Courses
The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.
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- African American & Black Diaspora Studies
- African Studies: Culture (in English)
- African Studies: East African Languages: Kiswahili (Swahili)
- African Studies: East, West & South African Languages: Amharic, Igbo, Mandinka, isiZulu
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CAS AH 317: From Morocco to Timbuktu: Art and Architecture at the Saharan Crossroads
Cultural exchange between North and West Africa, and its impact on art and architecture from the medieval period to the present; the interaction between Islam and other modes of African religious practice and how this interaction influenced African aesthetic expression. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS AH 323: Topics in Latin American Art
Study of a region, theme, or period in Latin America art and architecture. May be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Spring 2023: Artivism Since the 1960s. Examines art and aesthetics in political activism, focusing on artists, activists, and curators' contributions to the struggles against dictatorships during dirty wars, ongoing racial and gender discrimination, as well as environmental over-exploitation -
CAS AH 325: Art, Media, and Buddhism
Examines how textual, visual, and material forms of religious expressions have been conceptualized by Buddhists as well as how Buddhist objects are understood and re- contextualized in the West. Topics include: self- immolation; museums; war propaganda, and pop culture. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS AH 326: Arts of Japan
The arts of Japan, from prehistory to the twentieth century. Lectures intend to cover a broad range of media (painting, sculpture, ceramics, prints) and building types (temples, palaces, castles, teahouses). Special attention is paid to major projects integrating multiple forms. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS AH 327: Arts of China
Explores major works of Chinese art, from bronze vessels, Buddhist caves, ink painting, to contemporary performance. Addresses topics such as constructions of monumentality, cultural exchange, displays of power, literati identity, feminine space, and quests for modernization. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS AH 331: Arts of Archaic Greece
Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120)
Examines the origins of Greek art and architecture through ancient accounts, modern scholarship, and physical remains. Topics include town and sanctuary planning, theories of the orders, wooden and stone sculpture, painted pottery, miniatures, color, artists, technologies, and myth. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Writing-Intensive Course. -
CAS AH 333: Arts of Classical Greece
Examines architecture, sculpture, painting, and metalwork of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in their original contexts. Addresses such larger issues as development of portraiture; tension of "real" and "ideal"; roles and shifting iconographies of myth; and political use of monuments. Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 345: Early Medieval and Romanesque Art
Art and architecture of medieval Europe from the Early Christian Catacombs to the great Gothic cathedrals. Topics include piety, the cult of relics, the Virgin, monasticism, and secular monuments such as medieval European castles and the Bayeux Tapestry. -
CAS AH 352: Venetian Renaissance Art
A study of art and architecture in Renaissance Venice with focus on the "Myth of Venice," Byzantinne heritage, introduction of the oil medium, Scuole, and the work of the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Palladio, Veronese, and Tintoretto. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS AH 361: Southern Baroque Art
Explores transformations in painting, sculpture, and architecture of late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy, Spain, and France. Topics include: crisis of the religious image and Counter-Reformation; arts in service of a rejuvenated, triumphant Catholic faith; papal nepotism and patronage. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 363: The Arc of Russian and Ukrainian Art
This course introduces students to the history of art and architecture of Russia and Ukraine from the early Slavic period to the present day. The lectures and readings are organized chronologically and follow the main artistic developments throughout this period. -
CAS AH 365: Baroque Arts in Northern Europe
Explores the rich artistic traditions of the northern (Dutch) and southern (Flemish) Netherlands from the late sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Emphasis on major artists such as Rubens, Van Dyck, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Visits to the MFA's new Center for Netherlandish Art, conditions permitting. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 367: Material Culture
Introduction to the theory and practice of the interdisciplinary study of material culture, which includes everything we make and use, from food and clothing to art and buildings. Topic for Fall 2022: Race and Power in Everyday Objects. How have diverse groups of Americans used everyday objects to envision, embody, and resist racial categories since the 18th century? Students use objects like Chinese export porcelain teacups, Klan robes, and mid-century modern coffee tables to see what material culture can teach us about histories of race in the US. -
CAS AH 369: American Folk Art
Explores the objects that collectors and museums identify as "American Folk Art." Examines how this label developed throughout the twentieth century; familiarizes students with major collections and genres including painting, sculpture, textiles, and other media. Also offered as CAS AM 369. -
CAS AH 379: American Art and Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Explores the visual arts of painting, sculpture, photography, and popular media, through their interplay with persistent political and social questions that defined nineteenth-century America and continue to shape life in the twenty-first century. Themes include heroes, citizenship, war, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, consumerism. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 380: The Age of Napoleon
In-depth exploration of art in the age of revolution, nationalism, colonial expansion, and religious revival. Development of new attitudes toward history, nature, and the imagination in the work of Friedrich, Goya, Delacroix, Gericault, Ingres, Turner, Constable, Blake, and others. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 385: American Buildings and Landscapes
An introductory analytic survey of American buildings and landscapes within their historical and cultural contexts. Students examine forces that have shaped the American built environment. Topics range from Indian mounds to commercial strips, Spanish missions to skyscrapers. Also offered as CAS AM 385. -
CAS AH 386: Modern American Art
This class explores the diverse and contested field of modern art in the United States, examining the broad range of artists and art practices that laid claim to aesthetic modernism in the years between 1890 and 1945. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS AH 387: Boston Architecture and Urbanism
This class presents a history of Boston from the seventeenth through twenty- first centuries, as seen through the region's architectural and urban history. Major buildings, architects, and urban planning schemes are examined in terms of economic, political, social, and institutional histories. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS AH 391: Twentieth-Century Art to 1940
A study of the key tendencies in European art between the 1880s and World War II. The work of van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Dali, and their contemporaries is examined in relation to major issues in European culture and politics. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy.