The Core Program

The Core Curriculum in the College of Arts & Sciences is a liberal arts learning community for students who love books, ideas, and intellectual discussion. Centered around weekly lectures and small discussion classes with faculty representing many disciplines and departments at BU, the Core Program invites students to engage with enduring texts, art, and stories. The aim throughout is to help you navigate the ideas that shape our world. Building a learning community requires many voices and perspectives, and the Core strives to foster a learning environment where students from all backgrounds, majors, and specialties can contribute to the conversations.

The Core Curriculum has elective pathways through the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Their eight foundational classes can work together as a curriculum, or you can navigate them individually to build your own foundation. You will receive Hub requirements in every Core class, and if you choose to complete all of Core’s foundational courses, you will satisfy the majority of your Hub requirements.

As a transfer student, the Core is a unique opportunity to find a community at BU! Classes are small, and many are filled with upperclassmen, especially sophomores. Depending on what’s available this semester, we recommend considering any of the following Core courses as an incoming transfer student:

  • CAS CC 201: Core Humanities III – Renaissance, Rediscovery, and Reformation (fall only)
    • Prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar or equivalent (e.g., external credit for CAS WR 13TR & WR 16TR)
    • Course description: Examining works of Petrarch, Elizabeth I, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Descartes, and Cavendish, we consider the revival of the Classics and explore the new focus on the physical world and questioning of authority. Topics studied include the origins of modern political and scientific thought, the beginning of the novel and revival of epic, and Baroque aesthetics. A study of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel adds an artistic lens to our study of this period, and a focus on writing and research complements our emphasis on authorship.
    • Note: Students who complete CC 201 have the opportunity to go to Florence over the January 2026 winter break.
    • This course fulfills the following Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Research & Information Literacy, Writing, Research, & Inquiry.
  • CAS CC 202: Core Humanities IV – Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Modernity (spring only)
    • Prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar or equivalent (e.g., external credit for CAS WR 13TR & WR 16TR)
    • Course description: Explore works of philosophy and literature that interrogate Enlightenment and Romantic ideals of social hierarchy, what it means to know, the relations of subjectivity to reason, and how freedom can be found. Works by Voltaire, Kant, Austen, Shelley, the English Romantic Poets, Beethoven, Goethe, Whitman, Dickinson, and Douglass are included. We cross the threshold of the twentieth century with drama by Chekhov, the perspectivism of Nietzsche, and a critique of inequality by W.E.B. Du Bois.
    • This course fulfills the following Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Writing- Intensive Course.
  • CAS CC 221: Core Social Science I – Making the Modern World: Progress, Politics, and Economics (fall only)
    • Prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar or equivalent (e.g., external credit for CAS WR 13TR & WR 16TR)
    • Course description: How did “society” emerge as a distinctive object of political engineering, normative discourse, and social scientific inquiry? What economic transformations helped shape theories of justice and social contract? Careful readings of Western social, political and economic thinkers between 1600-1900.
    • This course fulfills the following Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II
  • CAS CC 212: Science, Reality and the Modern World (spring only) 
    • Course description: Studies the paradigm-shifting scientific theories of quantum theory and relativity that created a new world view and forced the 20th century into a new understanding of our relation to reality. Students parallel these theories with current debates about science, such as those concerning climate change and the phenomenon of “junk science.” Considers the role of science in the modern world, how we know what we know, the roles of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and chaos theory, and the nature of truth in a 21st century context. 
    • This course fulfills a single requirement in each of the following Hub areas:  Scientific Inquiry II, Quantitative Reasoning II, Critical Thinking.
    • Note: Students interested in majors within the natural sciences (Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Neuroscience, Physics, etc.) and are taking at least one laboratory course this semester should NOT enroll in CAS CC 111 or 212
  • CAS CC 318: Public Speaking (spring only)
    • Prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar or equivalent (e.g., external credit for CAS WR 13TR & WR 16TR)
    • Course description: How can you make a connection with an audience when you speak? How can you find ways to make a rhetorical argument? This course puts students in conversation with texts and ideas that guide them to find authentic voices when constructing narratives, arguments, and presentations to different audiences.
    • This course fulfills the following Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Teamwork/Collaboration
  • CAS CC 101: Ancient Worlds (fall only)
    • Course description: An interdisciplinary study of the origins of civilization, from Mesopotamia and the Hebrew Bible to the development of Greek civilization through Homer, Greek tragedy, and the philosophy of Plato. 
    • This course fulfills a single requirement in each of the following Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, First-Year Writing Seminar, Creativity/Innovation.
  • CAS CC 102: The Way: Antiquity and the Medieval World (spring only) 
    • Prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar or equivalent (e.g., external credit for CAS WR 13TR & WR 16TR)
    • Course description: A focus on writing and oral / signed communication leads to an exploration of the nature of communication, and a study of Western and Asian art at the Museum of Fine Arts brings out the contrast of traditions and deepens Core’s overall study of the relation of the individual to culture and to nature. 
    • This course fulfills the following Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course; Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy; Oral and/or Signed Communication.
  • CAS CC 111: Origins—of the Big Bang, Earth, Life and Humanity (fall only) 
    • Course description: The origins of the physical world, a scientific parallel to CC 101. Explores how the fields of astronomy, earth science, biology, and anthropology help us to understand our place in the cosmos from a scientific perspective. Topics include the Big Bang, evolution of the stars and earth, evolution of life, and the origins of human life and society. Assignments include computer-based and experimental laboratory work as well as team-based investigation and original research. 
    • This course fulfills a single requirement in each of the following Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry I, Quantitative Reasoning I, Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Note: Students interested in majors within the natural sciences (Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Neuroscience, Physics, etc.) and are taking at least one laboratory course this semester should NOT enroll in CAS CC 111 or 212.

    If you would like to learn more about the Core, including opportunities to minor, study abroad, and/or earn honors within the Core, please see here. You may also contact Dr. Kyna Hamill, Director, Core Curriculum at 617-353-5404, core@bu.edu, or bu.edu/core.