Category: Academics

From Truthout: Banning Howard Zinn’s Books Is Hardly a Way to Start a Conversation

As we all know, Howard Zinn was a prominent activist under the “auspices” of Boston University, best known for hisA People’s History of the United Statesthat was popular in every sense of the word, one of the reasons for its having remainedso powerful. Understandably, on March 2, the governor of Arkansas, Kim Hendren introduced a […]

From The Weekly Standard: What We Know of Shakespeare from His (Known) Portraits

Blake Seitz at The Weekly Standard reviews Portraits of Shakespeare by Katherine Duncan-Jones, an absorbing study, we are told, by an author who flouts the rule that tells us we cannot judge a book by its cover. Or if we cannot judge Hamlet from its cover, we can at least make a judgment about its […]

From The New York Times: Can Dr. Worthen go to Great Books Camp?

And in posing this question Professor Molly Worthen argues dyspeptically in her latest article for why more liberals should be attending ‘Great Books Camp.’ A careful study into the history of one’s own ideas, Dr. Worthen suggests, would allow us to put not only Donald Trump in perspective, but more generally to engage with conservatives […]

From The Business Insider: How Donald Trump Could Abolish the Department of Education

In his first hundred days as President, Donald Trumps plans to shutter the Department of Education. Top legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, has regrettably affirmed that there is no constitutional limitation against such an action. Assuming that Congress will give its consent, and that we make it past the first 100 days, this seems dangerously likely. […]

Scenes from Euripides’ Hecuba, November 2016

The 2016 performance of scenes from Euripides’ Hecuba from today’s CC101 lecture has been uploaded to the Core Youtube channel for your viewing pleasure. Many thanks go out to Prof. Kyna Hamill and the 2016-17 Hecuba Players. The 2016-17 Players are: Giselle Boustani-Fontenele, co-director with Kyna Hamill Flannery Gallagher Priest Gooding Seyedeh Hosseini Hannah Jew […]

How Homer Matters

“The core of what is valuable about those epics is that they are intensely human. … It is an absolutely down-the-barrel look at the realities of who we are.” In his lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, author Adam Nicholson argues the importance of Homer thousands of years after he wrote the Iliad and […]

From Education Week: Teaching Shakespeare with 21st Century Technology

As much as it helps to attend lectures, heed instruction, and explore themes we have not discovered ourselves but of whose salience we are assured nonetheless, the most enjoyment that Shakespeare has to offer can only be tapped through self-struggle. A kind in which the self not only struggles to develop with the help of […]

Top Ten Benefits of Core’s Final Semester

Sophomores — it’s registration weekend! This is a milestone moment. You’ll be selecting classes for next semester, which for many of you is your fourth in the Core, and potentially your final one. Now, it is well known that there are myriad benefits — intellectual, social, and logistical — for finishing Core in the second-year […]

From NPR: Put Your Laptops Away

Jame Doubek at NPR aptly begins the title of his article with ‘Attention, Students,’ since that is what his subject primarily concerns. Why are some students more easily able to recall lecture material than others? It is tempting to think this might have something to do with anal-retention; that students who fastidiously take notes like […]

From the Times Literary Supplement: Dylan’s voice, music, and words

A visionary trinity. ProfesSir Christopher Ricks is one of the most energetic octogenarians we have on the literary scene. Age has clearly not impaired his hearing, which has been and remains so keenly attune to the sounds and subtleties of (among others) Milton and Tennyson, that it has served as an aid for our own. […]