The Core Curriculum

Courses in the Common Core Curriculum and their Texts

The common Core Courses that most students take consist of four in English, four in History, three in Philosophy, two in Theology, one in Economics, and one in Politics. The B.S. majors and some of the B.A. majors are required to take three Core Courses in English, three in History, three in Philosophy, two in Theology, one in Economics, and one in Politics.

English 1301: The Literary Tradition I
Homer: Iliad, Odyssey; Vergil: Aeneid; Beowulf

English 1302: The Literary Tradition II
Dante: The Divine Comedy; Milton: Paradise Lost; English Lyric Poetry from John Donne to Wallace Stevens

English 2311: The Literary Tradition III (usually taken in Rome)
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides; Sophocles: Oedipus The Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone; Euripides: Bacchae; Aristophanes: Frogs; Aristotle: Poetics; Everyman & The Second Shepherd’s Play; Marlowe: Dr. Faustus; Shakespeare: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Merchant of Venice, Tempest

English 2312: The Literary Tradition IV
Austen: Mansfield Park; Melville: Moby Dick; Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment; Faulkner: Go Down, Moses

History 1311: American Civilization I
Jefferson: A Summary View of the Rights of British America; Franklin: Autobiography; The Declaration of Independence; The United States Constitution; Hamilton, Jay & Madison: The Federalist Papers; Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; Stanton: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions

History 1312: American Civilization II
Adams: The Education of Henry Adams; Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History; George F. Kennan: American Diplomacy; King: Letter from a Birmingham Jail

History 2301: Western Civilization I (usually taken in Rome)
The Book of Job; Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War; Livy: The Early History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita, Books 1-5); Boethius: On the Consolation of Philosophy; Einhard: Life of Charlemagne; More: Utopia

History 2302: Western Civilization II
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion; Kant: What is Enlightenment?; Diderot: Encyclopedie; Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France; Marx and Engels: The Communist Manifesto; Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum; Elie Wiesel: Night

Philosophy 1301: Philosophy and the Ethical Life
Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Republic; Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics; Aquinas: Summa Theologiae (Treatises on Happiness & on Law); Kant: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals; Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals

Philosophy 2311: Philosophy of Man (usually taken in Rome)
Plato: Phaedo, Symposium; Aristotle: On the Soul; Augustine: Confessions; Aquinas: Summa Theologiae (Treatise on Man); Descartes: Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy; Hegel: Philosophy of Spirit

Philosophy 3311: Philosophy of Being
Parmenides: On Nature; Aristotle: Metaphysics; Aquinas: On Being and Essence; Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics; Heidegger: Introduction to Metaphysics, A Question Concerning Technology

Theology 1301: Understanding the Bible
The Bible (Selections from the Old and New Testaments)

Theology 2311: The Western Theological Tradition (usually taken in Rome)
Augustine: Confessions; Aquinas: Summa Theologiae; Luther: Heidelberg Disputation, The Freedom of a Christian; Melanchthon: The Augsburg Confession; Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion; The Westminster Confession of Faith

Economics 1311: Fundamentals of Economics
Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; John Paul II: Centesimus Annus (Encyclical Letter, 1991)

Politics 1311: Principles of American Politics
The Declaration of Independence; The United States Constitution; Hamilton, Jay & Madison: The Federalist Papers; Tocqueville: Democracy in America; Lincoln: Selected Speeches

Other Courses in the Core

In addition to the thirteen to fifteen common Core Courses, the Core includes up to ten other courses that students must choose from a range of possibilities in the departments of math, the sciences, fine arts, and foreign languages.

Science: a student must take two laboratory science courses, one in the biological sciences, the other in the physical sciences. For non-science majors, Basic Ideas courses exist in Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, but a variety of other courses in the sciences may also be used to satisfy this requirement.

Mathematics and Fine Arts: one course is required in Fine Arts and one course in Mathematics. Again, there are specific math courses designed for non-science majors, such as Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry and The Calculus. The Art, Drama and Music Departments offer courses in the history of their disciplines, which students can take to satisfy the art requirement. The Art & Architecture of Rome, which is taken on the Rome Campus, satisfies the Fine Arts requirement.

Foreign Language: knowledge of a foreign language through the intermediate level is also required of all students. Depending on the background of each student, this requirement may be met by taking from one to four courses in a classical or modern language. At present the languages that may be used to meet this requirement are Ancient Greek, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.

Depending then on a student’s prior preparation in a foreign language, the Core will include from four to ten courses in addition to the courses in the Common Core. So also, a student’s success on advanced placement exams in high school may reduce the total number of required courses. Typically, good scores in AP English and AP American History or European History will excuse a student from Literary Tradition III or IV, American Civilization I or II, and Western Civilization I or II. Consequently, the total number of core courses that students take while at the University will vary from a minimum of perhaps 15 to a maximum of 25.

Many courses in The Core also apply to majors and concentrations. See the University Bulletin for a complete listing of core and other degree requirements and for information on majors, concentrations, and pre-professional programs.