Off the Clock: The Many Faces of Time

“Off the Clock: The Many Faces of Time” presents a transdisciplinary and transnational set of perspectives on time. This MOOC aims to expand the learners' understanding of the many facets of time, from our human experience of the present to plants, animals, bacteria, and even art’s relationship to the passing of time. This course equips learners with multidisciplinary tools for thinking about time in human and more-than-human constituents. To do so, the course asks and answers three key questions. First, course participants will acquire the skills needed to join philosophers and physicists in asking: what is time, and what are its features? Next, joining psychologists, chronobiologists, and philosophers of time, the participants will tackle the question: how do humans and non-humans perceive time? Finally, learners will acquire the skills to think with linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists about the way that humans conceive and value time. Throughout the course, each participant will learn to think across disciplines about time, one of the most fundamental aspects of being itself. About the creation of the MOOC The course was produced by 13 young researchers from different areas and nationalities participating in the 1st Intercontinental Academia (ICA 1) of UBIAS, a network of university-based institutes for advanced study on all continents. ICA 1 was organized by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA) at the University of São Paulo and the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) at Nagoya University. During two intensive meetings in São Paulo (April 2015) and Nagoya (March 2016), the participants had the opportunity to learn from dozens of conferences given by senior researchers in anthropology, philosophy, physics, neurobiology, chronobiology, psychoanalysis, environmental sciences, and other areas, all related to the common theme: Time. The MOOC is the result of this interdisciplinary and intercontinental work. This production has only been possible t