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Mini-Core Classes

This exhilarating program encourages small-class dialogue among generations of alumni and offers participants a new perspective on an enduring topic, much like the famed Core Curriculum that all College students experience.

mini core

What Are Mini-Core Classes?

The CCAA presents three Mini-Core Class series each academic year, with each taking place across three evenings at a convenient Manhattan location. Mini-Cores offer College alumni the opportunity to revisit the Core and its profound intellectual impact in a seminar-like setting with a distinguished faculty member. Topics relate to the Core Curriculum and explore new texts or ideas with the intent of facilitating rich conversation, debate and discussion that expands one's perspective on the world in relation to enduring topics such as morality, humanity, justice and religion.

Readings are assigned about a month in advance to those who register.

How to Attend

Classes are offered three times each year and are limited to 30 participants in order to inspire close discourse and conversation, reminiscent of the seminar format of the Core.

The class fee is $160 per alumnus/a for each series and $100 per young alumnus/a (within 10 years of graduation).

Upcoming Classes

Spring 2024: Lit Hum at the Opera

Wednesday, March 27, April 3, and April 17
6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Refreshments will be provided.
Registration is now open.

The role of individuals in society, the desire to overcome human mortality, the nature of reality as we know it are recurring themes in the intellectual journey that shapes the Core Curriculum. They cross historical, cultural, and geographical borders, as well as disciplinary boundaries, as they find expression in literature, philosophy, music, and the visual arts. In what is one of its most distinctive and exciting features, the Core asks students to explore the complexity of the human experience across the full range of its linguistic and artistic manifestations.

In this class, alumni will join Professor Giuseppe Gerbino, Professor of Music, Historical Musicology, and Department Vice Chair, in delving into the intertwined powers of literary fiction and musical expression. This is what happens when Literature Humanities goes to the opera.

Past Classes

Winter 2024—Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

fall 2023—The Novel of maturation in the nineteenth century

WINTER 2023—READING POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF READING

FALL 2022—MUSIC AND POLITICS ON STAGE: RICHARD WAGNER TO NINA SIMONE

SPRING 2020—ART HUMANITIES: UNDERSTANDING ARCHITECTURE

WINTER 2020—LITERATURE HUMANITIES: PROUST AND THE MODERN NOVEL OF THE SELF

CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION: WHY EDUCATION?

ART HUMANITIES MINI-CORE: MODERN ART/MODERN VISION: MONET, PICASSO, WARHOL

Contemporary Civilization Mini-Core: PLATO THE RHETORICIAN

LITERATURE HUMANITIES MINI-CORE: Antigone Now!

CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION MINI-CORE: The Ideal Society

FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE Mini-core: DINOSAURS, EXTINCTION AND CLIMATE

LITERATURE HUMANITIES MINI-CORE: MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS

MUSIC HUMANITIES MINI-CORE: MASTERPIECES OF WESTERN MUSIC, REVISITED

CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION MINI-CORE: STATE AND VIOLENCE

Literature Humanities Mini-Core: The Brothers Karamazov


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Questions? Contact Us

Registration opens about five weeks prior to the start of class. Have questions about the course or registration?

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