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 Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

The listing below reflects the Hub units fulfilled by courses in the 2019/2020 academic year.

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  • CAS EN 170: The Graphic Novel
    Examination of the rise, nature, and status of the contemporary book-length graphic novel. Topics include graphic vs. traditional novel, word and image, style and space, representations of subjectivity, trauma, and history. Authors may include Spiegelman, Bechdel, Nakazawa, Sacco, Satrapi, Backderf. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Digital/Multimedia Expression
    • Creativity/Innovation
  • CAS EN 175: Literature and the Art of Film
    Provides an overview of fundamental concepts for the analysis and understanding of film. Films are screened weekly and in conjunction with works of literature. Students must register for screening, discussion, and lecture. Also offered as CAS CI 201. 4 cr. either sem. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Digital/Multimedia Expression
  • CAS EN 177: Introduction to Asian-American Literature
    Explores Asian American literature from the early twentieth century until today. Addresses questions of identity, immigration, national belonging, diaspora, war, and global capitalism. Authors include John Okada, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-Rae Lee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Monique Truong, and Ha Jin. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. In the 2018-19 Academic year, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Writing-intensive Course. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • The Individual in Community
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • CAS EN 180: Post-Apocalyptic Narratives
    Why is contemporary culture drawn to stories of zombies, social collapse, and environmental disaster? What fascinates us about dystopia? Stories, novels, graphic novels, film, and television all examined to explore questions of narrative, interpretation, genre, politics, "high" vs. "popular" culture. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Ethical Reasoning.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Ethical Reasoning
  • CAS EN 195: Literature and Ideas
    How does literature relate to philosophy? How do poems and stories explore philosophical beliefs? Readings may include novels, epics, dialogues, sermons, theoretical treatises, and poetry, all engaging with broad questions about meaning, selfhood, divinity, politics, community, value. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Critical Thinking
  • CAS EN 201: Introduction to Literary Studies
    Introduction to literary analysis and interpretation. Variable topics. Through frequent writing assignments and discussion, students develop skills in the analysis of literary texts and learn to express their interpretive ideas in correct and persuasive prose. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Writing-Intensive Course.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS EN 220: Seminar in Literature
    Fundamentals of literary analysis, interpretation, and research. Intensive study of selected literary texts centered on a particular topic. Attention to different critical approaches. Frequent papers. Limited class size. Required of concentrators in English. Satisfies WR 150 requirement. In AY 18-19, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing, Research and Inquiry, Research and Information Literacy. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing: Research & Inquiry, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Research and Information Literacy.
    • Writing, Research, and Inquiry
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
    • Research and Information Literacy
  • CAS EN 221: Major Authors
    Introduction to the major works of ancient and medieval literatures that influenced later Continental, English, and American literature: the Bible, Homeric epic, Greek tragedy, Vergil's Aeneid, and Dante's The Divine Comedy. Required of concentrators in English. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Writing-Intensive Course.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS EN 306: Introduction to Playwriting
    This course teaches playwriting craft through lectures, readings, discussion of dramatic writing, writing workshops, attending theatrical events, individual conferences, and the writing of short plays culminating in a one-act. A portfolio of revised work is due at semester's end. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Writing-Intensive Course, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Creativity/Innovation
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS EN 310: British and Irish Writing: Poetry and the Novel Since 1900
    Crossing TS Eliot's The Waste Land, both figuratively and literally, we make an intensive study of significant works of major poets and writers who both helped to create and were created by the Modern Age, and of those they influenced. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
  • CAS EN 322: British Literature I
    Beginnings of English literature from Anglo-Saxon period to end of the seventeenth century. Topics include the development of various poetic forms, medieval romance, and British drama. Authors may include Chaucer, Kempe, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, and Milton. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS EN 323: British Literature II
    Overview of English literature between 1700 and 1900. Topics include London as urban center, modern prose fiction, Romantic and Victorian poetry, tensions between religion and science. Authors may include Pope, Swift, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Tennyson, Wilde. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS EN 326: Arts of Gender
    Examines representations of gender and sexuality in diverse art forms, including drama, dance, film, and literature, and how art reflects historical constructions of gender. Topic for Spring 2020: Gendered Utopias, Gendered Dystopias. Is it possible to create spaces where women, non-binary and queer people, and other outsiders thrive, or do all paths lead inexorably to a dystopian future? Texts include non-fiction by Delany and Nelson and speculative fiction by Atwood and Leckie. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • The Individual in Community
  • CAS EN 327: Topics in American Literature
    Topics vary. Topic for Fall 2019: Jane Eyre's Sisters. Close study of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre followed by a look at 19th and 20th century writers who appropriate and revise aspects of Bronte's novel in an American context. Authors include Jacobs, Alcott, Stoddard, Rhys, and Mukherjee. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
  • CAS EN 345: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
    The development of the American novel in 19th C America: Uncle Tom's Cabin and Moby-Dick, plus Twain, Jacobs, Southworth, Chesnutt. Formal/aesthic questions will be linked to cultural/historical ones including race and slavery, gender, individualism, and representing America. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS EN 347: Topics in Contemporary Fiction
    May be repeated for credit as topics change each semester. Topic for Fall 2018: Contemporary US Fiction. Survey of major American fiction since World War II. Authors include Roth, Baldwin, O'Connor, DeLillo, Pynchon, Morrison, Ozick, Erdrich. Topics include "disenchantment," commercialism, technology, paranoia, selfhood, community, fiction and world-making. Topic for Spring 2019: Post-1990 Anglophone Literature. The ways in which international works of fiction depict social change and their effects on individuals and communities. Authors discussed may include Adichie, Adiga, Muenuddin, Coetzee, Knausgaard, Dangarembga. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • CAS EN 349: Contemporary American Fiction
    US prose fiction from the last few decades, exploring questions of individualism, community, identity, technology, media, religious belief, violence, post-WWII political changes, and our relation to history. Authors may include Roth, Robinson, DeLillo, Pynchon, Morrison, and Lahiri, among others. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • The Individual in Community
  • CAS EN 356: Drama and Performance, 1945 - Present
    Theater history and performance art from 1945 to today. Analysis of plays through the lens of performance theory, blurring the line between the aesthetic and the social. Playwrights may include Brecht, Hansberry, Valdez, Moraga, Beckett, Kane, Deveare Smith, Shange, Parks. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community, Creativity/Innovation.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • The Individual in Community
    • Creativity/Innovation
  • CAS EN 363: Shakespeare I
    Six plays chosen from the following: Richard II, Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter's Tale. Some attention to the sonnets. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS EN 364: Shakespeare II
    Six or seven plays chosen from the following: Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and The Tempest. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness

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