Smithsonian Associates Online Programs

Economist Robbie Mochrie explains how economic thinking is indispensable to tackling huge problems such as avoiding climate catastrophe and pulling economies through the pandemic. Mochrie discusses how the greatest economic thinkers, including Aristotle, Adam Smith, and Esther Duflo, have enabled us to see the world differently and figure out how we can make it better. He shows that economic thinking emerged long before there were economists, and that good economics is about much more than the economy.

Though the story of the Wars of the Roses usually focuses on the Plantagenet men who fought, died on the battlefield, or survived to take the crown, some of its main personalities were queens, princesses, and duchesses. These remarkable women publicly and privately exerted the influence and wielded the power that shaped the conflict. Tudor and Renaissance scholar Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger introduces seven wives, mothers, and sisters who helped spin and shred the web of conspiracies that blanketed the English throne.

The domed U.S. Capitol has been rebuilt and enlarged many times under the direction of the person serving as Architect of the Capitol. Alan Hantman, who held the position from 1997 to 2007, shares insights into how the Capitol works as a physical space, who runs it, and how and why decisions are made about security. Hantman recounts memorable security threats, including the 1998 fatal shooting of two police officers and the evacuation of the Capitol on 9/11 as a hijacked airplane approached.

Five days after the Declaration of Independence was finalized, a crowd of American soldiers and sailors tore down a statue of King George III raised by grateful New York colonists. Its precious lead became 42,088 musket balls to fire at the king’s army. Historian Richard Bell explores the tumultuous years between 1763 and 1776 and the extraordinary events that turned loyal British colonies into a united confederation willing to go to war to achieve independence.

The influential 19th century intellectual Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science who visited the United States in 1804 to meet President Thomas Jefferson, whose writings Humboldt had taken to heart. Smithsonian American Art Museum curator Eleanor Jones Harvey, author of Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature and Culture, illuminates Humboldt's efforts to influence American cultural values through the visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics.

Folklorists Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman discuss the versatile figure of the witch in the folkloric medium of the fairy tale. Focusing on the collection of the Brothers Grimm, Cleto and Warman explore the many distinctive witches they gave us and their relationships to self-determination, community, and nature.

From Queen Victoria's alleged romances to ghoulish reports of body snatching, lady poisoners, or Jack the Ripper's murder spree, there was never a lack of titillating and terrifying news to read or talk about over tea in 19th-century Britain. Historian Julie Taddeo uses some of the period’s most intriguing crimes and scandals to shed light on the wider Victorian era and how its history is presented in today’s pop culture.

Explore the heart of Italy during the first millennium B.C.E. through a journey into the enigmatic world of the Etruscans. Using three masterworks of painting, sculpture, and metalwork excavated from tombs in central Italy, art historian Laura Morelli offers a glimpse into how members of this lesser-known culture adorned the places where they planned to spend eternity and the incredible luxury objects they took with them. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

The Buddhist world is alive with the supernatural. Ghosts and spirits, which the religion often describes as living out the consequences of past actions, wander the world imbued with the capacity for either great kindness or terrible wickedness. Art historian Robert DeCaroli reveals their contributions to Buddhism’s development and shares examples from art and literature drawn from across Asia. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Virginia Woolf famously said that George Eliot’s monumental Middlemarch from 1872 was “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” Joseph Luzzi, professor of literature at Bard College, examines how Eliot used innovative literary techniques and delves into her treatment of political issues, key transitions in English social and cultural life, and the characters’ emotional lives.