Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Yale | September 10th, 2024

It pays to think intel­li­gent­ly about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Shelly Kagan does just that, tak­ing a rich, philo­soph­i­cal look at death. Here’s how the course descrip­tion reads:

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will exam­ine a num­ber of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mor­tal­i­ty. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that death may not actu­al­ly be the end is con­sid­ered. Are we, in some sense, immor­tal? Would immor­tal­i­ty be desir­able? Also a clear­er notion of what it is to die is exam­ined. What does it mean to say that a per­son has died? What kind of fact is that? And, final­ly, dif­fer­ent atti­tudes to death are eval­u­at­ed. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is sui­cide moral­ly per­mis­si­ble? Is it ratio­nal? How should the knowl­edge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Major texts used in this course include Pla­to’s Phae­do, Tol­stoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, and John Per­ry’sA Dia­logue on Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty and Immor­tal­i­ty. Kagan also lat­er pub­lished a com­pan­ion book–simply called Death–which can be pur­chased online.

You can watch the 26 lec­tures above. Or find them on YouTube and iTunes in video and audio for­mats. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, includ­ing the syl­labus, please vis­it this Yale site.

This course has been added to our list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD (1963)

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adven­ture and Cre­ative Act

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How, Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion, He Recit­ed a Line from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds”

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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How to Be Happier in 5 Research-Proven Steps, According to Popular Yale Professor Laurie Santos

in Education, Psychology, Science, Yale | October 13th, 2023

Nature doesn’t care if you’re hap­py, but Yale psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Lau­rie San­tos does.

As Dr. San­tos points out dur­ing the above appear­ance on The Well, the goals of nat­ur­al selec­tion have been achieved as long as humans sur­vive and repro­duce, but most of us crave some­thing more to con­sid­er life worth liv­ing.

With depres­sion ris­ing to near epi­dem­ic lev­els on col­lege cam­pus­es and else­where, it’s worth tak­ing a look at our ingrained behav­ior, and maybe mak­ing some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to boost our hap­pi­ness lev­els.

Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life, Dr. San­tos’ mas­sive twice week­ly lec­ture class that active­ly tack­les ways of edg­ing clos­er to hap­pi­ness, is the most pop­u­lar course in Yale’s more than 300-year his­to­ry.

Do we detect some resis­tance?

Pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy — or the sci­ence of hap­pi­ness — is a pret­ty crowd­ed field late­ly, and the over­whelm­ing demand cre­at­ed by great throngs of peo­ple long­ing to feel bet­ter has attract­ed a fair num­ber of grifters will­ing to impart their proven method­olo­gies to any­one enrolling in their paid online cours­es.

By con­trast, Dr. San­tos not only has that Yale pedi­gree, she also cites oth­er respect­ed aca­d­e­mics such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Nicholas Epley, a social cog­ni­tion spe­cial­ist who believes under­so­cial­i­ty, or a lack of face-to-face engage­ment, is mak­ing peo­ple mis­er­able, and Harvard’s Dan Gilbert and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia’s Tim­o­thy Wil­son, who co-authored a paper on “mis­want­i­ng”, or the ten­den­cy to inac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict what will tru­ly result in sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness.

Yale under­grad Mick­ey Rose, who took Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life in the spring of 2022 to ful­fill a social sci­ence cred­it, told the Yale Dai­ly News that her favorite part of the class was that “every­thing was cit­ed, every­thing had a cred­i­ble source and study to back it up:”

I’m a STEM major and it’s kind of my over­all per­son­al­i­ty type to ques­tion claims that I find not very believ­able. Obvi­ous­ly the class made a lot of claims about mon­ey, grades, hap­pi­ness, that are coun­ter­in­tu­itive to most peo­ple and to Yale stu­dents espe­cial­ly.

With Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life now avail­able to the pub­lic for free on Cours­era, even skep­tics might con­sid­er giv­ing Dr. San­tos’ rec­om­mend­ed “re-wire­ment prac­tices” a peek, though be fore­warned, you should be pre­pared to put them into prac­tice before mak­ing pro­nounce­ments as to their effi­ca­cy.

It’s all pret­ty straight­for­ward stuff, start­ing with “use your phone to actu­al­ly be a phone”, mean­ing call a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber to set up an in per­son get togeth­er rather than scrolling through end­less social media feeds.

Oth­er com­mon sense adjust­ments include look­ing beyond your­self to help by vol­un­teer­ing, resolv­ing to adopt a glass-is-half-full type atti­tude, cul­ti­vat­ing mind­ful­ness, mak­ing dai­ly entries in a grat­i­tude jour­nal, and becom­ing less seden­tary.

(You might also give Dr. San­tos’ Hap­pi­ness Lab pod­cast a go…)

Things to guard against are mea­sur­ing your own hap­pi­ness against the per­ceived hap­pi­ness of oth­ers and “impact bias” — over­es­ti­mat­ing the dura­tion and inten­si­ty of hap­pi­ness that is the expect­ed result of some hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed event, acqui­si­tion or change in social stand­ing.

Below Dr. San­tos gives a tour of the Good Life Cen­ter, an on-cam­pus space that stressed out, social­ly anx­ious stu­dents can vis­it to get help putting some of those re-wire­ment prac­tices into play.

Sign up for Coursera’s 10-week Sci­ence of Well-Being course here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Making of Modern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale University, Featuring 23 Lectures

in Current Affairs, Online Courses, Yale | December 27th, 2022

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we men­tioned that Yale his­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der had start­ed teach­ing a course, The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine, and putting the lec­tures online. With the fall semes­ter now over, you can watch 23 lec­tures on YouTube. All of the lec­tures appear above, or on this playlist. Key ques­tions explored by the course include:

What brought about the Ukrain­ian nation?  Ukraine must have exist­ed as a soci­ety and poli­ty on 23 Feb­ru­ary 2022, else Ukraini­ans would not have col­lec­tive­ly resist­ed Russ­ian inva­sion the next day.  Why has the exis­tence of Ukraine occa­sioned such con­tro­ver­sy?  In what ways are Pol­ish, Russ­ian, and Jew­ish self-under­stand­ing depen­dent upon expe­ri­ences in Ukraine?  Just how and when did a mod­ern Ukrain­ian nation emerge?  Just how for that mat­ter does any mod­ern nation emerge?  And why some nations and not oth­ers?  What is the bal­ance between struc­ture and agency in his­to­ry?  Can nations be cho­sen, and does it mat­ter?  Can the choic­es of indi­vid­u­als influ­ence the rise of much larg­er social orga­ni­za­tions?  If so, how?  Ukraine was the coun­try most touched by Sovi­et and Nazi ter­ror: what can we learn about those sys­tems, then, from Ukraine?  Is the post-colo­nial, mul­ti­lin­gual Ukrain­ian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

A syl­labus for the course can be found on Sny­der’s Sub­stack.

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

A Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, the Best­selling Book by His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

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Introduction to Ancient Greek History: A Free Online Course by Yale Historian Donald Kagan (RIP)

in History, Online Courses, Yale | August 17th, 2021

Ear­li­er this month, Yale his­to­ri­an Don­ald Kagan passed away at age 89 in Wash­ing­ton D.C. In their obit­u­ary, The New York Times writes:

Pro­fes­sor Kagan was con­sid­ered among the country’s lead­ing his­to­ri­ans. His four-vol­ume account of the Pelo­pon­nesian War, from 431 B.C. to 404 B.C., was hailed by the crit­ic George Stein­er as “the fore­most work of his­to­ry pro­duced in North Amer­i­ca in the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

He was equal­ly renowned for his class­room style, in which he pep­pered nuanced read­ings of ancient texts with ref­er­ences to his beloved New York Yan­kees and inven­tive, some­times com­ic exer­cis­es in class par­tic­i­pa­tion, like hav­ing stu­dents form a hoplite pha­lanx to demon­strate how Greek sol­diers marched into com­bat.

If you nev­er sat in Kagan’s class­room, you can still expe­ri­ence his teach­ing style online. Record­ed in 2007, Kagan’s course Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry traces “the devel­op­ment of Greek civ­i­liza­tion as man­i­fest­ed in polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and cre­ative achieve­ments from the Bronze Age to the end of the clas­si­cal peri­od.” You can watch the 24 video lec­tures above, or find them on YouTube. The lec­tures also appear on iTunes in audio and video. Find the texts used in the course below. More infor­ma­tion about the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, can be found on this Yale web­site.

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online His­to­ry cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

The Ancient Greeks: A Free Online Course from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty 

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Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in History, Yale | July 25th, 2021

From Yale Uni­ver­si­ty comes an unfor­tu­nate­ly time­ly course, Epi­demics in West­ern Soci­ety Since 1600. Record­ed before the out­break of COVID-19, the 25 lec­ture course, pre­sent­ed by his­to­ri­an Frank Snow­den, cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

This course con­sists of an inter­na­tion­al analy­sis of the impact of epi­dem­ic dis­eases on west­ern soci­ety and cul­ture from the bubon­ic plague to HIV/AIDS and the recent expe­ri­ence of SARS and swine flu. Lead­ing themes include: infec­tious dis­ease and its impact on soci­ety; the devel­op­ment of pub­lic health mea­sures; the role of med­ical ethics; the genre of plague lit­er­a­ture; the social reac­tions of mass hys­te­ria and vio­lence; the rise of the germ the­o­ry of dis­ease; the devel­op­ment of trop­i­cal med­i­cine; a com­par­i­son of the social, cul­tur­al, and his­tor­i­cal impact of major infec­tious dis­eases; and the issue of emerg­ing and re-emerg­ing dis­eases.

You can watch the lec­tures on YouTube above, or on iTunes (Video — Audio). You can also read Snow­den’s relat­ed book: Epi­demics and Soci­ety: From the Black Death to the Present.

If you want to hear what Snow­den has to say about COVID-19, we have two inter­views below.

Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) Update: Epi­demics in His­to­ry

How Will COVID-19 Change the World? His­to­ri­an Frank Snow­den on Epi­demics From the Black Death to Now

Epi­demics in West­ern Soci­ety Since 1600 will be added to our list of Free Online His­to­ry cours­es, a sub­set of our meta­col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

The His­to­ry of the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, “The Dead­liest Epi­dem­ic of All Time”: Three Free Lec­tures from The Great Cours­es

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

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A Free Online Course from Yale University Explains How the World Lapsed into the Politics of Fear & Resentment

in Online Courses, Politics, Yale | December 17th, 2020

“How did we get from the huge eupho­ria that fol­lowed the fall of com­mu­nism in the ear­ly 1990s to our present pol­i­tics of fear and resent­ment, and what are the prospects going for­ward?” These ques­tions and more get answered in Yale’s free course, “Pow­er and Pol­i­tics in Today’s World.”  Taught by Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Ian Shapiro, the course “pro­vides an exam­i­na­tion of polit­i­cal dynam­ics and insti­tu­tions over this past tumul­tuous quar­ter cen­tu­ry, and the impli­ca­tions of these changes for what comes next. Among the top­ics cov­ered are the decline of trade unions and the enlarged role of busi­ness as polit­i­cal forces, chang­ing atti­tudes towards par­ties and oth­er polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions amidst the growth of inequal­i­ty and mid­dle-class inse­cu­ri­ty, the emer­gence of new forms of author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and the char­ac­ter and dura­bil­i­ty of the unipo­lar inter­na­tion­al order that replaced the Cold War.”

You can watch the lec­tures on Youtube, or stream them all above. The syl­labus and read­ing list can be found here.

“Pow­er and Pol­i­tics in Today’s World” will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

Mod­ern Poet­ry: A Free Course from Yale

Take Free Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

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Take Free Online Courses on African-American History from Yale and Stanford: From Emancipation, to the Civil Rights Movement, and Beyond

in History, Online Courses, Stanford, Yale | June 18th, 2020

As every Amer­i­can knows, Feb­ru­ary is Black His­to­ry Month. And as every Amer­i­can also knows — if the events of 2020 haven’t warped their sense of time too bad­ly — is isn’t Feb­ru­ary right now. But thanks to online learn­ing tech­nol­o­gy, we all have the free­dom to study any sub­ject we want, as much as we want, when­ev­er we want, irre­spec­tive of the time of year. Sources of inter­net-based edu­ca­tion have pro­lif­er­at­ed in the 21st cen­tu­ry, but long-respect­ed insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing have also got in on the action. Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, for exam­ple, has pro­duced the online course African Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present, whose 25 lec­tures by his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Jonathan Hol­loway you can watch on YouTube, or at Yale’s web site. The first lec­ture appears above.

Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in the spring of 2010, Hol­loway’s course exam­ines “the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the Unit­ed States from 1863 to the present,” involv­ing such chap­ters of his­to­ry as “the end of the Civ­il War and the begin­ning of Recon­struc­tion” and “African Amer­i­cans’ urban­iza­tion expe­ri­ences.”

It also includes lec­tures on the “thought and lead­er­ship of Book­er T. Wash­ing­ton, Ida B. Wells-Bar­nett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mar­cus Gar­vey, Mar­tin Luther King Jr., and Mal­colm X” — all writ­ers and thinkers Open Cul­ture read­ers will have encoun­tered before, but a course like African Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er their lives and work in clear­er con­text and greater detail.

Black his­to­ry has deep­er roots in some parts of the Unit­ed States than oth­ers. But that does­n’t mean the uni­ver­si­ties of the west have noth­ing to offer in this depart­ment: take, for exam­ple, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle, taught by the his­to­ri­an (and edi­tor of MLK’s papers) Clay­borne Car­son. Avail­able to watch on YouTube and iTunes (or right above), its 18 lec­tures deliv­er an intro­duc­tion to “African-Amer­i­can his­to­ry, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the polit­i­cal thought and protest move­ments of the peri­od after 1930, focus­ing on select­ed indi­vid­u­als who have shaped and been shaped by mod­ern African-Amer­i­can strug­gles for free­dom and jus­tice.” Tak­en togeth­er, these online cours­es offer you more than enough mate­r­i­al to hold your own Black His­to­ry Month right now.

Note: Clay Car­son­’s course can also be tak­en as a MOOC on edX. Enroll now in Amer­i­can Prophet: The Inner Life and Glob­al Vision of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. And find the cours­es list­ed above in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Watch Cor­nel West’s Free Online Course on W.E.B. Du Bois, the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Pub­lic Intel­lec­tu­al

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Photographs Documenting the Great Depression

in History, Philosophy, Yale | September 5th, 2019

dorothea lange

Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, The Farm Secu­ri­ty Administration—Office of War Infor­ma­tion (FSA-OWI) hired pho­tog­ra­phers to trav­el across Amer­i­ca to doc­u­ment the pover­ty that gripped the nation, hop­ing to build sup­port for New Deal pro­grams being cham­pi­oned by F.D.R.‘s admin­is­tra­tion.

Leg­endary pho­tog­ra­phers like Dorothea Lange, Walk­er Evans, and Arthur Roth­stein took part in what amount­ed to the largest pho­tog­ra­phy project ever spon­sored by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. All told, 170,000 pho­tographs were tak­en, then cat­a­logued back in Wash­ing­ton DC. The Library of Con­gress became their even­tu­al rest­ing place.

walker evans

We first men­tioned this his­toric project back in 2012, when the New York Pub­lic Library put a rel­a­tive­ly small sam­pling of these images online. But now we have big­ger news.

Yale Uni­ver­si­ty has launched Pho­togram­mar, a sophis­ti­cat­ed web-based plat­form for orga­niz­ing, search­ing, and visu­al­iz­ing these 170,000 his­toric pho­tographs.

arthur rothstein

The Pho­togram­mar plat­form gives you the abil­i­ty to search through the images by pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Do a search for Dorothea Lange’s pho­tographs, and you get over 3200 images, includ­ing the now icon­ic pho­to­graph at the bot­tom of this post.

Pho­togram­mar also offers a handy inter­ac­tive map that lets you gath­er geo­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion about 90,000 pho­tographs in the col­lec­tion.

And then there’s a sec­tion called Pho­togram­mar Labs where inno­v­a­tive visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques and data exper­i­ments will grad­u­al­ly shed new light on the image archive.

Accord­ing to Yale, the Pho­togram­mar project was fund­ed by a grant from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties (NEH). Direct­ed by Lau­ra Wexler, the project was under­tak­en by Yale’’s Pub­lic Human­i­ties Pro­gram and its Pho­to­graph­ic Mem­o­ry Work­shop.

rothstein 3
Top image: A migrant agri­cul­tur­al work­er in Marysville migrant camp, try­ing to fig­ure out his year’s earn­ings. Tak­en in Cal­i­for­nia in 1935 by Dorothea Lange.

Sec­ond image: Allie Mae Bur­roughs, wife of cot­ton share­crop­per. Pho­to tak­en in Hale Coun­ty, Alaba­ma in 1935 by Walk­er Evans.

Third image: Wife and chil­dren of share­crop­per in Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty, Arkansas. By Arthur Roth­stein. 1935.

Fourth image: Wife of Negro share­crop­per, Lee Coun­ty, Mis­sis­sip­pi. Again tak­en by Arthur Roth­stein in 1935.

Bot­tom image: Des­ti­tute pea pick­ers in Cal­i­for­nia. Moth­er of sev­en chil­dren. Age thir­ty-two. Tak­en by Dorothea Lange in Nipo­mo, Cal­i­for­nia, 1936.

lange bottom

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Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Puts Online a Huge Col­lec­tion of Bauhaus Art Objects

Down­load for Free 2.6 Mil­lion Images from Books Pub­lished Over Last 500 Years on Flickr

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.