The course calls for mastery of German and Tatar recommends a minimum of three to four years high school or two years of college German. But she still maintains that the course is "in the spirit of the Core." Though the stiff language requirement cuts down sharply the course enrollment--Tatar expects no more than 20--the class still has a broad enough appeal to qualify as a Core course.

"The course won't be purely focused on literary analysis," Tatar says, but will examine historical documents and discuss links between cultural developments in the Weimar Republic. These qualities of the course fulfill the Core requirement that Contexts of Culture courses be "interdisciplinary and cross-cultural."

The Core committee was convinced. They passed her course without reservation, though they urged her to offer the course in English translation. Tatar intends to make that shift in two years.

The guidelines on the Contexts of Culture section purpousely were left loose to encourage "imaginative enterprise on the part of faculty members."

Tatar credits the Core with inspiring a new interdisciplinary approach in the German Department. "Normally our courses emphasize literary analysis," Tatar observes, noting that her course will be one of "the first attempts in our department to bring in the historical and interdisciplinary dimensions."

The Core report instructs professors that their Core courses should not just present a set of facts but must provide a "basic literacy in major forms of intellectual discourse." Tatar says she prefers to avoid such inflated prose and is unsure how such notions apply to the humanities, or for that matter what intellectual discourse even means. But she believes she may have unintentionally conformed to the report's exhortation by "familiarizing students with two methodologies: historical and literary." Tatar shrugs. "I always thought the point of education in general was to teach people to think critically. If you want to call that intellectual discourse, then I guess that is what I am doing."

Asked to summarize briefly what topics he will cover in his course, Social Analysis 12, "Crime and Human Nature," James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government, winces before answering: "You know, all the biggies: crime, war, revolution, sex." He admits it all sounds somewhat overreaching and "a little apocalyptic," but believes he and his co-instructor, Richard J. Herrnstein, professor of Psychology, can keep everything under control with guidance from the Core report.

Wilson and Herrnstein's course emerges from a Gen Ed course the two professors began teaching three years ago on crime and public policy. Over the years they let the public policy issue slide as they became increasingly absorbed with what Wilson calls "the special case of crime."

This year they plan only minor revisions, unrelated to the Core requirements. Wilson explains that his course already fits the Core. Following the Core guidelines' dictates that Social Analysis courses be organized around a central theme, Wilson's course will ask, Why does a certain person commit a crime?

Unlike many introductory social science courses "with their laundry list of unrelated bits of knowledge," Wilson claims his course will discuss different aspects of crime only as they relate to this central issue. Wilson will lead his students through possible answers--including theories of personality, social environment, neighborhood formation, economics and genetics. On the way, the students will pick up some psychology, microeconomics and law.

In Social Analysis, the Core guidelines also ask professors to "test and illuminate" these formal theories with empirical data. Wilson again is in step with the Core here. For example, with genetics he will teach his students how to decode the genetic contribution and then observe complexities that arise in attempting to separate genetics and environment.

Finally, the Core report asks that the Social Analysis offerings "suggest the value questions or options that are implicit in the analysis." Wilson believes that this mandate to search for the values under theories is one of the major strengths of the Core, because it forces professors to focus their courses on "the philosophical implications, not just the facts."