October 13, 2009
Forum Network – Free lectures online
By Elisabeth Grant
The Forum Network is a collaboration of PBS and NPR, bringing together audio and video lectures online for free. The site contains hundreds of lectures, which visitors can search through by topic, series, and speaker. Searching for content is both exciting and daunting, so for this post, we highlight just five series from the site, and just three lectures from each of these series. Do note some familiar names below, including Eric Foner, Jill Lepore, and James M. McPherson.
Series
The Forum Network offers quite a few collections of lectures organized around a theme. Here are a series that may be of interest to historians.
- Slavery and the Making of America
37 lectures in the series, including: - Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, Charles Burnett
- Molasses: From the Slave Trade to the Great Flood, Anthony M. Sammarco
- Evening with Henry and Harriet Beecher, Philip McFarland
- Boston’s 375th Anniversary Series
108 lectures, including: - A Short History of Boston, Robert J. Allison
- A History of Boston Women Artists, Erica Hirshler
- Boston Sites and Insights: A Guide to Historical Landmarks, Susan Wilson
- American Experience: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
9 lectures, including: - New Perspectives on Lincoln and His Word, Eric Foner
- Nineteen Lincolns, Gretta Pratt
- Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Native American Culture Series
15 lectures, including: - American Indians and the French-English War, Colin G. Calloway
- King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore
- American West: Lewis and Clark Expedition, Clay S. Jenkinson
- Ken Burns: The Civil War Series
5 lectures, including: - This Mighty Scourge: Essays about the Civil War, James M. McPherson
- African American Voices of the Civil War, Charles Fuller
- Jews of the Confederacy, Lunelle Siegel
