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.

• CAS LS 508: The Structure of Spanish
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASLX250) AND one LS 300-level language course; or consent of instructor. - Introduction to Spanish morphology and syntax. Explores the structure of Spanish words, phrases, and sentences from multiple perspectives with a focus on natural language data. Examines Generative, Usage-based, and Lexical-Functional approaches to the analysis of grammatical structure. Conducted in Spanish. Also offered as CAS LX 384 and GRS LX 684.
• CAS LS 548: Topics in Text/Image/Spectacle in the Hispanic World
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: CASLS 350 and one CASLS 400-level course, or consent of instructor. - May be taken twice for credit if topics are different. Explores literature from the Spanish-speaking world and its relation to visual and performance art. Combines critical inquiry with creative practices to explore dynamics of influence, appropriation, and transformation across time and space. Topic for Fall 2025: The Middle Ages at the Movies. Investigates the history and legends of medieval Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) and their modern film and television adaptations. Close readings of medieval and modern narratives about the Cid, Averroes, Inês de Castro, and Isabel I of Castile reveal a historical imagination at work. Effective Fall 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation, Ethical Reasoning.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Creativity/Innovation
  • Ethical Reasoning
• CAS LS 557: Poetry of the Spanish Golden Age
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASLS350) and at least two 400-level LS course. - The development of lyric poetry during the Renaissance and the baroque period. Emphasis on close thematic, stylistic, and structural analysis of individual poems by major figures including Garcilaso, Fray Luis, San Juan de la Cruz, Góngora, and Quevedo.
• CAS LS 575: Topics in Peninsular Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: CASLS 350 and two LS 400-level literature courses or consent of the instructor. - May be taken twice for credit if topics are different.
• CAS LS 576: Topics in Spanish American Literature
  Prerequisites: CASLS 350 and two 400-level LS literature courses; or consent of instructor. - May be taken twice for credit if topics are different. Topic for Fall 2025: Ecocritical Literary Production in Latin America. Latin American literary and cultural production around ecocritical issues. Readings will range from chronicles, novels, poems and short stories produced between the 19th and 21st centuries, alongside ecofeminist and ecocritical theory.
• CAS LS 579: Topics in Hispanic Cinemas
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: CASLS 350 and at least two 400-level LS courses. – May be taken twice for credit if topics are different. Cinema as a perspective from which to analyze cultural and socio-political developments within the Spanish- speaking world. Topics drawn from the history of specific national cinemas, individual filmmakers or particular "schools," relations between literature and film, and political uses of film. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Critical Thinking
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
• CAS LY 572: Arabic Translation and Interpreting
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASLY304) - Graduate Prerequisites: three years of Arabic or consent of instructor. - Training in strategies of written translation between Arabic and English, and introduction to the challenges of oral interpreting. Exercises drawn from various contemporary materials including print and broadcast media as well as literary texts. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Critical Thinking.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • The Individual in Community
  • Oral and/or Signed Communication
• CAS MA 505: History of Mathematics
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA225 OR CASMA230) and (CASMA242 or CASMA442); or consent of instructor. - The development of mathematics from Antiquity through the 18th Century. Assuming background in modern mathematics, its roots are systematically pursued in terms of modern techniques, structures, and results. Providing the emergence of mathematical concepts and procedures, a coherent, unifying view of number, geometry, algebra, calculus, and mathematical analysis is presented. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Historical Consciousness.
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  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS MA 511: Introduction to Analysis I
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA225 OR CASMA230) - Graduate Prerequisites: (CASMA225 OR CASMA230) - Fundamental concepts of mathematical reasoning. Properties of the real-number system, elementary point-set theory, metric spaces. Limits, sequences, series, convergence, uniform convergence, continuity. Differentiability for functions of a single variable, Riemann-Stieltjes integration.
• CAS MA 512: Introduction to Analysis II
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA511) - Graduate Prerequisites: (CASMA511) - Background of CAS MA 511 used to develop further topics of calculus. Exponential and logarithmic functions, Taylor series, power series, real analytic functions. Differential and integral calculus for functions of several variables. Line and surface integrals, divergence theorem, Stokes's theorem, inverse and implicit function theorems, change of variables. Fourier analysis.
• CAS MA 531: Mathematical Logic
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA293) or consent of instructor. - Graduate Prerequisites: (CASMA293) or consent of instructor. - The investigation of logical reasoning with mathematical methods. The syntax and semantics of sentential logic and quantificational logic. The unifying Godel Completeness Theorem, and models of theories. A look at the Godel Incompleteness Theorem and its ramifications. Effective Fall 2018, 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 MA 532: Foundations of Mathematics
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA531) - Axiomatic set theory as a foundation for mathematics and as a field of mathematics: Axiom of Choice, the Continuum Hypothesis, and consistency results. Also offered as CAS PH 461.
• CAS MA 539: Methods of Scientific Computing
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA 225 or CASMA 230) & (CASMA 242 or CASMA 442) and programming experience or consent of instructor. - An introduction to topics including computational linear algebra, solutions of linear equations, numerical integration and solution of differential equations, finite element methods, and methods of stochastic simulation (i.e., Monte Carlo methods).
• CAS MA 541: Modern Algebra 1
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA242 OR CASMA442) - Basic properties of groups, Sylow theorems, basic properties of rings and ideals, Euclidean rings, polynomial rings.
• CAS MA 542: Modern Algebra II
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA541) or consent of instructor. - Vector spaces and modules, Galois theory, linear transformations and matrices, canonical forms, bilinear and quadratic forms.
• CAS MA 555: Numerical Analysis I
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA225 OR CASMA230) - Graduate Prerequisites: (CASMA225 OR CASMA230) - Numerical solutions of equations, iterative methods, analysis of sequences. Theory of interpolation and functional approximation, divided differences. Numerical differentiation and integration. Polynomial theory. Ordinary differential equations.
• CAS MA 556: Numerical Analysis II
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA555 & (CASMA242 OR CASMA442)) or consent of instructor. - Graduate Prerequisites: (CASMA555 & (CASMA242 OR CASMA442)) or consent of instructor. - Numerical linear algebra; norms, elimination methods, error analysis, conditioning, eigenvalues, iterative methods, least squares and nonlinear functional minimization. Partial differentiation equation boundary value and initial value problems. Finite element methods. Legendre and Chebyshev polynomials. Treatment in greater depth of selected topics from CAS MA 555.
• CAS MA 561: Methods of Applied Mathematics 1
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: CASMA 226 or CASMA 230 and CASMA 226 or CASMA231; or consent of instructor - Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Derivation and analysis of the classical equations of mathematical physics; heat equation, wave equation, and potential equation. Initial boundary value problems, method of separation of variables, eigenvalue problems, eigenfunction expansions. Fourier analysis. Existence and uniqueness of solution.
• CAS MA 562: Methods of Applied Mathematics 2
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA 225 or CASMA 230) and (CASMA 226 or CASMA 231) and (CASMA 242 or CASMA 442) or consent of instructor - Calculus of variations, first-order non-linear partial differential equations, Hamilton-Jacobi theory, Rayleigh-Ritz procedure, perturbation methods.
• CAS MA 563: Introduction to Differential Geometry
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASMA225 OR CASMA230) and (CASMA226 OR CASMA231) and (CASMA242 or CASMA442); or consent of i nstructor. - Study of local properties of curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space; curvature, torsion, Frenet equations, tangent and normal planes; first and second fundamental form; developable surfaces, principal, mean and Gaussian curvature; vector fields, covariant differentiation, geodesics, surfaces of constant curvature.