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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.

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  • CAS WS 479: Fatal Women and Dangerous Bodies
    Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120). - Examines depictions of the femme fatale and fears of female sexuality in realist, naturalist and decadent French fictions. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Writing-Intensive Course.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS WS 480: Japanese Women Writers
    Classic texts by Japanese women, including the "Tale of Genji" and "The Pillow Book," and their modern legacy, read alongside important philosophical and theoretical texts in queer and feminist thought. Lectures and texts in English. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking.
    • Critical Thinking
    • Historical Consciousness
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • CAS WS 492: Directed Study: Women's and Gender Studies
    Individual instruction and supervised study project in women's or gender studies. Application form available in program office.
  • CAS WS 501: Justice and Community Engagement
    Community engagement as it exists at the intersection of justice - social justice, criminal justice, educational justice, food justice, housing justice, restorative justice, and healing justice - will be central to this course. You will examine these through both historical and contemporary perspectives. Using writing as a tool for advocacy, activism, and change-making, you will engage with seminal texts, critical discussions, and reflective practices to examine topics including racism, gender justice, LGBTQIA rights, and other social justice movements. Voices of those doing the work of change are highlighted and invited as guests. We will investigate justice and public health issues including attention to individual, intergenerational, and systemic trauma. With an intersectional lens, we explore how social justice issues are uniquely shaped by identity characteristics (race, gender, sexuality). Collectively, the class engages diverse approaches to understanding and facilitating justice and resilience. Inclusive and trauma-informed approaches to inquiry and writing provide a foundation for community centered justice work. Designed to foster a deeper understanding of change-making, we hope to equip you with practical skills to become an effective agent of change in your community and beyond.
  • CAS WS 505: Topics in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
    May be repeated for credit as topic changes.
  • CAS WS 507: Diversity of Sex
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: senior or graduate standing, and at least one of the following courses or equivalent: CAS BI 225, BI 309, BI 315, BI 4 07, or BI 410; or consent of instructor - Examines the integrative and comparative biology of sex and sexes based on readings drawn from recent primary literature, review papers, and book chapters. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Oral and/or Signed Communication. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Oral and/or Signed Communication.
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
  • CAS WS 512: Sexual Violence
    This course engages the topics of sexual deviance and sexual trauma through multiple lens. These lenses include psychological, sociological, criminal justice, public health, and social justice perspectives. The course explores multiple facets of understanding sexual deviance and sexual trauma including legal and philosophical perspectives, historical activism, understanding and treatment of sexual offending, and survivor responses. The roles of multiple systems including the media, mental health organization and the criminal justice system are taken into account. This course includes ongoing group work that engages critical inquiry, addressing relevant topics in sexual trauma in practical ways. Students utilize knowledge of theory and research methodology to pursue real world responses to issues of sexual violence and trauma.
  • CAS WS 525: Judith Butler
    Undergraduate prerequisites: two previous XL, WS, or PH courses; or consent of instructor. Graduate prerequisites: graduate standing. - An intensive study of Judith Butler's philosophical thought and social theory from the 1990s to the present, with an emphasis on the continuities and discontinuities between Butler's early work on gender performativity and more recent writings on racial justice, war, and violence.
  • CAS WS 526: Food, Gender and Sexuality
    In Food, Gender and Sexuality, we will explore ways in which language and behaviors around food both reinforce and challenge gender hierarchies and restrictive norms around sexuality. Using frameworks developed in gender and sexuality studies, we will interrogate our contemporary foodscape through close readings of many media, including food blogs, magazines, TV shows and advertisements. The course will include reading, research, field work, discussion, and cooking to help us understand why and how food has been gendered and how the process differs across place, time, and culture.
  • CAS WS 530: Global Intimacies: Sex, Gender, and Contemporary Sexualities
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: advanced undergraduate standing or graduate standing, or consent of instructor. - Explores theoretical and ethnographic approaches to gender, sex, and sexuality as linked to globalizing discourses and transnational mobilities. Readings and discussion emphasize intersections of sex, gender, labor, love, and marriage in a globalized world.
  • CAS WS 542: Language, Race, and Gender
    Do women talk differently from men? How do race and ethnicity relate to the way people use language? This course examines these interrelated questions from the perspective of modern sociolinguistic theory, analyzing a range of languages and communities throughout the world.
    • Social Inquiry I
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • CAS WS 545: Seminar: Black Feminist Art and Performance
    Prerequisites: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120). - This course explores the work of eleven Black femme artists, coupled with theoretical and critical texts written primarily by Black femme thinkers. It is structured as a semester long reading group. Each week, students give presentations on a single artwork and facilitate discussion of the assigned readings. Over the semester, students debate what Black feminism is, and what makes a work of art or set of ideas Black feminist. Is it an identity, a method, an interpretive frame?
  • CAS WS 559: Feminist Killjoys & Cynical Queers: Intersectional Theories of Affect
    Prerequisite: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or 120). - This class examines the affective turn, which has been marked by a shift towards bodily sensation, structures of feeling, and modes of relationality. We pay particular attention to cultural constructions of emotion such as happiness, shame, anger, and fear. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single requirement in each of the following BU HUB areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Research and Information Literacy, Writing Intensive.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
    • Research and Information Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS WS 594: Advanced Feminist Theory
    This course explores themes in advanced feminist theory. Specific themes vary by semester. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings.
    • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • CAS XL 100: Leaving Home: Explorations in World Literature
    Growing up. Moving to the big city. Wisdom quest. Immigration. Tourism. How have the world's great literatures portrayed and shaped these experiences? How have literary works themselves found new worlds through translation and adaptation? Counts for credit toward all WLL majors. 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • CAS XL 222: Introduction to Western Literatures
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). - Introduces basic methods of comparative literary study through close readings of influential texts of the Western tradition from antiquity to present. Topics include genre, translation, appropriation, interpretation, theories of literary production and effect. All works read in English. 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS XL 223: Introduction to Middle Eastern Literatures
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). - Introduces basic methods of comparative literary study through close readings of some of the most influential texts of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew literature. Readings may include The Arabian Nights, Shahnameh, lyric poetry, and novels from the twentieth century. 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS XL 224: Introduction to East Asian Literatures
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). - Explores why and how to compare literatures and cultures and envisions the place of East Asia's traditions in World Literature. Embarks on theoretical reflection and close reading of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean texts from three millennia. 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS XL 225: Introduction to South Asian Literatures
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). - Introduces basic methods of comparative literary study through close readings of some of the most influential texts of Indian and other South Asian literatures. Readings may include Shakuntala, The Ramayana, bhakti and Sufi literatures. 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.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Writing-Intensive Course
  • CAS XL 230: Topics in Big Fat Books
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120) - Enters deeply into the world of one literary work and explores its reverberations across national and disciplinary boundaries. Topic for Spring 2026, Section A1: Seeing and Believing: Narrative, Art, and Identity in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red. Explores this contemporary novel set in 16th-century Istanbul as a crossroads of literature, visual culture, philosophy. Examines how multiple narrators challenge conventional ideas of truth, authorship, artistic representation, and weave together elements of mystery, romance, and metafiction. †opic for Spring 2026, Section B1: Homer’s Iliad. Semester-long attentive reading of Homer’s Iliad (in English), the oldest work of Western literature. First-time readers today are finding that this epic of the Trojan War is not only absorbing and relevant, but important to them personally. Find out why. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Writing-Intensive Course..
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Writing-Intensive Course

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