Gathering for the very first time on the West Coast, the Association for Core Texts and Courses convened for its Sixth Annual Conference in April 2000, at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. Organized around the broad theme of Universality and History, participants were invited, first, to address the first term in that title, "Universality," by entering the ongoing debate about whether core texts —be they great books, classics of many different cultures, or simply works used for a brief period of time within liberal and general education programs — have any universal significance or are always locked into particularities of their production or of their readership.