news, events, and commentary from the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum
January 29, 2013 at 12:20 pm
The Core encourages students to visit the MFA and join guest lecturer Henry Augustine Tate in a poetry reading and gallery talk on the intriguing topic of Valentine’s Day, and Lupercalia, an ancient festival.
The event will take place on Sunday, February 10th, from 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm in the Sharf Visitor Center of the MFA. The actual event isfree, but with cost of admission into the MFA.
For more MFA gallery talks, visit http://bit.ly/14qrRKU
January 29, 2013 at 12:01 pm
The Core delves into the literary works of diverse cultures, and students are always encouraged to widen their horizons. An opportunity to do this is the upcoming Annual Jewish Poetry Festival, on Sunday, February 3rd, from 2:00pm-4:00pm, at Temple Sinai, Brookline, MA.
It will include a reading and discussion of poems by Jewish poets within Temple Sinai and the Greater Boston Jewish community, in addition to music and refreshments with readings by noted poets Carol Dine and Alan Feldman.
For more information http://bo.st/Wvhwv1
January 28, 2013 at 3:44 pm
Core classes extensively explore poetry. Here is an essay on the topic of memorizing poetry - whether we should do it, and if so, why and how? An excerpt:
Anyone equipped with a smartphone—many of my friends would never step outdoors without one—commands a range of poetry that beggars anything the brain can store. Let’s say it’s a gorgeous afternoon in October. You’re walking through a park, and you wish to recall—but can’t quite summon—the opening lines of Keats’ “To Autumn.” With a quick tap-tap-tap, you have it on your screen. You’re back in the nineteenth century, but you’re also in the twenty-first, where machine memory regularly supplants and superannuates brain memory.
Find the full essay at http://nyr.kr/XN1xoS
January 28, 2013 at 3:18 pm
The Core presents a quote on the death of stars:
In the later red giant phase, the Core will shrink further and heat up to over 100 million Kelvin.
~Dr. Mark Jonas
January 28, 2013 at 3:01 pm
In view of CC202's study of Goethe's Faust, the Core would like to bring to students' attention Radiohead's meaningful mention of Mephistopheles, who is the main "villain" in the tragic play.
Radiohead - Videotape (click for song)
Lyrics:
When I'm at the pearly gates
This'll be on my videotape
My videotape
My videotapeWhen Mephistopheles is just beneath
And he's reaching up to grab meThis is one for the good days
And I have it all here
In red blue green
In red blue greenYou are my center when I spin away
Out of control on videotape
On videotape...This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can't do it face to face
So I'm talking to you before it's too lateNo matter what happens now
I shouldn't be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.
January 26, 2013 at 2:38 pm
On February 6th, there will be a lecture on Machiavelli's The Prince, by the great Michael Ignatieff, Edward Muir, and James Johnson. It will be located in the Photonics Building, Room 206, 8 St. Mary's Street, and will last from 7:00pm - 9:00pm.
The Core encourages students to attend this event, as these inspiring speakers will undoubtedly shed new light on this text that is specifically studied by CC201 but ultimately relevant to most, if not all, Core classes.
January 25, 2013 at 4:35 pm
The class of CC202 delves into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Here the Core presents an article looks at that work from another perspective- politics. Here is an excerpt:
The Victorians fostered the idea of Austen as the retiring spinster who confined her novels to the small canvas of village life. In more recent times she has been reinvented as, among other things, a feminist writer, yet it has been difficult to shake off the myth of sequestered, cosy “Aunt Jane”, devoted to domestic and romantic issues and studiously ignoring her historical and political context.
In fact, Austen’s novels scrupulously avoid the clichés of romantic fiction... Nor is it true that the novels ignore their historical context. Austen was no stranger to turbulent times. Most of her adult life was lived through the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. She had two beloved brothers in the navy and one in the army. Her cousin’s husband was guillotined in the French Revolution. She took for granted that her readers would understand the context of her work. If we read Pride and Prejudice carefully, we can see that this is an essential element of the novel. The historical context is there for all to see but because we don’t share it we tend not to notice it.
The full article can be found here: http://on.ft.com/10TM8JT
January 23, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Relating to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which is studied this semester by CC 202, is today's analect:
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
January 23, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Renaud Capuçon, who joins the orchestra for Sibelius's Violin Concerto
The Core is offering 15 free tickets for the Boston Symphony Orchestra performance on Thursday February 7th, at 8:00 PM, in the Boston Symphony Hall. From http://bit.ly/VWRVKL:
The eminent German conductor Christoph von Dohnányi leads three masterpieces from the heart of the orchestral repertoire. The program begins with Brahms's earliest orchestral masterpiece, his Variations on a Theme by Haydn, a prime example of theme-and-variations form that demonstrates the Romantic-era composer's fidelity to the Classical tradition. French violinist Renaud Capuçon, in his BSO debut, then joins the orchestra for Sibelius's Violin Concerto, a pinnacle of the concerto repertoire. The program concludes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.
For more information, visit the link above.
January 23, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Unknown, Rinceaux and Meander, 1st Century C.E. Mosaic (stone and glass tesserae, mortar), 73 in. x 28 in. Gift of the Committee of Excavation, Antioch and Vicinity (given in appreciation of Prof. W. A. Campbell's work), 1933.10
From January 30 – July 7, 2013, the upcoming Festina Lente exhibition will offer an unconventional behind-the-scenes opportunity to survey the Greek and Roman holdings in the Davis Museum’s permanent collections. Featuring vases and vessels of all sorts and designs, relief portraits and standing figures, mosaics, coins and jewelry, human and animal forms, the scope of the collection reveals tremendous vitality of form and function rendered in glass, terracotta, clay, metal, and stone.
The exhibition and programs illuminate the particular challenges facing museum antiquities collections, including questions of attribution, provenance, and authenticity; the science of investigation; changing strategies and shifting aesthetics in restoration; the function of and framework for managing fragmentary objects; the search for traces in abraded and eroded surfaces; and trends in collecting over time.
Core students are encouraged to dip their toes and visit this exhibition, as many of the works and ideas presented there will relate to, and may elaborate upon, the works studied in the Core.
For more information: contact Davis Museum and Cultural Center - Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA, 02482, (781) 283-2051, or visit http://bo.st/XxVMdU
