Courses
The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. 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.
View courses in
- All Departments
- All Departments
- African American Studies
- American & New England Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Astronomy
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Classical Studies
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Earth & Environment
- Economics
- English
- History
- History of Art & Architecture
- International Relations
- Linguistics
- Literary Translation
- Mathematics & Statistics
- Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Playwriting
- Political Science
- Portuguese
- Psychological & Brain Sciences
- Religion
- Romance Studies
- Sociology
- Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
- Writing
-
CAS HI 151: The Emerging United States to 1865
Explores how the United States, at first only a series of borderland outposts, became a sprawling national republic. Investigates factors that brought Americans together and those that tore them apart, as they struggled passionately over racial, religious, and sectional values. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I. -
CAS HI 152: The Emerging United States Since 1865
After the Civil War, Americans created a new urbanizing and industrializing landscape, flush with immigrants, growing class conflict, and racial divisions. This course explores how, through times of prosperity, depression, and war, Americans transformed the United States into one of the world's leading nations. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 175: World History to 1500
Explores historical and environmental factors influencing how cultures take shape and impact each other. Examines early global connections and conflicts between people of different continents as well as between humans, other species, the natural environment, and the planet as a whole. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 176: World History 1500-Present
Examines the religious encounters, economic rivalries, and military battles produced by European imperialism in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia since 1500. Analyzes how European colonialism came to dominate the world and nationalist movements succeeded in gaining independence. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy. -
CAS HI 190: History of Boston: Community and Conflict
Explores the history of Boston and the city's changes over time. Students work with archival objects, maps, and manuscripts. Topics include Native American history, colonial settlement, revolution, immigration, urban development, and race. Students visit nearby historical sites and museums. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS HI 191: What Is Europe?
Explores key moments in history when cultural contact prompted Europeans to reconsider how they defined themselves culturally and geographically. Lectures and discussions are combined with trips to local museums/archives to analyze the material remains of this process of self-definition. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration. -
CAS HI 200: The Historian's Craft
Required workshop for majors, normally taken in the sophomore year. Gives students the opportunity to analyze original sources and engage with leading works of historical scholarship. Explores how historians reconstruct and interpret the past using creativity, deduction, and contextual analysis. -
CAS HI 201: History of Medieval Europe
Traces the evolution of medieval civilization from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Emphasizes three main themes: the political and social development of western Europe, the evolution of Latin Christianity, and the role of popular culture. -
CAS HI 203: Magic, Science, and Religion
Boundaries and relationships between magic, science, and religion in Europe from antiquity through the Enlightenment. Explores global cultural exchange, distinctions across social, educational, gender, and religious lines, the rise of modern science, and changing assumptions about God, Nature, and humanity. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking. -
CAS HI 204: History of the Crusades
The origin and development of the Crusade movement in Western Christendom: the first four Crusades, their cause and results; crusader finance, preaching, and military recruitment; changing focus of Crusade movements from the Holy Land to other areas. -
CAS HI 205: Gender and Sexuality in Judaism
Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120).
Explores the role of gender and sexuality in Judaism and Jewish experience, historically and in the present. Subjects include constructions of masculinity and femininity, attitudes toward (and uses of) the body and sexuality, gendered nature of religious practice and authority. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 207: Game of Thrones: Power and Politics in Pre-Modern Europe
This course employs medieval and early modern authors, as well as contemporary scholars, as vehicles for understanding the dynamics of power, gender, violence and politics in George Martin's novel, Game of Thrones. Effective Fall 2023 this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation. -
CAS HI 208: Renaissance Europe
The main political, socioeconomic, intellectual, and artistic currents in Italy (c. 1350-1530) and northwestern Europe (c. 1500-1560); emphasis on leading thinkers (Petrarch, Bruni, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, and Montaigne) as creators of the modern Western mind. -
CAS HI 209: The Reformation: Religious Conflict in Early Modern Europe
Examines religious change in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, particularly the origins and causes of the Protestant Reformation, the parallel Catholic Reformation, and the consequent military conflicts in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Also offered as CAS RN 310. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I. -
CAS HI 210: Europe between Renaissance and Revolution
Surveys the key movements that transformed European culture, politics, and intellectual life between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries: the Renaissance, Protestant and Catholic Reformations, new age of science and exploration, absolutism and constitutional monarchy, Enlightenment, and French Revolution. -
CAS HI 214: History of Piracy
Examines piracy in European history from ancient time to the present, focusing on its economic and social causes, and its consequences. Addresses too the modern permutations of piracy as a form of social protest and a technique of terrorism. -
CAS HI 215: The European Enlightenment
How Europe became modern. The rise of science, critique of religion, and struggle for rights. The public sphere emerges: newspapers, Freemasons, coffee, salons, smut. The invention of a cosmopolitan republic of letters; Voltaire, Diderot, Kant, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin. 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. -
CAS HI 218: Power and Authority in Europe since World War I
Explores the breakdown of traditional authority, the rise of authoritarianism, and the triumph of democracy in twentieth-century Europe. Examines changing notions of power and legitimacy through major events, including communist revolutions, fascist takeovers, wartime occupations, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness. -
CAS HI 221: Catastrophe & Memory
Examines the ways in which catastrophes, both natural and social, enter into cultural memory. Goal is to understand how events that seem to defy comprehension are represented in works of art and given a place in the memory of a culture. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. -
CAS HI 226: Cities and Cultures
Examines the relationship between cultural expression and political, social, and economic change by focusing on cities such as Boston, Paris, London, Casablanca, and Johannesburg during times of intense creativity and upheaval.
