Category: Academics

The Penelopiad: A Great Experience

February 26, 2013 at 12:49 pm

The Penelopiad turned out to be as interesting and multi-layered as we had expected, attracting about 35 Core students and many more theater fans! Following the events of the Odyssey from the female perspective, the play interwove the voice of Penelope and the voices of her twelve maids who are killed in the end at […]

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Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!

February 26, 2013 at 12:14 pm

The Core Curriculum offers CC102-related intellectual stickers advocating what Buddha would say to Arjuna: Everyone interested can email core@bu.edu or Tweet to Prof. Eckel @taoofcore, to request their own sticker and the Core will mail it to them!

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Justifying Coercive Paternalism

February 26, 2013 at 11:58 am

In his compelling article, Cass Sunstein explores the validity of Mill’s ideas on government and the individual. Here is a sample: In his great essay, Mill insisted that as a general rule, government cannot legitimately coerce people if its only goal is to protect people from themselves. Mill contended that: The only purpose for which […]

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CC105 Information

February 25, 2013 at 3:04 pm

To all CC105 students, Nate and Gayle, your Core Mentors, will be sending out weekly emails summarizing the important topics from the lectures that week, reminding you of assignments and giving you links to some science articles that you may find interesting. The Core Blog will regularly be updated with what is being sent in […]

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W. H. Auden’s Syllabus

February 25, 2013 at 2:20 pm

In this article, Jeva Lange lets us peek into the extremely heavy reading list college students would receive from W.H. Auden for his class, Fate and the Individual in European Literature, as seen above. Compare this to all the Core reading lists combined! http://bit.ly/W8oTLj For the full article, visit http://nydn.us/13aM8q4

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The Essay as Reality Television

February 22, 2013 at 10:05 am

Adam Kirsch discusses whether or not essays are “extinct” as a form of writing, and references Michel e Montaigne, whose work is studied in CC201. Here is a sample: The essay, traditionally, was defined by its freedom and its empiricism—qualities that it inherited from its modern inventor, Montaigne. “What do I know?” Montaigne asked, and […]

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Sting & Confucius

February 21, 2013 at 12:46 pm

The Core presents a song by Sting titled Englishman in New York. It’s message relates to CC102’s study of the Analects of Confucius. The Confucian idea of the ethics of a “gentleman”, to some extent, provides directions on how to behave in the “gentlemanly” way when in a foreign land. Sting addresses this idea of […]

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Applying Confucian Ethics to International Relations

February 21, 2013 at 11:00 am

In view of CC102’s study of the Analects of Confucius, the Core presents an interesting discussion of Confucian ethics when applied to international relations. Here is a sample: Chinese ethics is a deontological system that has a continuity spanning a range from personal to public concerns, without differentiation. A good society, a good state, and […]

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CC204: Living Wage Calculator

February 19, 2013 at 12:11 pm

This spring, the class of CC204 has been looking at inequality in terms of race, gender, social class and financial standing. “Poverty in America” has provided a very useful tool to investigate inequality in terms wages across the United States, the Living Wage Calculator: http://bit.ly/Ykr2NZ Simply enter your home town and find out how much money […]

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Core Professor Atema: Nerval’s Lobster

February 18, 2013 at 3:23 pm

The Core presents an article by Mark Dery, in which he discusses Gérard de Nerval and his infamous “pet” lobster. Dery starts off by quoting Nerval himself: “Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? Or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take […]

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