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 EN 513: Modern English Grammar and Style
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. - This course shows how to systematically analyze grammar and style of sentences and longer units of discourse. Explores academic and popular debates on grammar and grammar instruction and helps the student become a better speaker and writer.
• CAS EN 517: Drama in Theory and Practice 1: Structure and the Script
  Prerequisites: By consent of instructor, to whom a short play or scene from a play must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. - Structure and the Contemporary Script. A comparison and analysis of the design of plays from the last two decades, encouraging students to imitate the form, character, and plot from these plays while experimenting with their own narrative structures. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation. Effective Fall 2026 this course no longer carries HUB units.
• CAS EN 519: Drama in Theory and Practice 2: Experiments with Character and Form
  Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor, to whom a short play or scene from a play must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. - Course includes the reading and analysis of dramatic works. Classes allow experimentation with the full-length monologue and small cast plays while giving attention to dramatic structure and style. Students present their own work in a workshop format, and material is critiqued in class. Students also attend performances and write critiques of professional productions. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation. Effective Fall 2026 this course no longer carries HUB units.
• CAS EN 520: Drama in Theory and Practice 3: Adaptation and the Theatre
  Prerequisites: Consent of instructor, to whom a short play or scene from a play must be submitted during the period just before classes begin. - This playwriting seminar focuses on translation versus adaptation, comparing the two, and culling material from other writing genres. Focusing on tone, imagery, stage design, and language, students write their own stage adaptations as well as read various texts translated from World Theatre. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation. Effective Fall 2026 this course no longer carries HUB units.
• CAS EN 604: History of Literary Criticism 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate 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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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
• CAS EN 606: History of Literary Criticism II
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Survey of literary critical perspectives and trends in humanistic theory relevant to literary interpretation from the middle of the twentieth century onward, including formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, gender studies, new historicism, and post-colonial studies. Frequent writing assignments of various lengths. 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 637: Thinking with Animals
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. In literary texts, animals appear as tricksters, clueless victims, predatory men, eloquent captives, and heroic matriarchs. This course analyzes narratives about animals in Anglo-American philosophy, science, and literature. Human myths about animals and the supremacy of the human are central to beliefs about race, gender, and private property. Focuses on animals as food, embodied mindedness, environmental justice, and ecological thinking.
• CAS EN 652: Asian American Studies: Theory and Methods
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - A brief overview of the theories and methods of Asian American studies, reading theory, literature, history, culture, sociology, and legal study to define a mode of inquiry and action inspired by a legacy of activism and survival from the Asian diaspora. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings.
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  • The Individual in Community
  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
• CAS EN 653: Native American and Indigenous Studies: Theories and Methods
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. An overview of the theories and methods of Native American and Indigenous studies. Focusing in particular on Indigenous Critical Theory, this course reads and discusses ideas from disciplines including history, law, literature, film and media studies, museum studies, and environmental studies to discuss how Native peoples advocate for issues important to Indian Country and to global Indigenous communities.
• CAS EN 665: Critical Studies in Literature and Society
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Fables and Tales, Appropriation and Performance, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
• CAS EN 671: Critical Studies in American Literary Movements
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Transatlantic Revolutions, Reading U.S. Empire, etc. Please see the English Department's website for the current topic.
• CAS EN 673: Critical Studies in Literary Genres
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Narratives of Illness, The Artist Novel, etc. Please see the English Department's website for the current topic.
• CAS EN 674: Critical Studies in Literary Genres
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Marriage and Money in American Fiction, Early Modern Women Authors, The Origin of Love, etc. Please see the English Department's website for the current topic.
• CAS EN 675: Critical Studies in Literature and Gender
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate 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 680: Critical Studies of American Writers
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include American Literature and Pragmatism, etc. Please see the English Department's website for the current topic.
• CAS EN 682: Critical Studies in Modern Literature
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Introduction to philosophical and historical approaches to the study of global literature outside Europe and North America. Themes addressed include individual and social development, historical reflection, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, cultural identity, the impact of socio- economic forces Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings and Aesthetic Exploration.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
• CAS EN 686: Studies in Anglophone Literature
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. Topics vary. Past topics include Comparative Readings in Postcolonial Literature, Anglophone Caribbean Poetry. Please see English Department’s website for current topic.
• CAS EN 688: Critical Studies in African American Literature
  Undergrad prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. Graduate prerequisites: graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Gender and Sexuality in the Neo-slave Narrative, Black Women in Life and Writing, etc. Please see the English Department’s website for the current topic.
• CAS EN 694: A1 Critical Studies in Literature and the Arts
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior status. Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - May be repeatable for credit as topics vary. Past topics include Film Language and Narrative Theory, Music and Poetry, Poetry and Visual Arts. Please see English Department's Website for current topic.
• CAS EN 695: Critical Studies in Literary Topics
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Fables and Tales, etc. Please see the English Department's website for the current topic.