On Tuesday, BU Today reported the frightening story of Will Lautzenheiser, a former BU student who lost his limbs to a terrible infection and has come back to Boston for rehabilitation.
During his time at BU, Will was a devoted student of English and the Core. As a teaching and research assistant and as a graduate student in film studies, Will earned the friendship and esteem of many faculty, staff, and alumni. Over the years, he has remained a great friend of the Core. Now, as he struggles to recover from his difficult illness, I know that he would be grateful for any support or sympathy that we as a community can provide.
A fund-raiser for Will has been scheduled in the GSU on Friday evening. The event, “An Evening with Michael Tully,” starts at 7 p.m. and includes a screening of director Michael Tully’s film Septien, followed by a conversation with Tully. The event is free and open to the public. Donations to benefit Will can be made at the door.
We also will be sending Will a message of sympathy from the Core community, along with a contribution to his support. If you would like to join us by signing that message, or if you would like to make a contribution (any amount will be gratefully accepted), please contact Zachary Bos in the Core office, by calling 617-353-5404 or emailing core@bu.edu.
Pre-reg advising sessions are available for undeclared students in Core courses who would like to talk over requirements, degree concentrations, and other questions with a Core faculty member before they meet their CAS staff advisor and receive a registration code.
Although each faculty member has an academic specialization -- and you're welcome to come to speak with someone whose particular interest is of interest to you -- all faculty are available for general advising, in terms of Core, requirements for majors, and general CAS requirements. If none of these times fit your schedule feel free to make an appointment for another time by speaking with the staff in the Core Office, CAS 119, or by email core@bu.edu. Advising sessions will be in CAS 119. You may reserve a space if you'd like, or come in simply as a walk-in. As always, don't hesitate to contact any one of us with any questions you might have.
Professor Zhou in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature has offered to include Core students in a trip to the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem. The trip will take place this Saturday, March 24. The Peabody-Essex Museum has a well known collection of Chinese and Asian art, highlighted by a Chinese house that was disassembled in China and reassembled in the gallery in Salem. The bus will arrive at 718 Commonwealth Avenue at 8:45 a.m. on Saturday. It will leave at 9:00 a.m. and return to BU between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m.
If you would like to go on this trip, please let Zak Bos (core@bu.edu) in the Core office know by 3:00 p.m. tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon so that we can pass the information along to the organizer of the trip.
According to Prof. Pat Johnson (in yesterday's CC102 lecture), "any BU undergraduate could have found a better way to dump Dido than Aeneas did in Book IV of the Aeneid":
She was the first to speak and charge Aeneas: "You even hope to keep me in the dark as to this outrage, did you, two-faced man, and slip away in silence? Can our love not hold you, can the pledge we gave not hold you, can Dido not, now sure to die in pain?" [etc. . . .] At length he answered: "As for myself... I never entered upon the pact of marriage... so please, no more of these appeals that set us both afire. I sail for Italy not of my own free will." [...] During all this she had been watching him with face averted, looking him up and down in silence, and she burst out raging now: "No goddess was your mother!... Liar and cheat!... You will pay for this... !" [...] Duty bound, Aeneas, ... though he sighed his heart out... went back to the fleet [to set sail for Italy and get the heck out of Dodge Carthage.]
Why was Aeneas so clumsy? How could he have done it better?
Here's the challenge. If you were Aeneas, how would you have dumped Dido? If you were Dido, would you have dumped him first? Submit your own suggestion to core@bu.edu (Subject: "Aeneid Exit Strategy") by noon on Friday, March 23. The best suggestion will win a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble and prominent display on the Core webpages.
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This illustration from the Vergilius Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Cod. Vat. lat. 3225) shows the death of Dido in Book IV. Below, in a clip from the film The Man Who Cried, Christina Ricci warbles her way through "When I Am Laid in Earth (Dido's Lament)", a song from adapted from Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. This Baroque opera is only one of many works which draw upon the Aeneid for characters, scenarios, and themes.
A lecture happening here at BU next month may of particular interest to students in CC204, who in the course of their study of the problem of inequality have been reading The Second Shift. The author of that book, Arlie Russell Hochschild (University of California, Berkeley), will be on campus on Friday, April 13, 2012, to deliver the 4th Annual Albert Morris Lecture in Sociology. The title of her talk is “The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times”.
Professor Arlie Hochschild has been at the forefront of research on contemporary work and family life for over thirty years, pioneering the use of gender as a category of analysis and turning sociological attention to emotion. The Second Shift and The Time Bind probed the complicated intersections of work and family life, and her co-edited book, The Global Woman (with Barbara Ehrenreich) brought attention to the global commodification of carework. She is both a renowned scholar and a very public advocate for women and families.
This free and public event will take place at 5pm in the 9th floor colloquium room, Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston University. A reception will follow. For more information, contact stown@bu.edu.
Get ready to laugh this Thursday and Saturday, because the Calliope Project will perform The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
The characters will take you on a farcical journey of witty dialogue, as they try to escape the social obligations of Victorian London. All this, for only $5 (It's cheaper than a bagel sandwich).
The performance will take place in SED Room 130 on Thursday, March 22, at 7p.m. & Saturday, March 24, at 3 and 7p.m.
Tickets are $5 at the door, or you can buy them in advance in CAS room 119.
CC 204 students will be happy to see a new addition to this year's Core Curriculum in the form of a new text. The Second Shift, a short treatise on the evolution of women in the workforce and its anthropological significance in modern society. Author Arlie Hochschild discusses how even though women have steadily integrated into the workforce, they still retain all their responsibilities in the household, effectively adding a "second shift" to their work day. This extra work culminates in an entire month of extra work, making it seem that women work thirteen months out of the available twelve.
In her book, Worsley gives her reader an in-depth look into one of the strongest indicators of social progress: our domestic habits. Our mirrors, our baths, even our toilets are all indicators of how society was structured and how it was progressing, or regressing. It makes for an enjoyable read, with a humorous yet educational style regarding the details of public defecation and waste management.
For those wondering what bathroom humor has to do with learning about our society, just try to consider the fact that bowel movements weren't always a private matter, and some would even relieve themselves in front of guests at a meal. It says a lot for our social mentality when one act can be seen in two extremes in relatively close history.
If this has piqued your academic curiosity, you can find a more in-depth review of the book here.
The EnCore book club meeting had its March Wednesday meeting yesterday, a gathering well-fueled by Noodle Street ambrosia and unspilled libations. The work in question was Robert Louis Stevenson's very popular novella, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here were some of the talking points that came up in the discussion:
The theme of duality. We compared this story to the book last tackled by the book club, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: Bad guys are the ones who can transform their appearance at will, appearing virtuous or not, and thus they represent the evil of inconstancy and mutability. What does it say about the supposedly good Jekyll that he chooses to transform himself, even if his intentions were originally virtuous?
Which leads us to Jekyll's original intentions with the potion: was he trying to be Mother Theresa, and ended up Charlie Manson?
The consideration of science: The Frankensteinian fear of "unnaturalness" in science. Is this due to science's inherent lack of morality, its status as knowledge which is "neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so?" (Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2).
Homosexual themes: The ever-present fearful scourge of Victorian men. Stevenson was friends with figures like Wilde, is this what he meant by Jekyll's constant struggle with "unnatural urges"?
Utterson is the dry lawyer, but everybody wants to share their secrets with him. This could be due to his "utter" rationality, but also to the fact that, as a lawyer, he does understand realistic human impulses, even if he doesn't give in to them himself.
Which leads to a very important observation: Victorians suffered from the suffocating pressures of keeping up appearances. It seems to matter less what you do than that nobody witnesses you doing it. The story portrays how even a good man like Jekyll has been pushed to wildly desire and crave freedom from restraints, to be wicked and carefree in light of these terrifically harsh standards of perfect, moral, upright English behavior.
What causes Hyde's takeover: Was the potion truly made with a defective (and thus effective) salt, or was it Jekyll's embrace of evil that traps him as Hyde? Is the potion like the Jim Carrey movie The Mask, which involves a wooden mask that brings the wearer's "innermost desires to life"?
Hyde as the id: another view is that Hyde is not evil per se, but rather a physical manifestation of pure impulse. Are the Victorians horrified by such lack of restraint (seen as some kind of undefinable deformity, impossible to pin down from visually witnessing it) rather than his evil deeds?
This whole discussion came up without structure, pre-established goals, or strict adherence to the material (read: you don't have to read the book beforehand). What are you waiting for? Join us on the first Wednesday of every month.
On March 20th, the second-year Core Humanities students will hear a lecture on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by the novelist Allegra Goodman. Dr. Goodman's most recent book The Cookbook Collector has been described as a "Sense and Sensibility for the digital age."
We are fortunate that a theatrical version of Pride and Prejudiceis being put on at the Somerville Theater the same week we are studying this work in Core. In view of this serendipity, the department is arranging a trip for students and alumni to the performances on Friday, March 23rd and Saturday, March 24th (both at 8 PM).
We need to know how many tickets to purchase (there will be no charge to attendees). Please indicate your interest in attending by email or by adding your name to the list in CAS 119, no later than tomorrow, Friday 3/8/12, at noon. We will provide details about transportation and location once we know who is interested. (The Somerville Theater is in the heart of Davis Square, a very cool place.)
The Core Blog is a hub for information and media related to the CAS Core Curriculum at Boston University. It will be updated regularly, with photo galleries, interviews, links to related reading online, news of events or activities, and other kinds of content that help connect our Core people—prospective, current, and former students—with each other.
You can stop by here once a week to scroll through the posts, or make this your homepage in order to keep your finger on the pulse of the Core. Either way, we hope you find this to be a pleasant way to strengthen your connection with the great people, the great books, and the great questions we encounter in the Core.
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