Tradition and Innovation: Selected Plenary and Panel Papers from the Third Annual Conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses

Tradition and Innovation presents the debates and discussions of a new professional association dedicated to the development of core curricula and the use of core texts. The book outlines the wide variety of core curricula in use in institutions of higher learning throughout North America. It highlights the chief issues in undergraduate, core liberal arts education: rationales and principles for core curricula, varieties of curricular arrangements, and selection of appropriate texts- old and new- for use in core curricula. Questions of pedagogy, canon, disciplinarity, as well as the challenges presented by multiculturalism and feminism, are all explored. The volume considers how thoughtful professionals are shaping core curricula and developing workable interpretations of texts in the classroom. Major participants in discussions included in this work are: Roger Shattuck, Gerald Graff, Louise Cowan, Dennis O'Brien, and Stephen Zelnick.