Looks like a far cry from the nice paperbacks we use now! Before editions of the Odyssey could be printed, bound, and tossed into a backpack, and before the story was first recorded on tablets, it was passed as an oral tradition that changed slightly with each retelling. After Homer recorded the story in writing […]
Imagine the difference between enjoying a relaxing, sit-down meal and scarfing down a granola bar while riding the T to work. While many would prefer the former, sometimes we must sacrifice quality and enjoyment for practicality. But should we treat reading the same way? The folks over at The Indy thought the same thing in […]
April 23, 2018 at 10:13 am
Exciting news: We have received word back from one of our students studying abroad in Madrid! This postcard comes to us from recent Core alum Kassandra Round, who has been very missed at the Core office. Dear Core, I have been in Madrid for almost 3 months and it has been an amazing experience. I […]
April 21, 2018 at 9:34 pm
On April 11th, an audience of forty gathered in the Katzenberg Center in the College of General Studies for a celebration of the work of David Ferry, in the form of a reading, by friends and faculty of the Core Curriculum, of works by and related to the poet. The man himself was our final […]
February 20, 2018 at 4:32 pm
…to affiliates of the Core, Emanuel “Ami” Katz and Stephen Kalberg, for their promotions to full professor on our Charles River Campus! Stephen Kalberg is a prolific writer who has published a total of twelve books, and his focus is on the German social theorist Max Weber. Ami Katz is a brilliant physicist, a frequent […]
February 8, 2018 at 11:34 am
The Enlightenment was… many things. To seek to define it in one word would, perhaps, be a display of great arrogance. And of course, none of us here with the Core have anywhere near enough self-esteem to be considered arrogant. One of the definitions of Enlightenment, and perhaps the most common, is thus: the Enlightenment […]
February 8, 2018 at 10:55 am
Now that we’re in the thick of the semester, we’re all lacking for a full night’s sleep. Here is what three of the English Romantics had to say about the subject of night. The Sun Has Long Been Set William Wordsworth The sun has long been set, The stars are out by twos and threes, […]
February 5, 2018 at 4:56 pm
Need some life advice? (I know I do.) Unsure about how best to handle love, longing, academics, et al.? (Yes to all of the above.) Why not ask the ancients for advice? BU’s very own Professor Varhelyi asked this final question when confronted with students’ concerns, and decided to pursue it further. In collaboration with […]
February 5, 2018 at 9:53 am
By: Carmen Bugan Feeling nostalgic for the Bodleian, here I turn to Charles Lamb, who wrote: What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in […]
February 1, 2018 at 12:40 pm
Zadie Smith is a writer and essayist who brings with her an modern, multicultural outlook on art and expression. As Dwight Gardner writes in The New York Times: “Smith, who is English-Jamaican, has prized open in her fiction a modern, multicultural, post-post-colonial England. In addition to being devastatingly good, her novels describe the ways society […]
