Core Curriculum

• CAS CC 101: Core Humanities I: Ancient Worlds
  An interdisciplinary study, beginning with the origins of Mesopotamian civilization and the Hebrew Bible. We then examine the beginning and development of Greek civilization through Homer, Greek tragedy, and Plato. Students also engage with the visual culture of Greece, and the relation of beauty and power, and of beauty and mathematics, by examining the Parthenon and works at the Museum of Fine Arts. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 102: Core Humanities II: The Way: Antiquity and the Medieval World
  A conversation between Core's Humanities classes begins as we examine Aristotle, Confucius, Laozi, the Bhagavad-gita, Virgil, the Gospels, and Dante. Students compare Biblical and Classical views of the "way," or the best human life, and look at the synthesis of the two in Dante. A study of Western and Asian art at the Museum of Fine Arts brings out the contrast of traditions and highlights our focus on the relation of the individual to culture and to nature. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 111: Core Natural Science I: Origins: The Cosmos, Earth, Life, and Human Beings
  Core Natural Science parallels the Humanities course by studying the origins of the physical world. The course looks at how the interlocking fields of astronomy, earth science, biology, and anthropology complement and contrast to a humanities-based understanding of our place in the cosmos. Topics include Big Bang theory, evolution of the stars and earth, evolution of life, the origins of human life, and the evolutionary source of human society. Assignments include computer-based and experimental laboratory work. Carries natural sciences (with lab) divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 112: Core Social Science I: Religion, Social Thought, and the Roots of Society
  Examines some of the earliest attempts to understand other peoples in Herodotus and Tacitus and looks at Durkheim's view that religion is fundamentally about society. We consider as well the encounter of Spanish missionaries with South America, of Jesuits with the traditions of China, and works including Augustine, Joinville's history of the Crusades, Locke, William James and modern anthropology. Carries social sciences divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 201: Core Humanities III: The Renaissance
  From the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the modern world. We examine the Renaissance revival of Classics, its emphasis on the individual and its rediscovery of the physical world. Topics studied include the rise of national literatures, the origins of modern political and scientific thought, and the beginning of the novel. Students look at Petrarch, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Descartes, and Milton, and explore the music of Bach and the art of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 202: Core Humanities IV: From the Enlightenment to Modernity
  From the Age of Reason through the Romantic Revolt to the Modern World. We examine questions of social hierarchy and what it means to know, as well as subjectivity and its relation to reason through Kant, Rousseau, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the Romantic poets, Thoreau and Emily Dickinson, and the art of Goya and the music of Beethoven. We look at the radical perspectivism of Nietzsche, return to 20th century America with DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk and end with Virginia Woolf's Modernist response to WWI in Mrs. Dalloway. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 211: Core Social Science II: Power, Political Forms, and Economics
  Looks at ideas of human rights and self-determination, the relation of the individual and society, and the relation of power and economics to society. We consider the major events and processes that have shaped the modern world both in the United States and globally and look at the roots of these changes in the works studied in first year Core. Readings are drawn from classic works of social and political theory: Thucydides, Ibn Khaldun, Hobbes, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Weber, Adam Smith, Marx, Durkheim and Malinowski. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS CC 212: Core Natural Science II: Reality: Science and the Modern World
  Studies the paradigm-shifting scientific theories which created a new world-view and forced the 20th century into a new understanding of our relation to reality, beginning with quantum theory and relativity and then exploring the Second Law of Thermodynamics, emergent properties, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Carries natural science divisional credit in CAS.

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