English

  • GRS EN 604: History of Literary Criticism 1
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    A historical survey of western literary-critical standards from the earliest surviving formulations in classical Athens to the dawn of the twentieth century. Writers include Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Augustine, Dante, Sidney, Hume, Wordsworth, Marx, Nietzsche. 4 cr. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Aesthetic Exploration
  • GRS EN 606: History of Literary Criticism II
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Survey of literary critical perspectives and trends in humanistic theory relevant to literary interpretation from the middle of the twentieth century onward, including formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, gender studies, new historicism, and post-colonial studies. Frequent writing assignments of various lengths. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • GRS EN 652: Asian American Studies: Theory and Methods
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    A brief overview of the theories and methods of Asian American studies, reading theory, literature, history, culture, sociology, and legal study to define a mode of inquiry and action inspired by a legacy of activism and survival from the Asian diaspora. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • The Individual in Community
  • GRS EN 665: Critical Studies in Literature and Society
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Fables and Tales, Appropriation and Performance, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
  • GRS EN 666: Critical Studies in Literature and Society
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Environmental Imaginaries, Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
  • GRS EN 671: Critical Studies in American Literary Movements
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Topics vary. Fall 2018: Modernity in the Atlantic World. An "Atlantic Studies" introduction to the historical conditions that unite Britain and America in a single, though internally various, culture. Readings include Gilroy, Bailyn, Ellison, Roach, Defoe, Paine, Equiano, Douglass, Dickens, and James.
  • GRS EN 673: Critical Studies in Literary Genres
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Topics vary. Topic for Fall 2019: The Earliest Women Writers: Poets, Philosophers, and Mystics. Women's writing from ancient Greek poet Sappho (630-570 BCE) through to medieval defender of women, Christine de Pisan (1364-1430 CE). Readings by feminist critics such as Virginia Woolf, Judith Butler, Toril Moi.
  • GRS EN 674: Critical Studies in Literary Genres
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Film Noir, Early Modern Women Authors, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
  • GRS EN 675: Critical Studies in Literature and Gender
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Topic for Fall 2020: Early Modern Women Authors. A survey of European women writers from the 1400s to the early 1600s, and of the modern critical thinking that has redefined their literary-historical importance. Christine de Pizan, Theresa of Avila, Marguerite de Navarre, Gaspara Stampa, Elizabeth I, and others.
  • GRS EN 677: Critical Studies: Black Diaspora Theory and Practice
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Explore "diaspora" as a keyword for black studies, intervene in the term's emergence, usage, and many theorizations. Beginning with Paul Gilroy's take on diasporic culture and consciousness, course goes on to complicate/extend/challenge through lens of black gender and sexuality studies. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • The Individual in Community
    • Critical Thinking
  • GRS EN 680: Critical Studies of American Writers
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Topic for Spring 2021: Pragmatism and Literature. How do we determine truth? What do we do when faced with uncertainty? This course pairs pragmatist philosophy with novels, poems, essays, and autobiographies (including Emerson, Poe, Dickinson, Du Bois, Henry James, Pauline Hopkins, and Stephen Crane).
  • GRS EN 681: Performative Text and Design
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Intersections of text, design, performance, publishing, and activism. Examinations of techniques, forms, media, and theoretical ideas--asking about the political potential of such practices. Students develop an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about the form a text might take as a spatial appearance (page or environment), through materials (costume, flags) or how it might be used as a performative object. Themes include: labour, liveness and documentation, ephemeral vs. permanent, alternative publishing, activist archiving. Lectures, project based, field trips, and studio visits. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Digital/Multimedia Expression
    • Creativity/Innovation
  • GRS EN 682: Critical Studies in Modern Literature
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Introduction to philosophical and historical approaches to the study of global literature outside Europe and North America. Themes addressed include individual and social development, historical reflection, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, cultural identity, the impact of socio- economic forces Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings and Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Aesthetic Exploration
  • GRS EN 683: Critical Studies in Literature and Ethnicity
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Topic for Spring 2020: Multiethnic Women's Literature in the U.S. Readings may include works of fiction, poetry, or drama composed by multiethnic women writers. Attention to a wide range of literary works and historical and cultural contexts.
  • GRS EN 684: Critical Studies in Literature and Ethnicity
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Topic for Spring 2021: "Identity." This course takes seriously the ongoing dependence on "identity" in cultural tensions, artistic expressions and cultural debates. Where did it come from, what does it mean and why does it matter? Via a cross-cultural exploration of literary, historical and critical works we engage how "identity" is claimed, mobilized and sometimes weaponized.
  • GRS EN 686: Studies in Anglophone Literature
    Literature *Topics vary. Topic for Fall 2023: Comparative Readings in Postcolonial Literature. Examines how postcolonial writers have explored the themes of historical upheaval and modernization. We focus on the fictional and non-fictional works of V. S. Naipaul and compare them with Wole Soyinka, Jean Rhys, George Lamming, J. M. Coetzee.
  • GRS EN 688: Critical Studies in African American Literature
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    Topic for Fall 2022: Gender and Sexuality in the Neo-slave Narrative. Examines how neo-slave narratives intervene in the sexual and gendered silences of slave narratives and the power relations that produced them. Students who are hesitant to study depictions of sexual violence might consider taking another course.
  • GRS EN 690: Critical Studies in Comparative Literature
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Topic for Spring 2019: The Gothic, Identity, & the (Post)Human. Reading of nineteenth- and twentieth-century dark narratives together with theory and literary criticism relevant to interpreting the Gothic, particularly regarding identity, conceptions of the human, and aesthetic form. Authors such as Mary Shelley, Stevenson, Stoker, Conrad, Barnes, Capote, and Morrison.
  • GRS EN 693: Critical Studies in Literature and the Arts
    Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
    This course examines translational practices in art, writing, and performance, considering translation between languages, genres, discourses, and media--asking about the political potentials or pitfalls along the way. Includes creative exercises and concludes with the collaborative publication of a zine. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Creativity/Innovation
  • GRS EN 695: Critical Studies in Literary Topics
    Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
    Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Literature and Affect Theory, Multiethnic Speculative Fiction, Literature and Conceptions of Time, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.