Department of History

Discussion of what happens between teacher and students in a classroom setting. By Dr. K, Patricia Cross.

They seem like such a normal family. Joyce is a daycare facility inspector. Paul is in Britain's Royal Marines. The kids-Kathryn, twins Hilary and Ruth, and Joe-love pop music, fast food, and computer games. But the Bowlers are different. No, they're very different. They can go back in time! It's romance versus reality in the most tantalizing, time-tripping, domestic drama of any century: The 1900 House. The Bowler family, smitten by the idea of experiencing the Victorian lifestyle right down to corsets, chamber pots and cutthroat razors, invites everyone along as they turn back the calendar to the spring of 1900. Their eye-opening, heart-tugging story is a uniquely thoughtful and witty portrait of the grueling demands of a bygone era and the relentless power of modern ways.On-site cameras capture the misery of long and arduous laundry days, the frustrations prompted by a stove that refuses to provide enough hot water, the indignity of being routinely "dirty, greasy, and smelly," and the sobering fact that life, especially for women, is enormously restrictive and achingly dull. Yet for all the hardships, by the end of their three-month adventure, the Bowlers understand another era, themselves, and each other with exceptional clarity and a unique perspective. Just how good were the good old days? Find out when you move with the Bowler family into the 1900 House.

Featuring never before seen film footage of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Regime, The Architecture of Doom captures the inner workings of the Third Reich and illuminates the Nazi aesthetic in art, architecture and popular culture. From Nazi party rallies to the final days inside Hitler's bunker, this sensational film shows how Adolph Hitler rose from being a failed artist to creating a world of ponderous kitsch and horrifying terror. Hitler worshipped ancient Rome and Greece, and dreamed of a new Golden Age of classical art and monumental architecture, populated by beautiful, patriotic Aryans. "Degenerate" artists and "inferior" races had no place in his lurid fantasy. As this riveting film shows, the Nazis went from banning the art of modernists like Picasso to forced euthanasia of the retarded and sick, and finally to the persecution of homosexuals and the extermination of Jews.

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, the wherewithal. Call it what you like: Money can make us or it can break us. In the past year, it's certainly broken some of the biggest names on Wall Street. How on Earth could a little lcoal difficulty with subprime mortgages in the United States unleash an economic tsunami big enough to wipe out some of Wall Street's most illustrious firms, force nationaization of banks and financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, and bring the entire world economy to the very brink of recession, if not depression?Hosted by bestselling author, economist, historian, and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, THE ASCENT OF MONEY takes a prescient look at how money evolved, from the concept of credit and debt in the Reniassance to the emergence of a global economy and the subprime crisis we face today.As he traverses the world of money, Ferguson speaks with leading experts inculding finanacier George Soros and former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, among others. From the rise of the stocks and bonds markets to subprime mortgages, from the housing bubble to the globolization of money and the concept of "Chimerica," Ferguson demonstrates that financial history is the essential backstory behind all history and to the current financial meltdown.

One of the most influential political films in history. Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of algiers (La batalille d'Alger) vividly recreates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950's. As viiolence escalates on both sides, children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafes, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents. Shot in the streets of algiers in documentary style, the film is a case study in modern warfare, with its terroist attacks and the brutal techniques used to combat them. The Criterion Collection is proud to present Gillo Pontecorvo's tour de force-a film wit astonishing relevance today.

Set against the antebellum South, The Birth of a Nation, follows Nat Turner (Nate Parker), a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer), accepts an offer to use Nat's preaching to subdue slaves. As he witnesses countless atrocities, against himself and his fellow slaves, Nat orchestrates an uprising in the hopes of leading his people to freedom.

Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis and Academy Award nominee Emily Watson are star-crossed lovers torn between unquestioning loyalty to the ties of tradition and the passion they share in one of the year's most critically-acclaimed films from Academy Award nominated director Jim Sheridan.

Seeds of ChangeHow did the 20th century change theway Americans live? This program examines daily life during the early 1900s-when William McKinley was President, a loaf of bread cost only a few cents, horsepower really meant horsepower, flying to the moon was the stuff of dreams, and the average life span was only 45 years-while looking ahead to the decades of changes yet to come. (46 min.) 1999.

In the aftermath of World War I, many modern-minded Americans, particularly women, were eager to do away with outdated traditions and claim new rights and freedoms. This program investigates why the issue of womens rights, ranging from suffrage to smoing, became so controversial-and what that said about America's sense of self.