5 Free College-Level Writing & Lit Videos

By Jason Boog 

Wish you could study writing Ray Bradbury, Penelope Lively or Clive Cussler? SocialTimes introduced us to YouTube EDU, a massive collection of free educational videos from Harvard, Yale, MIT, University of California and other great universities.

Here’s more from SocialTimes: ” YouTube’s education channel, offers videos of courses at top schools around the globe in categories ranging from arts and humanities to education, business and law, mathematics, science, medicine, languages and more.”

We’ve rounded up five useful courses for all the writers, readers and publishing folks in the audience.

1. An Evening with Ray Bradbury: “Science fiction author Ray Bradbury regales his audience with stories about his life and love of writing in “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea”

2. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: “In this lecture at the midpoint of the course Professor Hungerford takes stock of the syllabus thus far and to come by laying out her guiding thesis of the Identity Plot, a rubric for understanding novels in the twentieth century.”

3. “CSI”: Fact vs. Fiction: “Dr. Henry Sanchez, UCSF Professor of Clinical Pathology, explores the fact and fiction of the television version of crime scene investigation. This presentation is part of the course, Basic Principles Underlying Modern Medicine”

4. Clive Cussler at University of Oregon: “The Robert D. Clark Honors College presented best-selling author Clive Cussler to speak on writing adventure fiction.”

5. Reading History and Writing Fiction: “Penelope Lively, winner of the Booker Prize, describes how the study and appreciation of history influences the writer of fiction. David McCullough, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a Yale alumnus, offers a reply and his own thoughts on the craft and art of writing.”