March 29, 2011 at 12:32 pm
There’s still time yet to see calliope’s mainstage Cyrano de Bergerac this weekend, April 1st and 2nd, at 7PM in CGS 511. Tickets are $5, and available at the door or in advance in the core office (CAS 119). You can see photos taken by Professor David Green on opening night on the core flickr account, here.
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Activities, Great Photograph
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Tagged calliope, Cyrano, flickr
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March 29, 2011 at 12:24 pm
It is a common observation, that objects which in the reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure.
- Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful, ("Sympathy")
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Analects
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Tagged Analects, Burke, Sublimity
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March 28, 2011 at 10:25 am
Lectures This Week
Note: April 1 is the last day to drop classes and earn a 'W'
THE CORE DIGITAL PROJECT
Starting this week, Core is collecting video content for two projects: a video for the Core website and a video to celebrate the sophomores who have completed two years in the Core Curriculum. To do this we need help from Freshmen and Sophomores to stop by the Core office to sign out a Flip Video camera for a day. Give us your best 2-4 minute take and return the camera and file to the office. We want to see funny, engaging, thoughtful, nostalgic or serious reflections on Core texts and experiences. Use your imagination, you can parody a moment from a text or a lecture, or just tell us why you love the Core! All videos should be submitted by April 15. The makers of the top 2 video clips in first and second year will each win a Flip Video camera. Edited versions of the files will be shown at the Core Banquet on May 4.
Calliope presents the swashbuckling nineteenth-century play, Cyrano de Bergerac, this Friday, April 1 & Saturday, April 2 at 7:00 PM in CGS 511. Tickets are $5 and are available in CAS 119.
Do your part to tread lightly on the environment. Registration has begun to participate in the Core Ecolympics, April 1-15. There is a lot to see and do with the Ecolympics: on Thursday, March 31, see the documentary film "Home" and what we have done to the planet in 50 years! Pizza at 6:45, film at 7 PM in CAS B-36.
Also, a walk along the Arboretum on Sat. April 2 beginning at 9 AM. Check out the calendar for more events: http://www.bu.edu/core/ecolympics/calendar.
There are a limited number of tickets available to see F. Murray Abraham in Shakespere's The Merchant of Venice on Wed. March 30 at 7:30 PM at the Emerson Majestic Theatre. Tickets are available in CAS 119 for $5.
Coming Up
Friday, April 8: come to the annual Aristophanes play reading pitting students from Core and Classics against faculty in a retelling of the Greek comic play, The Wasps. See students try to cure their professors of an addiction to becoming Deans. Profs Eckel, Nelson, Esposito, Roochnik and others will appear in various ridiculous roles, and all this will be introduced by free pizza and the Jim Jackson, Brian Jorgensen, Wayne Snyder and Jay Samons Blues band -- and end with our traditional phallic procession. CAS Stone B50, 5:00 ? pizza; 5:30 - the band; 6:30 - the show. Come for some or all -- and bring your friends.
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If you have ideas or comments about Core activities, email Prof. Kyna Hamill
To learn more about Core events, visit the Core calendar or e-bulletin archive
Stay connected with Core: BLOG | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | ALUMNI
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in e-bulletin
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Tagged e-bulletin, Ecolympics
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March 28, 2011 at 10:24 am
Poster design by Madeline Chapin and Zachary Bos
This year's calliope mainstage Cyrano de Bergerac opened this weekend, and well over a hundred students and theater-lovers went, saw, enjoyed.
Tickets are available in the Core office for this weekend's shows, 7 PM on Friday and Saturday both, April 1st and 2nd. Stop by CAS 119 to purchase yours for $5. Tickets may also be bought at the door.
Cyrano is directed by Core alumna Elizabeth Ramirez, with assistant directing/ fight directing by James Melo and with advice from professors Kyna Hamill and David Green. As a part of the cast, I can say with reasonable confidence and measured humility that the show is absolutely spectacular, well worth the price of entry, and is an experience that should not be lightly missed. If you enjoy theater, or even just the core, then this show has been lovingly made for you. I hope to see you all there! Feel free to check the Facebook event page for more information and for show photos.
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Activities, Announcements
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Tagged calliope, Cyrano, theater
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March 28, 2011 at 10:13 am
When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut out by degrees almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which would confine it.
- Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful, ("Of the Passions Which Belong to Society")
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Analects
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Tagged Analects, Burke, Sublimity
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March 25, 2011 at 10:09 am
WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasure which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a life of the most perfect satisfaction, at the price of ending it in the torments, which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death: nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful, is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience. The cause of this I shall endeavour to investigate hereafter.
- Edmund Burke, On the sublime and Beautiful ("Of the Sublime")
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Analects
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Tagged Analects, Burke, Sublimity
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March 24, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Next month's issue of the New York Review of Books features Gary Wills' biting condemnation of the effort of Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly to reconcile modern nihilism in their new book All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. The problem is not that the book is unnecessarily abstruse, but rather seems to be tackling a monumental problem with a kind of rigor akin to building a dog house with a sledge hammer:
So how can one make intelligent choices? Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly call modern nihilism “the idea that there is no reason to prefer any answer to any other.” They propose what they think is a wise and accepting superficiality. By not trying to get to the bottom of things, one can get glimpses of the sacred from the surface of what they call “whoosh” moments—from the presence of charismatic persons to the shared excitement of a sports event.
It only gets worse when the authors begin referencing western classics:
Homer, we are told, does not judge this adulterous woman, and the proof is a line they quote from the Richmond Lattimore translation of Iliad 4.305, which says she is “shining among women.” This proves that “Homer deeply admires Helen.” The authors do not understand the formulaic nature of oral poetry. The line-ending metrical formula dia gynaikōn is used for outstanding women, as the similar phrase dia theāōn, “shining among goddesses,” is used for outstanding deities. The formula is just another way of saying “Helen,” as “fast on his feet” is a way of saying “Achilles.” It expresses no personal judgment by Homer (whoever or whatever he is). Since the same formula is used for Penelope, the virtuous wife of Odysseus, the authors claim that Homer made no moral distinction between the two. They even say that Helen is a goddess, since dia gynaikōn can mean that. It does not, without the addition of theāōn (to describe, for instance, Hera).
The review concludes referencing the authors' fascination, it seems, with finding "whoosh" in making coffee:
They take us through five pages on the sacred craft of the wheelwright and then through four pages of the “revered domain” of making the proper cup of coffee—the sacred beans, the sacred cup lovingly tended, the company worthy to share this holy communion... Thank God we have been delivered from the meaningless inwardness of Augustine and Dante, to worship at the shining caffeine altar.
You can read the full review here. Is modern, secular life only worthwhile in light of seemingly random, disconnected moments of whoosh that go largely unexamined? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Other Publications
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Tagged Book Review, Homer
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March 22, 2011 at 4:04 pm
George Scialabba recently offered a review of Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson in The American Conservative. The piece gives greater context to the life of Adam Smith, though not without acknowledging the inherent difficulty in so doing:
He was shy, destroyed most of his letters, and did not seem to relish giving brilliant performances, either in print or in conversation. He never fell afoul of civil or religious authority, had no mistresses, and engaged in no public quarrels.
It further helps elucidate the nuances of Smith, who in his prolific ideology has often been himself caricatured into a polemic rambler:
Everyone knows, of course, what Adam Smith stood for: free trade, the division of labor, the minimal state, the invisible hand, the illimitable growth of wants and needs. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” “Every individual … intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” Case closed.
What everyone knows is seldom altogether wrong; but often it is not altogether right, either. As Emma Rothschild notes at the outset of Economic Sentiments, her superb study of Smith and Condorcet, “They think and write about self-interest and competition, about institutions and corporations, about the ‘market’ and the ‘state.’ But the words mean different things to them, and their connotation is of a different, and sometimes of an opposite, politics.” It is far from obvious that Smith would have entertained cordial feelings toward Alan Greenspan or Margaret Thatcher.
Do you agree with this portrayal of Smith? Do his writings match up? does it change your opinion of him? feel free to leave any comments below.
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Great Personalities
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Tagged CC203, Smith, The American Conservative
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March 21, 2011 at 11:01 am
Nowruz is a Zoroastrian holiday marking the first day of spring, celebrated by persons of Persian ancestry. Families gather to observe traditional rituals when the sun crosses the equator and equalizes night and day. The official day begins when the sun leaves the zodiac of Pisces and enters the zodiac of Aries.
Nowruz is believed to have been invented by Zoroaster himself. It was also important during the Achaemenid era (548-330 BC) because kings from different Persian nations used to bring girts to the Emperor.
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Announcements
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Tagged holiday
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March 20, 2011 at 10:09 am
Boston University’s campus along the Charles River was mutilated over the years by various road-building projects. It lost its waterfront to Storrow Drive in 1950, and then got sliced on the other side by the Massachusetts Turnpike in 1965. The construction left some odd remnants of land, including a triangular path of hillside next to the Boston University Bridge. Land is precious to any urban university and it was (and probably still is) pretty frustrating to BU officials to have a parcel that, wedged among major roadways, was completely inaccessible. I remember the expansion-eager headmaster of the BU Academy proposing that we tunnel our way to the site.
-- Peter Wood, formerly of the Department of Anthropology at BU, writing for the Innovations blog at The Chronicle Review.
By CAS Core Curriculum
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Posted in Quotes
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Tagged BU, Other Publications
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