The Core Blog

Kurt Cobain: Letters & Journals

February 20, 2013 at 4:05 pm

Kurt Cobain’s music and ideas have had a large impact on several generations, and the Core finds it worth acknowledging. In this article, Maria Popova explores and provides pages from the letters and journals of grunge legend. She describes the collection:

The posthumously released Kurt Cobain: Journals (public library) offers an unprecedented glimpse of the modern icon’s inner life, from an anatomy of his eclectic influences — John Lennon, the Stooges, the Sex Pistols, PJ Harvey, Public Enemy, David Bowie — to a chronicle of his tumultuous psychoemotional landscape to sketches and drawings that would later grace Nirvana album covers and that, like those of Sylvia Plath, Queen Victoria, and Richard Feynman, have been acclaimed for their artistic acumen.

A sample from the pages she provides:

For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/WRn95U

By mdimov | Posted in Art, Community, Great Personalities | Tagged 80's, 90's, change, generation, grunge, impact, letters, music, pages, star, thoughts, writing | Comments (0)

Where Stars Come From

February 20, 2013 at 3:24 pm

The Core shares an article from BU Today concerning the intriguing origin of stars, where CAS professor James Jackson answers some exciting questions. A sample:

For years, Jackson, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of astronomy, and his international colleagues studied [a dark, opaque mass that astronomers call] “the brick,” with the most powerful telescopes available and saw only, well, a brick, impenetrable and opaque. That changed last year with the unveiling of a powerful new tool called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a collection of 66 dish antennae, or radio telescopes, spread across an almost 10-mile stretch of Chile’s high-altitude Atacama Desert. The $1.4 billion project, to be fully functioning by the end of 2013, is three decades in the making and involves astronomers from Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia.

“ALMA’s going to blow the field wide open,” says Jackson, CAS associate dean for research and outreach, who was among the first astronomers to use the array. “We are poised to understand the origins of stars in an unprecedented way and that’s the origin of us.”

For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/Vwflab

By mdimov | Posted in Community, Core Lecturers, Faculty Publications, Great Questions | Tagged astronomy, birth, CAS, far, James Jackson, origin, Science, stars, start, telescope, tool | Comments (0)

Core Housing application deadline!

February 19, 2013 at 5:05 pm

The deadline for Specialty housing is this Thursday, February 21st. For anyone interested in living in the Core House next year it's important to apply before then. The application is very simple, and should take only a few minutes to complete, and it involves no obligation on your part. In other words, it simply opens up the option of living in the House if those plans to live in StuVi 2 happen to fall through. You can find the application online at http://www.bu.edu/specialty/apply.

The House is in South Campus, 141 Carlton Street, five minutes from CAS, and has a generous supply of singles and bathrooms, a great common room, a nice porch (in case the weather ever gets warm) and a great community. Feel free to contact the RA, Caitlin Outterson at coutterson@gmail.com to find out more or to get a tour of the house.

By CAS Core Curriculum | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Charles McNulty on Depictions of Violence in Theater

February 19, 2013 at 12:49 pm

In this compelling article, Los Angeles Times Theater Critic McNulty discusses the controversial topic of violence in theater. Here is a sample:

What is the line between acceptable and unacceptable violence in art? If gruesomeness is the criterion, much of Jacobean drama would have to be banned, including Shakespeare's "King Lear," with its graphic scene of Gloucester's eyes being mercilessly plucked out. Some may believe they can identify pornography at a glance, but violence places keener demands on our sensibilities. Its artistic validity isn't a function of how many liters of blood are spilled or how many limbs are dismembered. The question is one of gratuitousness. Or to put it another way: How does the brutality fit into a work's larger vision?

For the full article, visit http://lat.ms/VtvNb6

... and since we are on the topic of theater, do not forget to look into the upcoming "Penelopiad" performance at the Boston Center for the Arts!! For more information, visit http://bit.ly/Zp8kvl

By mdimov | Posted in Activities, Art, Community, Core in the City, Events, Great Ideas, Great Questions | Tagged anger, arts, controversy, odyssey, peace, Penelopiad, performance, production, right, theater, violence, wrong | Comments (0)

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 you need to be making to be "living well" there!

By mdimov | Posted in Academics, Curriculum, Great Ideas | Tagged CC204, finance, Inequality, life, money, social science, society, stability, wages, well | Comments (0)

Winston Churchill- ‘Our Modern Watchwords’

February 18, 2013 at 3:34 pm

Until recently, Winston Churchill was only known to have written one poem as a schoolboy. Now, a 10-verse poem he wrote while serving in the army has emerged, from 1898 when he was 24 years old.

Two of the 10 stanza of the work, titled 'Our Modern Watchwords', read:

The shadow falls along the shore
The search lights twinkle on the sea
The silence of a mighty fleet
Portends the tumult yet to be.
The tables of the evening meal
Are spread amid the great machines
And thus with pride the question runs
Among the sailors and marines
Breathes there the man who fears to die
For England, Home, & Wai-hai-wai.

For the full article discussing this poem, visit http://bit.ly/W6cdir

By mdimov | Posted in Announcements, Art, Great Personalities | Tagged adult, ambition, army, Britian, celebration, Churchill, Empire, poem, power | Comments (0)

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 for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gobble up your monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad!" — Gérard de Nerval, when asked why he kept a lobster as a pet and walked it on a leash.

Dery also quotes our very own Core Professor Jelle Atema on the matter:

Dr. Atema wonders if Nerval's lobster was really a crayfish. In an e-mail to me, he speculated, "People sometimes confuse (marine) lobsters and (freshwater) crayfish. If it were a freshwater crayfish, it could take an occasional dunk in the Palais pond. Crayfish can make short overland excursions across moist terrain as do eels and some catfishes. The European lobster could be one- to two-feet long, a memorable appearance. In Europe, the crayfish would be no more than six inches long, which would not inspire lobster lore." Then again, "as Ovidius said: rumors grow with time, thus turning a crayfish into a lobster," explains Atema, adding, "a crayfish is more likely to have been a 'pet' with a home tank of fresh water and a palace pond to wet his gills, now and then, during strolls on a blue ribbon leash."

For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/151PN7S

By mdimov | Posted in Academics, Community, Core Lecturers, Great Personalities | Tagged article, Core Professor, Jelle Atema, lobster, Nerval, quote, surrealist | Comments (0)

Vlada Brofman- Core Writing Tutor & Musician

February 18, 2013 at 2:53 pm

The Core is delighted to point out that one of our very own Writing Tutors is also a talented musician!

Here is a video showing her singing solo:

... and another showing her in performance with her band, NoMad Dreams:

Vlada and NoMad Dreams will be performing this Sunday, February 24th, at noon in the Harvard Square Starbucks. Stop by and tell her Core sent you!

By mdimov | Posted in Announcements, Art, Community, Faculty Publications | Tagged Art, expression, music, talent, tutor, writing | Comments (0)

Ron Rosenbaum on the Jane Austen ‘hype’

February 14, 2013 at 1:03 pm

Relating to CC202's study of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the Core offers an article by Ron Rosenbaum, titled Is Jane Austen Overhyped?- Evaluating her literary merit amid the Anniversary reverence.

The subject it deals with is important, and relevant to all classics- how much good does exaggerated celebration their anniversaries really do? Here is a sample, in which Ron Rosenbaum shares his thoughts:

It’s not that she’s overrated. It’s that she’s in dire jeopardy of being overhyped—and dumbed down in the process...

I’ve begun to feel—in the midst of the tsunami of schlocky, rapturous, over-the-top, wall-to-wall multiplatform celebration of the 200^thanniversary of Pride and Prejudice—that it’s all a bit too much. Something quiet and true about Austen is being lost in the trumpet blasts and the spin-offs.

For the full article, visit http://slate.me/Xbeb1f

By mdimov | Posted in Academics, Art, Community, Curriculum, Great Ideas, Great Personalities | Tagged celebration, critic, dumb, exaggeration, excess, hype, Jane Austen, pride and prejudice | Comments (0)

Leonardo & Michelangelo

February 14, 2013 at 12:36 pm

The Core presents an article by Michael Kammen, summarized by Arts & Letters Daily as: "One was an upstart clad in pink and purple, the other an acknowledged genius. Florence wasn’t big enough for both Michelangelo and Leonardo..."

Here is a sample from the article:

Leonardo, widely recognized as a genius and brilliant draughtsman — his Mona Lisa was first shown to the Florentines in 1503 — received the Anghiari commission, while Michelangelo, just 28, understandably full of himself and arrogantly disrespectful of his senior, was given Cascina. They proceeded to work on their cartoons in private places, in very different ways, with various interruptions for other projects, and, as it turns out, with quite different aims in mind...

The rivalry between these two masters ended only with their deaths, and even then it lived on in the minds of their followers. Raphael, eight years younger than Michelangelo, was an eyewitness to the contest, learned from both men and sought to incorporate the best of each in his own work.

This same conflict is detailed in "The Agony and the Ecstasy", a book that was read for the Core Alumni Book Club last year.

For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/12OyUid

By mdimov | Posted in Art, Community, EnCore, Great Personalities | Tagged Art, difference, different, Leonardo da vinci, masters, Michelangelo, motive, opponents, paint, reason | Comments (0)

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