Course Description

Follow in the footsteps of history’s most ambitious and influential explorers—from ancient wayfarers to modern astronauts—in this captivating 24-lecture course taught by award-winning University of Tennessee professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius. Witness mutiny, disease, starvation, and cannibalism alongside the awe-inspiring human impulse to chart the unknown. You will trace interconnected journeys across frozen poles, vast oceans, and the final frontier of space, examining motives from pilgrimage and proselytizing to wealth, conquest, and fame. Through Vikings in North America, Marco Polo on the Silk Road, Columbus’s “Enterprise of the Indies,” Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa, and the race to the Moon, you will gain a truly global portrait of exploration that includes non-Westerners and the perspectives of the discovered.

Lecture-by-Lecture Outline

Ancient and Medieval Trailblazers

• The Earliest Explorers – 32 min

The Vivaldi brothers’ ill-fated quest to India and the epic 7,000-year-old settlement of the Pacific islands.

• The Scientific Voyage of Pytheas the Greek – 31 min

Meet the originator of scientific exploration who reached the edge of the known world and influenced later expeditions.

• St. Brendan—The Travels of an Irish Monk – 29 min

Follow the 6th-century monk who sailed the Atlantic in a leather boat seeking paradise and solitude.

4. Xuanzang’s Journey to the West – 30 min

The 7th-century Chinese monk’s illegal pilgrimage to India to secure authoritative Buddhist scriptures.

• Leif Eriksson the Lucky – 31 min

How Viking culture of adventure and violence propelled Norse settlement in North America.

• Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville – 31 min

Medieval Europe’s window onto China through Polo’s authentic travels and Mandeville’s fantastical tales.

• Ibn Battuta—Never the Same Route Twice – 30 min

Moroccan jurist’s 75,000-mile, 24-year circuit across the Muslim world and beyond.

Age of Sail and Global Empires

• Portugal’s Great Leap Forward – 31 min

Tiny Portugal’s rise from poverty to seaborne superpower via Prince Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama.

• The Enigmatic Christopher Columbus – 30 min

Unpack Columbus’s complex motives and the massive Columbian Exchange triggered by his 1492 voyage.

• Magellan and the Advent of Globalization – 30 min

First circumnavigation of the globe and how it bound together the world economy.

• The Ruthless Ambition of the Conquistadors – 29 min

Cortés, Pizarro, and de Soto: how a handful of Spaniards toppled empires and reshaped Latin America.

12. Henry Hudson—Death on the Ice – 30 min

Mutiny and murder in the 1610 quest for the Northwest Passage.

• The Jesuits on a Global Mission – 30 min

How the Society of Jesus used cultural exploration to spread Christianity from China to the Americas.

• Captain Cook Maps the World – 30 min

Cook’s scientific voyages and the new attitudes toward foreign peoples that defined the Enlightenment era.

• Alexander von Humboldt—Explorer Genius – 30 min

The “second Columbus” who revealed the world as an interrelated ecological unit during his 5,950-mile trek across the Americas.

Continental Crossings and Imperial Frontiers

• Jefferson Dispatches Lewis and Clark – 29 min

America’s Corps of Discovery charts the Louisiana Purchase and crosses Native American lands peacefully.

17. Sir John Franklin’s Epic Disaster – 30 min

The 1845 disappearance that captivated Victorian Britain and forged a culture of adventure.

18. Ida Pfeiffer—Victorian Extreme Traveler – 30 min

A woman who circled the globe twice, escaped cannibals, and became a best-selling travel writer.

• Japan Discovers the West – 30 min

19th-century Japanese missions to America and Europe that shaped the Meiji transformation.

• Dr. Livingstone and Mary Kingsley in Africa – 30 min

Stanley’s famous greeting and how two very different Britons revealed Africa to the world.

Poles, Oceans, and Space

21. Arctic Feats and Fates – 29 min

Who really reached the North Pole? Debates, airships, and Umberto Nobile’s dramatic 1926 flight.

22. Antarctic Rivalries – 30 min

Amundsen vs. Scott to the South Pole and Shackleton’s epic survival saga.

• A Deep-Sea Dive into the Mariana Trench – 30 min

1960 descent to the deepest place on Earth by Piccard and Walsh, plus centuries of ocean exploration.

• The Race to Outer Space – 31 min

From Apollo 8’s earthrise to commercial spaceflight—why we leave Earth and where humanity may go next.