English
View courses in
- English
- All Departments
- African American & Black Diaspora Studies
- African Studies: African Languages: Akan Twi, Amharic, Igbo, Kiswahili (Swahili), Wolof, isiXhosa, Yoruba, isiZulu
- African Studies: Culture (in English)
- American Studies
- Anthropology
- Arabic: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Archaeology
- Astronomy
- Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Chinese: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Cinema & Media Studies
- Classical Studies: incl. Classical Civilization and Tradition (in English), Ancient Greek, and Latin
- Classical Studies: Modern Greek
- Comparative Literature
- Computer Science
- Core Curriculum
- Earth & Environment
- Economics
- Editorial Studies
- English
- First Year Experience
- French: Language, Literature, Linguistics, Culture (including courses in English)
- German: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Hebrew: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Hindi-Urdu: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- History
- History of Art & Architecture
- Interdisciplinary Studies
- International Relations
- Internships & Experiential Learning
- Italian: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Japanese: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Jewish Studies
- Korean: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Linguistics
- Literary Translation
- Marine Science
- Mathematics & Statistics
- Natural Sciences
- Neuroscience
- Persian (Farsi): Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Political Science
- Portuguese: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Psychological & Brain Sciences
- Religion
- Russian: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Senior Year Development
- Sociology
- Spanish: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Turkish: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)
- Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
- Writing
-
CAS EN 354: The Poetry of War
Undergraduate prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CAS WR 100 or WR 120). - Survey of narrative, lyric, and dramatic forms of war poetry, mostly in English, beginning with mythic war and then responding to four modern wars: the American Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, and the American war in Vietnam. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Writing Intensive. -
CAS EN 356: Drama and Performance, 1945 - Present
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - 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. -
CAS EN 360: Toni Morrison's American Times
Using historical and literary sources to make visible the interactions between the world of the novel and that of American history, the course examines how Morrison's Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, and Love depict crucial times in American history. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. -
CAS EN 361: Auteurs at Work
This course surveys the work of one or two auteurs, paying special attention to the aesthetic dimensions of their films. Alongside the study of films, students explore the work of auteurs by collaborating to make a short film. Topic for Fall 2025: Explores the work of Maya Deren, a filmmaker who serves as an exemplar of American Independent filmmaking. With special attention to questions of authorship, artistic control, budget constraints, alternative distribution networks, and aesthetic vision. Films by Deren, Lynch, Cocteau, Hammer, Spielberg, and others. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single requirement in each of the following BU HUB areas: Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS EN 363: Shakespeare I
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - 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. -
CAS EN 364: Shakespeare 2
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - 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 Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. -
CAS EN 365: Studies in Non-Cinematic Media
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - This course explores the economic, political, and aesthetic implications of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How does the MCU's interlocking multimedia meganarrative give the impression of a 'universe,' and how does that universe interact with the one we live in? Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS EN 369: Haruki Murakami and His Sources
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - Students read works by Haruki Murakami and by writers who shaped him or were shaped by him, reflect on the nature of intertextuality, and gain a perspective on contemporary literature as operating within a global system of mutual influence. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS EN 370: Introduction to African American Women Writers
Undergraduate Prerequisites: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 120) - Examines the African American female literary tradition through selected texts by African American women, written from slavery to the present. Themes include Women in Bondage (Harriet Jacobs and Octavia Butler); Into the Twentieth Century (Frances E. W. Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gwendolyn Brooks); and The Diaspora (Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Paule Marshall). Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Critical Thinking, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Writing-Intensive Course. -
CAS EN 373: Detective Fiction
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - Major writers in the history of literary crime and detection, mainly British and American, with attention to the genre's cultural contexts and development from the eighteenth century to the present, as well as the literary features and standards of aesthetic evaluation of works in this genre. Authors may include Godwin, Poe, Conan Doyle, Chandler, contemporary authors. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. -
CAS EN 375: Special Topics in Cinema and Media Studies
Explores topics in cinema & media studies - May be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Fall 2026: Black Horror. -
CAS EN 377: Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - An exploration of the literature of the "New Negro Renaissance" or, more popularly, the Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1935. Discussions of essays, fiction, and poetry, three special lectures on the stage, the music, and the visual arts of the Harlem Renaissance. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. -
CAS EN 385: Auteur Filmmaking
Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., EN 120 or WR 100 or WR 120). - Topic for Spring 2025: Section A1: Céline Sciamma & Sébastian Lifshitz. This course centers on the fiction films of Céline Sciamma and the documentaries of Sébastien Lifshitz, two contemporary French auteurs who explore themes of childhood, female adolescence, gender identity, and LGBTQ representation. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration. -
CAS EN 390: Topics in Comparative Literature
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - May be repeated for credit as topic varies. Topic for Fall 2026: This course examines the development of the Western epic tradition from Homer to Milton through a comparative study of that tradition’s transformation across shifting literary and historical contexts. -
CAS EN 393: Technoculture and Horizons of Gender and Race
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. - Explores new media theory, postmodernist thought, social media, and video games to confront gender, race, and sexuality. Through critical reading, writing, and hands-on digital technology use, students consider how race, sexuality, and gender live in virtual worlds. Also offered as CAS WS 393. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Digital/Multimedia Expression. -
CAS EN 398: Global Shakespeares
Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. - Why do contemporary writers parrot and parody "Shakespeare," and how much of this activity is about Shakespeare at all? This seminar provides an introduction to reading and writing about Shakespeare's plays. But it also takes a step back to consider Shakespeare as a phenomenon, inspiring adapters around the world. Beyond learning about particular offshoots and adaptations, the deeper point is to explore how playwrights think about their sources, their audiences, and their art. Effective Summer 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy. -
CAS EN 401: Senior Independent Work
Undergraduate Prerequisites: approval of Honors Committee. - SR INDEP WORK -
CAS EN 402: Senior Independent Work
Undergraduate Prerequisites: approval of Honors Committee. - SR INDEP WORK -
CAS EN 404: History of Literary Criticism 1
Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior 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. -
CAS EN 406: History of Literary Criticism II
Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. - Survey of recent literary critical theory. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings.
