news, events, and commentary from the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum
September 6, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Terrified gods got themselves up as high
as they could go, nearest the highest heaven,
cringing against the wall like beaten dogs.
* Lines 20-22, in Book III of Tablet XI, of David Ferry‘s “rendering in verse” of the Epic of Gilgamesh, studied in the first-year Core Humanties, and the topic of Prof. Brian Jorgensen‘s first lecture to the Core freshmen this morning in CC101.
September 6, 2011 at 4:27 pm
To new and returning students -- welcome to the fall semester!
Lectures this week:
This year the Core will make audio recordings of all lectures and post these as downloadable mp3s on the respective course webpage. If you have any trouble accessing these recordings, starting 24 hours after the lecture, please contact Zachary Bos.
SEPTEMBER EVENTS IN THE CORE
Students may RSVP for any of these events by emailing core@bu.edu, by adding their name to the sign-up sheet in CAS 119, or by visiting the RSVP link provided.
If you have any ideas, or comments about Core activities, please contact Prof. Jennifer Formichelli at jlf@bu.edu.
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Get connected with Core:
The Core blog - http://bu.edu/core/blog
Facebook - http://facebook.com/BUCore
Core events - at http://www.bu.edu/core/calendar
September 2, 2011 at 3:02 pm
A letter sent today to all our incoming first-year students in CC101 and CC105:
We are delighted that you have chosen to join the Core Curriculum. We hope that you find the Core to be a challenging, inspiring, and encouraging experience, as so many students have in the past. We will certainly do all we can to help you make it a success.
Classes begin on Tuesday, September 6, with the first meetings of discussion seminars and the first lectures in Core Natural Sciences and Core Humanities. Please check your class schedule at The Student Link to see if there have been any last-minute classroom changes. Helpful hint: If your classroom assignment is "ARR", look in the "Notes" section to the far right of the row to find the room number.
If you are in CC101, you will want to begin your reading of Gilgamesh right away. Please read Tablets 1-6 before Tuesday, and bring your copy of the book to lecture. You'll want to be prepared to discuss this portion of the text in your first discussion sections. If you won't be able to get your book until next week, you can download the assigned reading as a PDF, via a link at the course webpage. You can find reading lists for all Core courses -- including ISBN numbers -- on the Core website.
Please save the date for two important Core events:
If there is anything we can do to help you make your transition to the University, please contact us. Zachary Bos, our Administrative Coordinator, is a great source of information about all things connected to the Core. He can be reached at 617.353.5404 or at core@bu.edu. Liberty Davis Kenneally, our Program Administrator, is particularly skilled at solving problems with class schedules. She can be reached at 617.353.5436 or libertyd@bu.edu. You can also reach me directly at 617.353.1083 or mdeckel@bu.edu.
We hope that your first few days at BU are full of great experiences. We look forward to working with you in the Core.
Best regards,
David Eckel
Director of the Core Curriculum
August 17, 2011 at 10:35 am
You may be asked to summarize the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet during your study of the play in CC201 this fall. If so, you couldn't do worse than to give as precise and cogent an answer as the student author does here:
Hamlet was a young man very nervous. He was always dressed in black because his uncle had killed his father by shooting him in his ear. He could not go to the theatre because his father was dead so he had the actors come to his house and play in the front parlor and he learned them to say the words because he thought he knew best how to say them. And then he thought he’d kill the king but he didn’t. Hamlet liked Ophelia. He thought she was a very nice girl but he didn’t marry her because she was going to be a nunnery. Hamlet went to England but he did not like it very much so he came home. Then he jumped into Ophelia’s grave and fought a duel with her brother. Then he died.
– From English as She Is Taught: Genuine Answers to Examination Questions in Our Public Schools, 1887 (Source: the "Futility Closet" blog by Greg Ross)
August 16, 2011 at 1:00 pm
The financial counseling staff at Kansas State University have published an article addressing financial responsibility for college students. From the piece:
Budgeting should begin before a student even sets foot on campus, said Jodi Kaus, program director for Powercat Financial Counseling at Kansas State University. Students may have extra funding from high school graduation gifts, savings bonds or part-time job income, and it's important to put that money to good use.
"Students should keep an emergency savings cushion for unexpected contingencies," Kaus said. "They should articulate their own specific financial goals to prioritize how they want to make use of these extra resources. Using them for a portion of college costs could help reduce the amount of necessary loans and interest charges."
Once students get to school, Kaus said they need to be in tune with their money. Making a detailed list of all spending items can reduce the chance of running into an unexpected expense.
"Laundry and haircuts are often overlooked, but these costs can add up over time," Kaus said. "Eating out tends to be the biggest budget breaker for most students. It becomes a social event, but $15 here and there starts to eat into a budget very quickly."
August 12, 2011 at 10:40 am
From the Museum of Science website:
The Museum welcomes students back to the city in style by offering free admission to a night in our Exhibit Halls, Monday, September 19, 2011, beginning at 5 PM. This exclusive evening features Omni and 3-D Digital Cinema films, Theater of Electricity shows, Boston Duck Tours, mini Segway tours, and live presentations. Students can also enter our annual raffle to win great prizes from Boston-area businesses. Valid college ID required for free admission. There is a limit of two timed tickets per person for special exhibits, films, and presentations.
July 8, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Click here for the Amazon product page
Join EnCore for the August gathering of our Boston book group. We will be discussing the collected letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. As always, refreshments will be served. RSVP at the EnCore event page.
The Van Gogh Gallery website describes all the collections of Van Gogh’s letters here. A good and affordable edition is available on Amazon. Contact us at corealum@bu.edu if you have any trouble laying your hands on a copy.
Since there are Van Gogh paintings in the MFA, we're aiming to plan a visit to the Museum later in the month -- stay tuned for an invitation.
When?
Wednesday, August 3rd, 6-9 pm
Where?
Alumni Conference Room, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, West Entrance, 7th floor
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The EnCore Boston Book Club was conceived by alumni as a way to help re-establish our connections with fellow alums and Core faculty, and to the great works of literature and art we encountered during our Core days at BU. The group meets the first Wednesday of every month. If you were unable to make the previous book club meetings, we encourage you to join us and re-experience the deep and intellectually stimulating discourse you remember from your days in the Core. Please email corealum@bu.edu for more information.
July 8, 2011 at 10:44 am
The greatest of the world's literature is strangely anonymous. We learn from their writing nothing of the lives of Homer or Shakespeare. Even Dante is only an apparent exception to this rule. The actual circumstance, the personal detail of his life, is present in the Divine Comedy in solution. It can be precipitated only by knowledge gained from his other writings. Nothing is more important in his poem than its first line. Had Dante written mia vita rather than nostra vita he would not be the universal poet he is. This strange anonymity is absolutely true of Plato. The huge bulk of his writings contains only two or three references to himself, and these are of a very special sort -- for example, we learn in the Apology that he was among those who offered to pay the fine which Socrates proposed at his trial, and in the Phaedo that he was sick on the last day of Socrates' life. From the whole body of Plato's Dialogues we learn only the history of his mind, never the story of his live, except in its single most decisive event: he came to know Socrates.
-- from "The Grove of Academe", an essay by William H. Ralston, Jr., appearing in The Sewanee Review Vol. 81, No. 1, Winter 1973. Emphasis added.
June 27, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Did you see this interview with Prof. Esposito, when it was posted last month following its publication in the Core Journal? Here's an excerpt:
Photo of Prof. Stephen Esposito by Hannah Franke, 2011
How do you think the addition of Ajax has been beneficial for CC101?
It’s a tender matter to bring up suicide to eighteen-year-olds because they’re on the cusp of a whole new world, in the tender rite of passage from girls to women, boys to men. I think it’s a bold and brave move on the part of the Core to present to eighteen-year-olds a play that is somewhat frightening, but, for all its sadness, so illuminating and uplifting. We could pretend the students at Boston University don’t think about suicide, but we’d be fooling ourselves. There’s a way in which we, the Core faculty, by asking our students to read this play, are doing the same thing that the Theatre of War people are doing for the U.S. military; after all, many of those soldiers are only eighteen years old. So we’re creating a forum for our young people to talk openly and honestly about a difficult issue. And that is what education is all about.
Read the entire interview, conducted by Hannah Franke, over at the Core Features page.
June 24, 2011 at 4:10 pm
In May 2011, a photographer visited Prof. Eckel's CC102 seminar classroom. His pictures capture, vividly, the thrill and pleasure of deep, intellectual engagement that shows in the faces of Prof. Eckel and his students as they discuss Socrates.
Photos by Kal Zabarsky (c) BU Photo Services. Click here to see the full set of photos on the Core Flickr account.
