English

• CAS EN 538: Teaching American Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  This course focuses on teaching American literature at the high school level. Goals include building a knowledge base in American literary history, modeling deep learning with selected texts, addressing theoretical questions in English Language Arts pedagogy, and learning practical classroom skills. 4 cr. 1st sem. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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  • The Individual in Community
  • Teamwork/Collaboration
• CAS EN 542: The Rise of the Novel
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  The development of prose fiction in England through the eighteenth century. Major themes and genres in works by Behn, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Lennox, Austen, and Sterne.
• CAS EN 546: The Modern American Novel
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing; and First-Year Writing (WR 120 or equivalent).
  Topics vary from semester to semester but this course may be taken only once for credit. Topic for Fall 2021: Representative Works 1900 - 1950. Novelistic responses to American modernity, centered on idea that "the color line" is its central feature. How does racism structure modern economic, social, cultural change? Authors: James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Willa Cather, Faulkner, Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS EN 548: Joyce & After
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Readings in transatlantic modernism (Irish, British, American) from 1922 forward. Joyce's Ulysses is central. Other readings from authors such as James Baldwin, Alison Bechdel, Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bishop, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and Virginia Woolf. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Aesthetic Exploration.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Ethical Reasoning
• CAS EN 564: Studies in Auteur Filmmaking
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing; and First-Year Writing (WR 120 or equivalent).
  Intensive study of a single filmmaker or group of filmmakers, paying special attention to theoretical problems of authorship and artistic control. How do filmmakers respond to studio pressure, historical events or government censorship? How do personal styles develop and transform in a collaborative medium? What does it mean to think of the director or writer or producer of a film as its author? Topic for Spring 2021: Kubrick. Intensive study of Stanley Kubrick's films. Readings include novels he adapted (Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining), thematically relevant fiction, and critical essays. Topics to be considered: black comedy, visionary experience, utopic misanthropy. Weekly screenings. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Aesthetic Exploration, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS EN 569: Film and Media Theory
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing; and First-Year Writing (WR 120 or equivalent).
  Introduction to film and media theory as a mode of inquiry. What happens when we render the world as an image? How do cinematic images differ from other forms of image-making? What does it mean to be a spectator? Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS EN 572: Studies in American Literary Movements
  Topic for Fall 2013: Transnational American Studies. Drawing on examples from literature, history, art, photography, and architecture, this course explores the global origins of American culture. Topics include the immigrant experience; tourism; internationalism; and cultural crossings between Japan and the US in the late nineteenth century. Also offered as CAS AM 501.
• CAS EN 574: Studies in Literary Genres
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Fall 2019: Crime & Detection. Poetics, politics, culture, and ideology of fictional crime and detection. Focus texts to be chosen from works by Poe, Doyle, Christie, Hammett, Chandler, Cain, and Himes, among others. Practical and theoretical critics include Lacan, Todorov, Brooks, Irwin, Auden, and Zizek.
• CAS EN 584: Studies in Literature and Ethnicity
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Fall 2019: Literature of the Migrant. A reading of eleven novels that bear on human migrations. Besides examining major issues, a focus on how these books were made. Some of the texts are translations, but most of them are by American authors.
• CAS EN 586: Studies in Anglophone Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing; and First-Year Writing (WR 120 or equivalent).
  Caribbean Poetry. Study of twentieth-century Caribbean poetry written in English(es), surveying anthologies and concentrating on major figures (Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison, Eric Roach). Emphases: the function of poets in small societies, and their choices concerning linguistic and aesthetic traditions. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing- Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS EN 587: Studies in African American Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: GRS students only.
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS students only.
  Topic for Spring 2020: Music and Culture: Race and Sound. It is only recently that sound itself has been identified as a sphere for studying the construction of race. This class focuses on the relationships between music, sound and race, but also on intersections with literature, media, and sexuality.
• CAS EN 588: Studies in African American Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Spring 2020: Tracking Changes in the Twentieth-Century African American Novel: Negotiations of Genre and Gender. Readings of Slave Narratives and Neo Slave Narratives, and the Urban Novel. Authors include Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Walter Mosley.
• CAS EN 590: Studies in Comparative Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing,
  Topic for Spring 2020: Marxist Cultural Criticism. An introduction to Marxist cultural criticism. Starting with foundational Marxist writings about culture (Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser, and Adorno), examines how key concepts from the tradition get reformulated by Jameson, Spivak, Said, Zizek, and other contemporary critics to bear on questions of race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, modernity, and language.
• CAS EN 593: Studies in Literature and the Arts
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  Topic for Spring 2020: On The Road in U.S. Literature and Film. Course "puts the geography of the United States in motion" (Nabokov, Lolita) exploring why characters take to the road and what happens when they do. Novels by Hemingway, Salinger, Capote, Nabokov, Robinson. Films by Ford, Hitchcock, Lumet, Scott, Pierce.
• CAS EN 594: Studies in Literature and the Arts
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing.
  NOTE: Class is currently on the Student Link as CAS EN 594 but will soon be changed to CAS EN 564. Topic for EN 564, Spring 2021: Kubrick. Intensive study of Stanley Kubrick's films. Readings include novels he adapted (Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining), thematically relevant fiction, and critical essays. Topics to be considered: black comedy, visionary experience, utopic misanthropy. Weekly screenings.