Conversations with History host Harry Kreisler welcomes Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations for a discussion of the Anglo American maritime system—its origins, development, and impact on the world. The conversation touches on the unique synergy between Protestant religion and capitalism, the consolidation of Anglo American power in the process of transforming the international system, the importance of culture in international politics, and the need for a dialogue of civilizations in the 21st century. (57 minutes)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Father J. Brian Hehir for a discussion of the role of religion in framing ethical issues in a nuclear age. (56 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes distinguished French political scientist Olivier Roy for a discussion of globalization’s impact on religion and culture. The conversation focuses on changes within Islam. They explore the balance of power between Islamists and neo fundamentalists, the dynamic propelling terrorism, and the appropriate response of the West to the challenges posed by the interaction between globalization and Islam. (54 minutes)

Conversations with History host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Fawaz A. Gerges for a discussion on the origins, evolution and future direction of Islamic militancy. (56 minutes)

Georgetown University Professor John L. Esposito talks with UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler about the complex forces shaping Islam and its relationship with the West. (56 min)

Ira Lapidus, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founding Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies on the Berkeley campus joins Harry Kreisler to discuss Islam, its relation to politics, the treatment of women in Islamic societies, and how an understanding of Islamic history might inform U.S. foreign policy. (54 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton administration, for a discussion of the forces shaping terrorism in an era when the boundaries between religion and politics are blurred. He articulates a strategy for protecting the homeland while addressing the root causes of terrorism in todayŐs world. (59 min)

Conversations Host Harry Kreisler welcomes philosopher Martha Nussbaum for a discussion of women and human development, religious freedom, and liberal education. (55 min)

This lesson helps students explore, confront and deconstruct stereotypes targeted at Muslims. Students will learn about the impact of Islamophobia and create an anti-Islamophobia campaign to display in school.

This is a multi-day lesson about Creation aimed at kindergarten students or lower elementary.  It does not use a lot of computer assisted technology in deference to the abilities of these students and the possible lack of one to one computers at this grade level. 

CultureTalk - Arab World features native speakers from across the Arabic-speaking world giving filmed interviews, in Arabic and sometimes English, on selected topics. Text-based translations and transcriptions are often provided as downloadable documents for most Arabic videos. The videos engage a number of region/country-specific topics, including cultural traditions, religion, politics, and sports.

CultureTalk - Arab World features native speakers from across the Arabic-speaking world giving filmed interviews, in Arabic and sometimes English, on selected topics. Text-based translations and transcriptions are often provided as downloadable documents for most Arabic videos. The videos engage a number of region/country-specific topics, including cultural traditions, religion, politics, and sports.

Humans are social animals; social demands, both cooperative and competitive, structure our development, our brain and our mind. This course covers social development, social behaviour, social cognition and social neuroscience, in both human and non-human social animals. Topics include altruism, empathy, communication, theory of mind, aggression, power, groups, mating, and morality. Methods include evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology and anthropology.

This is a PowerPoint slideshow I created for my Philosophy 1000 final that could be helpful for anyone studying philosophy, religion, or the existence of god. 

This course is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the development of English society between the late fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries: a vital period of social, political, economic, and cultural transition, and one which provided the immediate context of early British settlement in North America. Particular issues addressed in the lectures and section discussions, and available for deeper study as essay topics, will include: the changing social structure; households; local communities; gender roles; economic development; urbanization; religious change from the Reformation to the Act of Toleration; the Tudor and Stuart monarchies; rebellion, popular protest and civil war; witchcraft; education, literacy and print culture; crime and the law; poverty and social welfare; the changing structures and dynamics of political participation and the emergence of parliamentary government.

CultureTalk - Arab World features native speakers from across the Arabic-speaking world giving filmed interviews, in Arabic and sometimes English, on selected topics. Text-based translations and transcriptions are often provided as downloadable documents for most Arabic videos. The videos engage a number of region/country-specific topics, including cultural traditions, religion, politics, and sports.

In this video segment from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, learn how Muslims in America celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the Ű_í_Ű__Ű_ŒŰ_ŒŒŰ‹_Feast of Breaking the Fast.Ű_í_Ű__Ű_ŒŰ_ŒŰ_í_Ű_Œ

This course surveys the social, cultural, and political development of western Europe between 500 and 1350. A number of topics are incorporated into the broad chronological sweep of the course, including: the Germanic conquest of the ancient Mediterranean world; the rise of a distinct northern culture and the Carolingian Renaissance; the emergence of feudalism and the breakdown of political order; contact with the Byzantine and Islamic East and the Crusading movement; the quality of religious life; the vitality of the high medieval economy and culture; and the catastrophes of the fourteenth century.

This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mankind, a source of imperatives for the collective organization and conduct of human life. In this sense, nature is less the object of complex scientific investigation than the object of individual experience and direct observation. Using the term “nature” in this sense, we can say that modern reference to “the environment” owes much to three ideas about the relation of mankind to nature. In the first of these, which harks back to ancient medical theories and notions about weather, geographical nature was seen as a neutral agency affecting or transforming agent of mankind’s character and institutions. In the second, which derives from religious and classical sources in the Western tradition, the earth was designed as a fit environment for mankind or, at the least, as adequately suited for its abode, and civic or political life was taken to be consonant with the natural world. In the third, which also makes its appearance in the ancient world but becomes important only much later, nature and mankind are regarded as antagonists, and one must conquer the other or be subjugated by it.

The 12th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 12th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Language study is embedded in every 12th grade unit as students use annotation to closely review aspects of each text. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.