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  • 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. Effective Fall 2018, 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 215: Global Modernist Fiction
    A comparative study of five modernist authors from different world cultures: Faulkner, Kafka, Chang, Rushdie, and Murakami. Examines experiments in narrative technique as differently situated responses to the major events and legacy of the twentieth century. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • The Individual in Community
    • Critical Thinking
  • 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. Effective Fall 2018, 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 313: Variation in Dialects of English
    Exploration of how dialects of English differ from each other, focusing on grammatical variation in the US, with occasional forays into British dialects. Students come to appreciate how linguists investigate grammatical diversity scientifically, revealing the complex structure of non-standard dialects. Also offered as CAS LX 365.
  • 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 325: Topics in Early Modern British Literature
    May be repeated for credit as topics change each semester. Topic for Fall 2020: What a Sonnet Was. This is a craft-based effort to recount the early history of the sonnet form in English through the innovations devised by writers famous and obscure: among them Anne Locke, Gascoigne, Watson, Sidney, Donne, George Herbert, Mary Wroth, Jonson, Herrick.
  • 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 Fall 2020: This course is revisionist and interventionist: it places female and LGBTQ+ artists (especially performance and conceptual artists) at the centre of literary and art history at the same time as it offers a model for reading and shaping the present. 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. Imagining US South in modern novels, short stories, drama, film, and other media: D.W. Griffith, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mitchell, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams; selected contemporary fiction from novelists such as Dorothy Allison and Edward P. Jones; South-themed movies, TV dramas. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
  • CAS EN 328: Women's Literary Cultures
    Writings by women in diverse literary forms, including drama, poetry and prose. How does women's literary culture reflect historical constructions of gender and sexuality? How do writers engage with new literary forms, like the lyric, political treatise, or the novel? Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • The Individual in Community
  • CAS EN 331: Topics in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
    May be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Spring 2020: Gender and World Travel in the Long 19th Century: How did British authors explore the expansive global networks of the 19th century? What roles did gender play in authorship and travels, both real and imagined? Novels, poetry, travel narratives, and essays by female and male writers are read. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
  • CAS EN 333: American Literature: Beginnings to Civil War
    An introduction to the multiple literary traditions of North America (especially that area that would come to be the United States) from the close of the fifteenth century through 1855. Authors include John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, William Apess, Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS EN 334: American Literature: Civil War to World War I
    American literature from the Civil War to the end of World War I in 1918. Changing literary forms in the age of Reconstruction, robber barons, the New Woman, westward expansion. Authors may include Whitman, Alger, Twain, James, Crane, Wharton, Chesnutt. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
  • CAS EN 335: British & Irish Poets: 1890 to 21st Century
    An exploration of major poets of the long twentieth century, from Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats through the War Poets, Eliot, Loy, Auden, and Lawrence to Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Paul Muldoon. Cannot be taken for credit in addition to CAS EN 535.
  • CAS EN 341: History of the Novel in English
    An introduction to the history of the Anglophone novel, from its origins in early modern England to its status as the dominant literary form of modernity. Readings include Defoe, Austen, Dickens, James, Woolf, Morrison, and Coetzee. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Critical Thinking

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