The Editors: Judith Summerfield is the University Dean for Undergraduate Education at the City University of New York. A professor of English at Queens College, she is also on the faculty of the Ph.D. program in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has written on composition and rhetoric, literary studies, and narrative.Crystal Benedicks is Assistant Professor of English at CUNY’s Queensborough Community College, where she teaches composition and literature. She is currently working on a book about spasmodic poetry.

• Contents: Judith Summerfield: The Project: Common/Uncommon Ground – Judith Summerfield/Crystal Benedicks: What Is in This Book? – Sean Egan: CUNY Histories: Liberal Education and the Free Academy – Philip M. Anderson: Curriculum Mapping: Climbing out of the Briar Patch – Robert Whittaker: General Education vs. Education Generally: Curriculum Renewal in an Urban College – David Podell/Jonathan D. Sassi/Jane Marcus-Delgado: The Comprehensive College as Civilized Hydra: General Education at the College of Staten Island – Linda Stanley/Anita Ferdenzi/Paul Marchese/Margaret J. Reilly: A Jazz Performance: Improvisations on General Education at a CUNY Community College – Donald M. Scott: Reforming General Education at Queens College – Ann Davison/Sue Lantz Goldhaber: Integration, Socialization, Collaboration: Inviting Native and Non-Native English Speakers into the Academy Through «Reacting to the Past» – Robert F. Cohen/Kim Sanabria: Our Mission at Hostos: Charting a Course to Self-Empowerment – Crystal Benedicks: The Shakespeare Portal: Teaching the Canon at the Community College – David Potash: A Shared Classroom: General Education at Baruch College – Paul Arcario/James Wilson: Putting It Together: General Education at LaGuardia Community College – Erin Martineau: Disciplinary Ways of Knowing: The Value of Anthropological Thinking in General Education – Cheryl C. Smith: Opening the Invisible Gateway: Some «Common Things» About Student Writing – Crystal Benedicks: Afterword: On Metaphors and Genres.