The Ancient Greek Hero at edX — Harvard’s Gregory Nagy Offers Massive Open Online Content and Community
| December 19, 2012 | Posted by Claudia Filos under CHS Learning Module |
Hour 7 of The Ancient Greek Hero examines this "double exposure" moment that depicts Achilles as an apobatic athlete dragging the body of Hector. Image: "Boston Hydria." Attic black-figure hydria: Attributed to the Antiope Group. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 63.473. Drawing by Valerie Woelfel.
Join the Fall 2013 session of HeroesX now. New participants are welcome through December 31.
Project Update – October 2013
Since the project was launched in March 2013, The Ancient Greek Hero has enrolled over 36,000 participants from over 170 countries. Participants in the inaugural session completed the challenging material at promising rates. More importantly, participants describe being transformed by the content, the community, and the rare experience of “reading closely”.
The second session is open now through December 31, 2013. New participants are welcome at any time. Register now!
The Center for Hellenic Studies is also developing a sequel project. Stay tuned for more information.
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The Ancient Greek Hero taught by Harvard’s Gregory Nagy now available as an online, open access project on edX
Project Announcement – December 2012
Starting in March 2013 (with open enrollment through late June 2013), The Ancient Greek Hero, directed by Harvard classics faculty member Gregory Nagy will be available as an open access project through edX (www.edx.org), the online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The HarvardX project will use the latest technologies to help students engage with poetry, songs, and stories first composed more than two millennia ago. Featured literature includes the Homeric epics, a selection of early lyrics, excerpts of prose history, seven tragedies, two Platonic dialogues, and the intriguing but rarely studied dialogue, On Heroes by Philostratus.
Nagy, the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature and head of the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University, will be assisted by Kevin McGrath, Alex Forte, a team of other Teaching Fellows specializing in a wide variety of academic fields.
Former teachers of earlier versions of the course, which has been taught almost every year since the late 1970’s, and students who have already taken the course (i.e., alumni) will also interact with new students.
The text for the project will be Nagy’s forthcoming Harvard University Press book, The Ancient Greek Hero in Twenty-Four Hours. This book will be available on the project website and in dynamic e-book form; it will be supported by an enriched and annotated Sourcebook containing all the readings and texts.
The HarvardX division of the project will be the first humanities offering by edX and will feature innovative approaches to both teaching and class participation.
“With a focus on collaborative work, the use of multimedia resources, and with personalized engagement with online mentors and field experts such as course alumnae/alumni, The Ancient Greek Hero will offer students an intimate and inspiring experience that is completely different from how popular opinion generally views the intellectual accomplishment of a typical MOOC,” said Nagy. “This is a course for students of any age, culture, and place, and its profoundly humanistic message can be easily received without previous learning in Western Classical literature.”
Along with other spring edX offerings, The Ancient Greek Hero is open for registration as of today through www.edx.org. EdX expects to announce a second set of spring 2013 courses and project in the future.
About the Project
Through English translations that have been carefully prepared and arranged for this course, as well as through supplementary comparative material drawn from cultures other than the Greek, and featuring a wide variety of media such as vase painting, European opera, and cinema—from Ingmar Bergman’s version of Mozart’s Magic Flute to Ridley Scott’s science fiction classic, Blade Runner—Nagy provides students who have no previous background in classical Greek civilization with a fully engaging and immediately accessible introduction to the major themes and conceptual motifs of this ancient literature, its myths and ritual practices.
The project begins with the Homeric poems, stressing the historical fact that heroes in ancient Greece were worshipped, just as ancestors are today worshipped in many societies; in other words, heroes were defined by what we know as ‘hero cult’. This understanding of cult or the ritual dimension of heroes—in forms of worship such as athletics or in rites of personal devotion—is vital for our perception of how epic and tragic heroes came to life in the ancient media of verbal and dramatic performance.
Nagy argues that the true hero of the project is the logos or the word of reasoned expression as activated, for instance, by Socratic dialogue. This logos of dialogue requires careful thinking realized in close reading and reflective writing. The last work to be read in the project comes from Plato’s memories of the final days of Socrates, memories which depend on a thorough comprehension of the concept of the hero in all his or her various manifestations throughout the history of Greek civilization.
Participants will have access to dynamically linked online texts, video lectures and discussions, annotation tools, and online forums, all of which are designed to engage students from around the world in a continual dialogue with the literature of ancient Greece. Throughout the project Nagy incorporates a strongly comparative approach featuring analyses of other forms of artistic representation, such as the visual world of painting, the dramatic place of theater, and musical, choral, and sculptural expression.
Besides teaching at the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass., Nagy is also the Director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. As part of its educational mission, the Center offers free access to a dynamic online archive of all the resources associated with previous distance learning versions of this project. These resources include multimedia lectures and discussions, audio recordings, lecture notes, and the complete collection of readings. Readers can also access content from 2010 and 2011 via recent posts on the CHS blog: kleos@CHS.
As a former TF for this course, count me in! Let me know how I can participate! Really fabulous! Kudos!
Dear Nancy,
Thanks again for your interest! We look forward to working with you!!
Claudia
PS It was so fun meeting you at the APA!
WOW! How exciting! What an opportunity! Okay, how much for the textbook? What tenative day of the week and hour for the optional online dialogues? How would I ineract with others? Wow!
Bill
Hi Bill, thanks so much for your enquiry!! The course resources will be available online for free. Students who want to purchase a print copy of one of the course texts will have that option too. There will be a new platform for interacting with other participants around the course content in exciting ways!! We are also planning to have a FB and/or Google+ page for social interaction around the course. We are not yet sure of the days or times for any live sessions, but stay tuned!! Have you enrolled?
All the best,
Claudia Filos
Dear Greg,
What a good idea! I love having a way to keep Heroes in my life. I am in Paris now and until the end of February. IF I can be of any help with Heroes just let me know. I would be so happy to help.
Happy New Year!
All the Best,
Mary
Dear Mary,
Thanks so much for this lovely note! We hope you can join us!! More very soon!!
Best,
Claudia Filos
Any word on start up date? How many people signed so far?
Hi Bill, the class should start in March, but don’t have enrollment figures. Hope you will join us!! Best, Claudia
As a two-year TF in the old Concepts of the Hero course, I too would be glad to help! I have carried many of Greg’s ideas with me to Ohio Wesleyan.
Dear Sally, thank you so much!! We look forward to working with you!! Best, Claudia
https://www.facebook.com/ClassicalAncientGreece
What a great opportunity! I m studying archaeology in Greece and this course is very interesting!Can’t wait to start!!!
Sofia
So glad you are going to join us!! Best, Claudia
I am really interested in taking this course. how do i sign up ?
Thanks so much for your interest! You can sign up here: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/CB22x/2013_Spring/about
Fabulous, i cant wait!!!!!!!
thankyou : )
I am really excited about this course as well. Will the lessons be sent through my hotmail account ? will i need a special program to partake in this course ?
I’m so glad you are joining us! All the course materials will be available online via the edX platform.
Stay tuned for more details, since the course will begin on March 13. In the meantime, you might want to follow the course via two new social media sites:
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAncientGreekHero
On Google+: https://plus.google.com/communities/107397536757277586726
thank you very much Claudia, much appreciated 🙂
I’d like to learn ancient Greek. Are you aware of any online courses?
I’m signed up! How do I get a print copy of h24h?
Dear Ruth, we will make an e-book version available before the class begins. Best, Claudia
Hi Claudia
I am enrolled in Prof. Nagy’s online course. You once posted for us the first 21 hours. I lost the link on my pc and new enrollees are asking for course materials too. Could you repost these materials?
We are a bunch of eager beavers.
Thanks
Anita
Hi Anita,
Thanks so much for this question. The link is:
https://chs119.chs.harvard.edu/EdRes/archive/fall2011_fas_dce/notes_fall11/NagyAncientGreekHero24Hours_first8hrs_2011-10-02.pdf
Although the link says first 8 hours, it was updated and actually contains the 21 hours. But if you are only going to read the material once, you may want to wait for the final version, since this is still a draft.
Best,
Claudia
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where can i access module 5? I keep getting rerouted to the core course; the most recent offering; and can’t seem to access module 5 from a previous incarnation
Hi Mark! The release date for Module 5 is September 8, so you should be able to access that module after that date! If you have trouble accessing after the release date, please do let us know and we can see as to how we can assist you.