Great Books
I have been thinking and talking a lot recently about the place of Great Books and the study of the textual foundations of Western Civilization in the modern American university. Not only are these central to my teaching, I am a beneficiary of this pedagogy. Columbia, my Alma Mater, is famous for its Core Curriculum, a series of required courses such as 'Lit Hum' and 'Contemporary Civilization' = CC) originating in the curricular reforms of the World War I period. I had the unusual experience of being both a student and a teacher in Columbia's Core Curriculum: Columbia was my first teaching job after I finished graduate school, and I was assigned a section of CC. Needless to say, the experience was transformative for my own intellectual and professional development. Over the past few days, I've been reorganizing and cleaning out some of my bookshelves and located some of the books I used in college in CC. Some of the books I used as an undergraduate...
