English

• CAS EN 394: Cultures of Science
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing.
  This course explores the shared cultures of the sciences and literature from the Enlightenment through the Victorian eras in Britain and Europe. We combine the history of science, the social history of literature and related arts, and sociology of knowledge. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Social Inquiry II.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS EN 395: Race, Sex and Science Fiction
  Science fiction has always been engaged in complex conversations about culture and the fate of the human species. This course takes seriously the presence of issues such as race, sex and gender, which have become increasingly foregrounded in the genre.
• CAS EN 396: Resistance, Revolution, and Slavery in African American Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: one previous literature course or junior or senior standing.
  Focuses on African American literature before the Thirteenth Amendment, paying particular attention to the practices, institutions, and ideologies of abolitionism and slavery as domestic and global systems. We read novels, autobiographies, poems, speeches, and essays that resisted slavery in various registers--political, religious, philosophical, and artistic.
• CAS EN 401: Senior Independent Work
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: approval of Honors Committee.
  
• CAS EN 402: Senior Independent Work
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: approval of Honors Committee.
  
• CAS EN 404: Literary Criticism I
  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.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Aesthetic Exploration
• CAS EN 406: 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.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
• CAS EN 465: Critical Studies in Literature and Society
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Two previous literature courses or junior or senior status.
  Topic for Fall 2019: Hamlet/Lear/Macbeth: Appropriation and Performance. Historical context, performance histories, and appropriations and transformations of Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. Films, novels, plays from England, France, Germany, Russia, Australia, Japan, US. Theoretical analysis of intertextuality, cultural politics, canon formation, globalization of culture.
• CAS EN 466: Critical Studies in Literature and Society
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Two previous literature courses or junior or senior status.
  Topic for Fall 2019: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. Considers the first century of black Atlantic literature, including poetry and prose by Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and Frederick Douglass. How did these writers represent the early modern world? How did they work to change it?
• CAS EN 471: Critical Studies in American Literary Movements
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Two previous literature courses or junior or senior status.
  Transatlantic Revolutions. An introduction to the literatures and histories of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, focusing on the historical conditions that unite the Atlantic World into a united yet heterogeneous culture. Readings include Defoe, Franklin, Paine, Louverture, Christophe, Vastey, Wollstonecraft, Bronte, and Melville. 4 cr. Either sem. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Research and Information Literacy
• CAS EN 473: Critical Studies in Literary Genres
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Two previous literature courses or junior or senior status.
  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.
• CAS EN 474: Critical Studies in Literary Genres
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Spring 2018: 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. Also offered as CAS WS 300 A1 and CAS XL 381 A1.
• CAS EN 475: Critical Studies in Literature and Gender
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior 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.
• CAS EN 477: Critical Studies: Black Diaspora Theory and Practice
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior 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.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • The Individual in Community
  • Critical Thinking
• CAS EN 480: Critical Studies in American Writers
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior 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).
• CAS EN 481: Performative Text and Design
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior 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.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Digital/Multimedia Expression
  • Creativity/Innovation
• CAS EN 482: Critical Studies in Modern Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Fall 2020: Approaches to the Postcolonial Novel. An exploration of character and context in key works of postcolonial literature. We will read secondary works that discuss the theories and histories of this diverse body of work. Authors may include Salih, Naipaul, Shanbhag, Adichie, Mueenuddin, Bulawayo, Marechera. 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.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Aesthetic Exploration
• CAS EN 483: Critical Studies in Literature and Ethnicity
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  May be repeated for credit as topics vary. 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.
• CAS EN 484: Critical Studies in Literature and Ethnicity
  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.
• CAS EN 488: Critical Studies in African American Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Fall 2020: 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.