Human Origins and the Purpose of History, n.d.

Subseries A: Teaching Materials

This subseries documents Herman's role as a Professor in the Northeastern History Department. The majority of records relate to the teaching of a two part Western Civilization survey class titled “To Know Thyself.” Beginning in the 1972–1973 academic year, Northeastern's history department offered a two–semester course in Western Civilization that surveyed “the major ideas and institutions of Western Civilization” from ancient times to the present. The Western Civilization course, as it was described in the 1972–73 course catalog, continued to be offered through the 1988–1989 academic year. The course is referred to alternatively by the course numbers 23.101/23.102, and HIST 1101/HIST 1102. Included are binders on each unit of the course, which consist of workbooks, lecture notes, quizzes, and scripts for video lectures produced for each unit (see Subseries B. Audio Visual for VHS copies of video lectures). This subseries also includes an index of video tapes produced by the History Department, and records related to several student projects overseen by Herman.

Subseries B: Audio-Visual:

This subseries includes the complete series of video lectures that Professor Herman created with Martha E. Francois, Donald Allen, Charmarie J. Blaisdell, and E.H. Harbison for the Western Civilization history survey class “To Know Thyself.” The videos made by Professor Herman and his colleagues were supplemented with commercially produced documentaries, including “Charlemagne: Holy Barbarian,” “The Middle Ages: A Wanderer's Guide to Life and Letters,” “Sun King,” “French Revolution: The Terror,” “Freud: The Hidden Nature of Man,” and “Future Shock.” Researchers should note that the quality of the recordings varies. The video lectures were supplemented by textbooks written by Professor Herman; copies of the textbooks are available in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections Department in the Faculty Publications collection. Also included in this subseries are audio recordings of Herman's Western Civilization lectures from the mid- 1980's, 3 CD's and 6 MiniDV's related to the student project “The First World Series,” and several U-Matic tapes of slides and stills related to the University.