georgetown University Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), which will aid your own contemplative engagement with the poem. Alone and with the edX community, you will reflect on both Dante's interpretation of freedom and how it functions in the formation of personal identity, and the problem of finding appropriate metaphors to discuss these issues in our modern life.

You, the modern reader, will only understand the full implications of Dante's poetry if you participate with it in a way that is personal and is genuinely contemplative. You will discover that contemplative reading goes beyond the literal meaning, and even beyond the traditional allegorical and interpreted meaning, to apply every possible meaning contained in the text to your own life and identity. Through the MyDante platform, you will learn to know yourself in your own historical, personal, and spiritual contexts as you journey towards your understanding of your personal freedom and identity.

Now I shall sing the second kingdom,
there where the soul of man is cleansed,
made worthy to ascend to Heaven.
-Purgatorio, Canto I, lines 4-6

While Hell is “black, confined, stinking, noisy, and suffocating, the great Mountain of Purgatory rises in pure sunlit solitude out of the windswept southern sea.” (Sayers, Purgatorio; Introduction)  Dante has undergone a conversion which has, literally, turned his world upside down.

Sadly, the majority of Dante’s readers do not accompany him beyond his escape from the Inferno, in part, perhaps, because of an instinctive anticipation that when the excitement of adventure is over, then the hard work of maturation must begin. Indeed, there is work aplenty on Mount Purgatorio, but there is also so much more. There is day and night, labor and rest, waking and dreaming, all the rhythms of diurnal living; but above all, there is the delight of hope. All that the penitent souls suffer here, they undergo in the eagerness of passionate yearning to be healed of the wounds of sin inflicted on them as part of the universal heritage of humanity. Purgatory is a “school of contemplation,” where the healing of wounds coincides with learning to suffer the weight of responsibility for one’s own identity as a person. For those willing to undertake the steep ascent of Dante’s seven-story Mountain, nowhere in the legacy of human culture is the process of becoming a “whole person” more closely observed or rendered with deeper psychological and social insight than in the cantos of Dante’s Purgatorio.

For us as modern readers, Mount Purgatorio is a steep ascent indeed, and if fewer of us accept this challenging invitation than do for the careen through Hell, then it should come as no surprise for us to learn of the untold years, centuries perhaps, that the souls whom Dante meets there require to complete their climb. A realistic willingness to suffer consciously and voluntarily, motivated by authentic hope, is hardly recognized as a possibility by most of us today for whom security and prosperity are accepted as the unqualified goals of our striving. Even to consider an alternative of the sort which Dante offers us in the Purgatorio is already a notable achievement, but one which the imaginative power of Dante’s poetry here places within our reach. Do not let the opportunity pass you by.

In this course, you will be asked to participate in learning activities on both edX and on MyDante, an innovative platform for deep reading that emphasizes mindfulness and contemplative reading habits as key to deriving lasting meaning from poetic texts. We begin on September 28 with an optional reading week. If you have not previously worked with the MyDante platform and are not familiar with the Contemplative Reading approach to the text which it is meant to support, the week offers a chance for you to become acquainted with MyDante and the practice of contemplative reading before we begin the course in earnest on October 5. Equally important, if you have not already read Inferno, we strongly suggest you do so before beginning Purgatorio. It is possible to read, understand and enjoy Purgatorio without having read the Inferno, but it is also true that familiarity with the first part of the journey will increase both your understanding and your enjoyment of the second. Finally, if you were with us for the Inferno, then we urge you to read through the Purgatorio in the reading mode of MyDante, or even as much as you can, during this week. The basic premise of contemplative reading is that re-reading is the best way to read. Try it; we are very sure you will agree.

Turn back if you would see your shores again.
Do not set forth upon the deep,
for, losing sight of me, you would be lost.
-Paradiso, Canto II, lines 4-6

Joy is the business of Paradiso, that much is clear; but could there be a more mysterious word in the whole realm of human imagination than “Joy?” “Joy” boggles the human imagination because it asks us to follow the vector of hope to its maximal extension and intention, until it arrives at that point which Dante locates “nel mezzo,” at the very center of everything, at that point where every centripetal and centrifugal force of both the physical universe of energy and the symbolic universe of creative imagination and meaning first arise and finally return.

From beginning to end, the Pilgrim’s progress through Paradiso is enabled and guided by his enactment of the role to which he consented in the climactic episode of the Purgatorio in the garden of the Earthly Paradise. Now leaving Earth behind and beneath, the Pilgrim is transformed into the disciple; specifically, the disciple of Beatrice. She now becomes his true path, la diritta via, along which he gradually discovers the Joy that Christianity identifies as the hope of Resurrection.

Dante’s Paradiso maps the physics of freedom, tracing a universal history of meaning. Just as there is a physics of matter and energy, there is a physics of freedom governing the evolutionary history of hope which directs the human search for meaning in every person’s life and in all human culture. In this universe, meaning functions as does light in the physical universe, acting as its absolute measure and enforcing its most basic law—the law of relational identity, where “all are responsible to all for all.” Like the principle of relativity in the physics of energy, relational identity means that each personal existence has historical reality only in relation to all other personal identities.

Almost everyone agrees that the poetry of the Paradiso is sublime. Sublimity, however, is a highly rarefied and strenuously acquired taste. This is why Dante himself warns us in the second canto of the Paradiso that unless we have become used to eat the “bread of Angels,” we should turn back and not attempt to follow him on this final leg of his journey, and we as modern-day readers might well be tempted here to turn back as the Pilgrim himself was tempted in the second canto of the Inferno. But to paraphrase Virgil’s response then, which both encouraged and challenged, “Why be so afraid to reach for what your heart most hopes for; where else do you have to turn?”

In this course, you will be asked to participate in learning activities on both edX and on MyDante, an innovative platform for deep reading that emphasizes mindfulness and contemplative reading habits as key to deriving lasting meaning from poetic texts. The pedagogical approach of the course goes beyond mere academic commentary on the poem as literature; it introduces the reader to a way of thinking about the meaning of the poem at a personal level. This module is the third of three modules that compose the full course. Part 1 (Vita Nuova and Inferno) and Part 2 (Purgatorio) of the course are available as archived versions on edX and MyDante. This course features Robert and Jean Hollander's contemporary translations of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, permission courtesy of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. The print editions contain valuable notes and commentary which are highly recommended as companions to the course materials.

Learn about the great historical and cultural changes that ushered in the modern world.

Albert Einstein has become the icon of modern science. Following his scientific, cultural, philosophical, and political trajectory, this course aims to track the changing role of physics in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. This history course addresses Einstein's engagement with relativity, quantum mechanics, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, the arts, and technology, and raises basic questions about what it means to understand physics in its broader history.
 
Participants in the course will follow seventeen lessons, each of which will present a mix of science (no prerequisites!) and the broader, relevant cultural surround.  Some weeks will examine the physics concepts, while others will see excerpts of films or discuss modernist poetry that took off from relativity. Or we might be looking at the philosophical roots and philosophical consequences of Einstein’s works.  At other times we will be fully engaged with historical and political questions: the building, dropping, and proliferation of nuclear weapons, for example. 
 
Typically, in a lesson (about an hour of streamed material), there will be opportunities for individual mini-essay writing, some multiple choice questions to bolster your understanding of the science, and a group activity which might one week be a debate and another a collective commentary on elements of an artwork from 1920s Weimar Germany.   

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code : https://www.edx.org/edx-terms-service. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

HarvardX pursues the science of learning. By registering as an online learner in an HX course, you will also participate in research about learning. Read our research statement : http://harvardx.harvard.edu/research-statement to learn more.

Harvard University and HarvardX are committed to maintaining a safe and healthy educational and work environment in which no member of the community is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination or harassment in our program. All members of the HarvardX community are expected to abide by Harvard policies on nondiscrimination, including sexual harassment, and the edX Terms of Service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact harvardx@harvard.edu and/or report your experience through the edX contact form : https://www.edx.org/contact-us.

Learn about the history of the Middle East for a deeper understanding of current regional developments!

Learn about the history of the Middle East for a deeper understanding of current regional developments!

Learn about the history of the Middle East for a deeper understanding of current regional developments!

A survey course covering the English Reformation, one of the most pivotal periods in English and world history.

What is memory? What’s the utility in exploring it and risking the activation of painful memories? What remembrance do we owe people we have lost and how is that reflected in the monuments we create to memorialize them? Why do different groups of people interpret the same event differently—even when the facts are not disputed?

In The Ethics of Memory, we will discuss these questions and more by exploring personal memory, collective memory and memorial culture, and conflicts of memory.

We begin early in the 20th century—the century of critical engagement with memory—when personal memory was plumbed as the basis of psychoanalysis and as a theme in the poetry and prose of World War I. Then we look at the ways in which a people, collectively, choose to memorialize those lost to war, injustice, or tragedy. Finally, we explore memory as a site of struggle, where the way we see ourselves currently implicated by a memory may depend on our group identity, such as in the case for reparations for slavery in the United States.

Throughout, we will share our own perspectives on personal and collective memory and wrestle with questions of ethical responsibility for remembrance and ownership of the narrative of a memory.

In this course, we will:

• Discover in the writing of Freud how the exploration of memory gave birth to psychoanalysis, and in Proust how such exploration was elevated to an art form; 
• Examine poetry from WWI and the Harlem Renaissance that demonstrates the relevance of literature as a framework for understanding the ethics of memory;
• Reflect on examples of the many ways we collectively memorialize our losses; and
• Share examples of personal and public monuments to memory in order to reflect on the ethical responsibility that memorializing confers on us now.