October 27, 2015 at 11:18 am
A guest post by Word & Way president Justin Lievano (CAS 2016). Slate.com recently posted several pages fromAshley Montagu’s The Cultured Man, 1958. These leaves warrant our interest because they contain quizzes meant to evaluate ones cultural knowledge. Quiz might be generous; taken all together, these questions compose a kind of oral exam to which […]
October 8, 2015 at 10:23 am
It seems folks are always fretting about the juvenile hijinks taking place on college campuses. However, going through some BU archives, we find an opinion expressed in 1931 that the immaturity was more or less over. Has this observation been borne out? You be the judge. From an editorial titled “Growing Pains”, published in a […]
September 21, 2015 at 9:27 am
To current Core students, Dantes Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso marks theculmination of first year Core. Yet, toItalians, Dantes work of literature is referenced through academics, politicians and media. Dante is marked with a reverence by Italy for his ability to create a national language in the country. John Kleiner marks Italys celebration of the poets […]
September 8, 2015 at 10:08 am
Over at The Chronicle Review, a faculty member tells the story of how she was wondering why her students were always late, and what they told her when she asked them why. An excerpt: Overall, students were much more understanding about tardy arrivals than I, and that got me thinking: Was I worrying too much […]
August 5, 2015 at 5:13 pm
“Justice” is something of a buzz word in the Core: what it means, how it should be administered, and what constitutes a crime are just a few of the topics that are addressed by writers like Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, and Dante. For the most part, these great thinkers propose systems wherein criminals are punished retroactively […]
Here at the Core, we spend a great deal of time examining a wide range of perspectives on morality, returning semester after semester to examine questions such as “how do we define right and wrong?” and even “do right and wrong really exist?” As we explore these ethical questions through the lenses of science, literature, […]
March 23, 2015 at 10:30 am
The ease of publishing one’s writing online, in conjunction with the pleasure reading of popular fiction, may have changed our perception of the literary canon, says Arthur Krystal of The Chronicle Review. He fears a loss of appreciation for its greatness as new artists turn out works that will never have the same resonance as, say, a Shakespearean sonnet or a Homerian epic.
March 18, 2015 at 10:46 am
To current and former Core students, Dante’s Inferno brings to mind images of a nine-tiered Hell filled with sinners of various sorts. CC102 students, studious as they are, know the nine circles and their inhabitants like the back of their hands. Reporting by the Onion, though, indicates that Dante’s descriptions are out-of-date: recent years have […]
March 5, 2015 at 10:31 am
First thing in the morning, the Core office checks Arts & Letters Daily, a site run by The Chronicle of Higher Education where, each work day, links are posted to some of the best essays, reviews and articles from the worlds of criticism and scholarship. It is, in other words, our one-stop shopping destination for […]
January 5, 2015 at 10:48 am
The taxi service Uber is taking Boston by force. With its mixed reviews in the media, riders wonder about their drivers as well as what services are offered outside Beantown. Lucky for us at the Core office, Professor Hamill left a copy of the New Yorker open to an article providing Uber reviews for Charon, […]
