Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. 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.

• CAS AH 546: Places of Memory: Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
  Covers key aspects of the history, theory, and practice of historic preservation. Preservation is discussed in the context of cultural history and the changing relationship between existing buildings and landscapes and attitudes toward history, memory, invented tradition, and place. Also offered as CAS AM 546 and CAS HI 546.
• CAS AH 548: Global Heritage Conservation
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Examining global approaches towards heritage conservation through a study of concepts, charters and case studies, using themes such as world heritage, cultural tourism, historic towns, new design, intangible heritage, authenticity, integrity, recent past, historic landscapes, conflict, disasters, revitalization and reconstruction.
• CAS AH 554: Boston Architectural and Community History Workshop
  Focusing on a single neighborhood in Greater Boston, this course explores ways to assess and narrate architectural and urban development. Emphasis is on primary sources—land deeds and plans, building permits, historic maps, etc. —coupled with fieldtrips and classroom discussion.
• CAS AH 557: High Renaissance and Mannerist Art in Italy
  The seminar considers Italian Renaissance art theory and its role in shaping and responding to the interests and concerns of artists. Texts take a variety of literary forms such as commentaries, dialogues, poems, and courtly handbooks.
• CAS AH 563: Global Baroque: Art and Power in the Seventeenth Century
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. - Investigates the interaction between art and structures of power in seventeenth-century Europe, with particular attention to its global dimensions. Focus on Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez, and Bernini but also other forms of cultural production that circulated through global trade.
• CAS AH 571: Problems in African Diaspora Art History
  This course examines the African Diaspora in art history, addressing debates on its definition and study. It challenges students to explore diaspora’s impact on artistic and scholarly practice, introducing key debates shaping the sub-field of African Diaspora Art History.
• CAS AH 574: Topics in African Art
  Repeatable for credit as topics change. Topic for Fall 2025, Section A1: This course examines the collection and display of the arts of Africa and the Diaspora from the colonial period to the present. The course also considers seminal exhibitions of modern and contemporary African art, asking how these practices have shifted perceptions of African art in the twenty-first century.
• CAS AH 589: Topics in Nineteenth Century Art
  Prerequisites: junior or senior standing (or graduate student). - Topic for Fall 2025: The Age of Impressionism. European art, 1848-1900, is examined in light of contemporary developments in politics, literature, and the history of ideas. Class discussion of readings, both recent and classic, is followed by an oral report and a final paper on a research topic.
• CAS AH 591: Seminar in Photographic History
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior or senior standing, or consent of instructor. - Topic for Spring 2024: "Documentary Photography." A study of changing uses, definitions, and archives of documentary photography from 1839 to the present. Topics include urban photography, war imagery, topographical and survey landscapes, architectural records, social reform photography, New Deal imagery, and digital documents.
• CAS AH 596: Seminar: Contemporary Art
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior or senior standing, or consent of instructor. - Rotating topics in art, criticism and theory since 1960. Examines major themes such as formalism, minimalism, conceptual art, the neo-avant-garde, art and politics, postmodernism and globalization in their social and political contexts. Topic for Fall 2025: Contemporary Exhibition Practices. This seminar explores how, over the past forty years, artists, curators, critics, and architects have played various roles in the expansion of large-scale exhibitions and the emergence of new museums of contemporary art around the world.
• CAS AH 734: Colloquium in Greek Art and Architecture Discussion
  Graduate Corequisites: (GRSAH733) - Required discussion section for students registered in CASAH 733. Students must also register for CASAH 733.
• CAS AM 735: Studies in American Culture
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Introduction to handling of primary materials from a number of disciplines in order to develop an American Studies perspective. Required of all American Studies PhD students.
• CAS AM 736: The Literature of American Studies
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Introduction to classic problems in the interpretation of American society and culture. Required of all American Studies PhD students.
• CAS AM 775: Independent Research Project Colloquium
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Preservation Studies master's student standing. - Restricted to students in their final semester of the Preservation Studies Master's Program. Provides for the research and writing of an independent, rigorous, and original capstone project in the preservation field, with guidance from faculty.
• CAS AM 867: Material Culture
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor. - 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. Explore contemporary scholarship from a range of disciplines. Also offered as GRS AH 867.
• CAS AM 899: Professional Development Seminar
  Graduate Prerequisites: Completion of required coursework. - A seminar offering advanced AMNESP PhD students the opportunity to present and discuss works-in-progress and structured guidance for the tasks involved in job applications. Open to PhD students after completing required coursework. Does not fulfill PhD course requirements.
• CAS AN 506: Regional Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: one archaeology course or consent of instructor. - Graduate Prerequisites: one archaeology course or consent of instructor. - Use of advanced computer (GIS) techniques to address regional archaeological problems. This applied course examines digital encoding and manipulation of archaeological and environmental data, and methods for testing hypotheses, analyzing, and modeling the archaeological record. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Historical Consciousness
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS AN 508: Landscape Archaeology
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or 120) - A seminar-style introduction to "landscape archaeology," a theoretical and methodological approach that explores how past and present communities create (and are in turn affected by) "cultural landscapes" formed through the interplay of sociocultural values and the natural environment. Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • Social Inquiry I
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS AN 510: Proposal Writing for Social Science Research
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Graduate Prerequisites: graduate student standing in the social sciences or humanities. - Workshop-based course designed to turn students' intellectual interests into answerable, field-based research questions. Goal is the production of a doctoral level research project proposal and/or dissertation prospectus.
• CAS AN 518: Zooarchaeology
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASAR101) - Introduction to the study of archaeological animal bones. Provides theoretical background and methodological skills necessary for interpreting past human- animal interactions, subsistence, and paleoecology. Laboratory sections focus on skeletal identification. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Quantitative Reasoning I, Social Inquiry II.
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  • Quantitative Reasoning I
  • Social Inquiry II