Full Description
The focus of this book is on the theme of liberal education. Some contributors explore our common humanity, particularly the humanity of our teachers and students. Others explore the dialogue of ideas, the conversation that takes place across texts, cultures, and time. Perhaps most importantly, there is in these pages the primary conversation between the text and the student, which teachers attempt to aid and cultivate. Where it is the good life, good artwork, or the goodness of science, all of the papers argue the criteria of inclusion for works in curricula, as well as the purposes and means of core text programs. Thus, administrators, scholars from all walks of academic life, and dedicated teachers in the liberal arts will find themselves in the conversations of this book. Whether one honors the ancients, honors the moderns and postmoderns, or honors the conversation between the three, this is a must-read for all college and university professors seriously concerned with liberal arts educations and its texts.
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 I: Liberal Education and the Place of Core Texts Chapter 3 Free to Hear Our Calling Chapter 4 Is the Classroom a Paradise Lost or Regained? Chapter 5 Does Liberal Democracy Stifle Liberal Education?: Nietzsche's Challenge to the Core Chapter 6 Common Readers and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse Chapter 7 Netscape-induced Hysteria and the Proper Place of the Book Part 8 Part II: The Conversation—Authors and Students Chapter 9 An American Conversation: Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass Chapter 10 Guiding Curiosity: Augustine's Confessions and Dane's Inferno Chapter 11 Three Philosophical Heroes: King, Boethius, and Socrates Chapter 12 A Place for Silence in the Core Text Curriculum: Benedict's Rule and the Great Books Dialogue Part 13 Part III: Politics and the Place of Core Texts Chapter 14 "The king-becoming graces": Linking Core Courses in a First-year Learning Community Chapter 15 Wooing Tyranny in Shakespeare's Richard III Chapter 16 Ancient Historians and Modern History: Herodotus and Thucydides on Patriotism Chapter 17 Imagine That: Some Latent Lessons in Thucydides' History Chapter 18 Achilles Now: Core Texts, the Good Life, and Democratic Society Part 19 Finding a Place in the Core Chapter 20 Staging as Teaching: The Philoctetes in the Liberal Arts Curriculum Chapter 21 The Necessity of Eloquence Chapter 22 The Compleat Protestant Reformation in a Single Core Text: The Pedagogy of Historicity Chapter 23 Using Thomas More's Utopia in the Western Civilization Survey Chapter 24 Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali—A Case Study in Diversification of the Core Part 25 Part IV: Contemporary Texts and the Core Chapter 26 The Hungry Gene as a Core Text in a Freshman Learning Community Chapter 27 Education Women: Classic Texts and Modern Films Chapter 28 The Secret of The Secret History, Or Adding a New York Times Best Seller to Columbia's Core Chapter 29 The Reader's Odyssey: Teaching Homer, Keats, Tennyson, and Cavafy Chapter 30 "It doesn't have to be that way": The Place of the Core and Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary
