Category: Core Authors

Editor’s Introduction to The Journal, Issue 31

Issue Theme: “Age of Anxiety” It has been a liminal year. Covid, war in Ukraine, and political upheaval have shaken and will continue to shake preconceived notions about the world as we know it, from the viability of liberalism to the merits of state power in protecting public health. All these sources of apparent division […]

Editor’s Introduction to The Journal, Issue 30

The online edition of the thirtieth issue of The Journal of the Core Curriculum has just been published. To help place the issue in a context of editorial goals and of the community involvement that went into its production, we hereby present the Editor’s Note from the front matter, written by the editor-in-chief: I am […]

Texts and video from our Spring community reading

On the evening of April 14, 2021, an audience of classmates, alumni, lecturers, and friends of the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum came together to hear faculty and staff share favorite texts which speak somehow to our present moment of isolation, separation and anxiety, as Auden did in his poem “Age of Anxiety.” Here is […]

Christopher Ricks on Milton and Blasphemy

Christopher Ricks, an esteemed professor in the Editorial Institute and the Core Curriculum here at BU, recently gave a lecture to the CC201 students on Milton and Blasphemy. This lecture discusses the incredible sensitivities of the word blasphemy, what it means to blaspheme, and how anti-blasphemy laws still impact our society today. He also discusses […]

“I think we deserve a happy ending”

Kathryn Donlan (CAS ’18) is a writer and aspiring archivist (an an alumna of CC 111!). She likes talking about literature from the perspective of social history and historical context, and in keeping with this outlook she recently shared her thoughts on Twitter on the news of a new cinematic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. […]

The poems of the 2020 Core Poetry Reading

On the evening of April 15th, four and a half dozen classmates, alumni, lecturers, and friends, all members of the extended community we call the BU Core, came together on Zoom for our traditional spring poetry reading, an event Core has organized for nearly two decades. Despite a hitch at the start (we were Zoom […]

A Tour of Ancient Athens, or the Ups and Downs of Core

As any student who’s been on our Summer Study in Greece program can testify, visiting Athens at any time is a life changing experience. But it would be a dream to see it at the height of its glory, and luckily artist Dimitris Tsalkanis made that dream come true. Tsalkanis spent 13 years making a […]

Core Authors in the News!

Some content for your viewing pleasure… Are you exhausted by the prospect of reading another new translation or adaptation? Are you looking for a new way to experience the story of your favorite hero? Perhaps you should go back to basics and experience a classic text the classic way!This articlediscusses the impact of hearing the […]

Meditation on Remediation

An update from the front lines of the Core classrooms! This week, students are exploring Hamlet, and discovering what it means to remediate a text. Core students know better than anyone that some stories strike such a chord with the human experience that they continue to be told throughout history. Storytellers have always taken source […]

The Good-Enough Life

As Er watches dead souls choose new lives in Plato’s Myth of Er, he is surprised to see Odysseus chooses a life of a farmer. Instead of another life of greatness and fame, he chooses the middle path of an ordinary man. Many thinkers and characters strive for greatness, and some even manage to achieve […]