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 732: Transatlantic Literature and the History of Print, 1700-1900
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - A theoretical and historical examination of transatlantic literature, with a focus on capitalism, aesthetics, and print culture. Readings in Marx, Weber, Raymond Williams, Benedict Anderson, Paul Gilroy, Defoe, Franklin, Wheatley, Equiano, Wordsworth, Austen, Irving, Bronte, Melville, and James.
• CAS EN 738: Special Topics: Race and Literature
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. Topic varies by semester. Please see English Department's website for current description. This course asks: what can political theory of racial capitalism offer to an analysis of contemporary cultural production? How can literature and media deepen our understanding of the relationship between economic exploitation and the production of race itself?
• CAS EN 743: Narrative and Literary Conceptions of Time
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Pairing narrative theory with history of science, this course asks how writers from Dickens to Woolf jolt their readers out of everyday time scales, setting a human lifespan next to millions of years or a tenth of a second.
• CAS EN 747: Topics in British Literature
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. Topic varies by semester. Please see English Department's website for current description.
• CAS EN 749: Environmental Humanities
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - The environmental humanities explore how humans interact with other-than-human beings and forces conceived of as "nature" or "environment" in Western modernity, decentering the human as the central agent of Earthly life at precisely the moment when faced with the Anthropocene.
• CAS EN 766: Milton Now
  Explores Milton's work and the current formation of "Milton studies," focusing on four interrelated topics: modes of reading, historicism, secularism, and gender and sexuality. Asks how and why we read Milton now, engaging conversations about the fate of the humanities.
• CAS EN 767: Topics in American Literature
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. Explores various topics related to American literature and culture, broadly conceived. Topic varies by semester. Please see English Department's website for current description.
• CAS EN 771: The Novel in Theory and History
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - An inquiry into the state of novel theory today and the problem of accounting for the emergence of prose fiction in male and female, Christian and non-Christian, Western and Eastern, Neoclassical and Enlightenment authors between 1650 and 1800.
• CAS EN 777: American Popular Writing
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Survey of best-selling writing (fiction, poetry, journalism, and otherwise) from the American Revolution to late nineteenth century. Questions of race, class, gender, literary conventionality, canonicity, sentimentalism and "reform." Possible authors include Rowson, Cooper, Douglass, Stowe, Alger, Longfellow, Barnum, Twain.
• CAS EN 788: Transnational Modernism
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - This interdisciplinary course explores how globalization shaped the emergence of modernist styles in the U.S. and the Caribbean. Topics include transatlantic migration; the effects of mobilization and world war; the rise of black internationalism; and modernist indebtedness to Asian cultures.
• CAS EN 792: Introduction to Recent Critical Theory and Method
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Selective survey of recent literary theory and method. Representative topics: Post- Structuralism; Marxism; Frankfurt School; Film Studies; New Historicism; Science and Technology Studies; Performance Theory; Genre; Post-Colonial Studies; Book History; Gender Theory; Disability Studies.
• CAS EN 794: Professional Seminar
  Graduate Prerequisites: English PhD students in their final semester of coursework. - Developing professional skills and preparing for advanced independent scholarship for English doctoral students in the last semester of coursework. Course includes preparation for comprehensive exam and dissertation prospectus; conference paper submission; publication; fellowship and job applications.
• CAS EN 795: World Literature: Theory and History
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - We consider whether postcolonial studies might be expanded to include approaches whose primary aim is not to "subvert" empire. Imperial histories as well as Anglophone fictions and autobiographies by minorities will be studied with this in mind.
• CAS EN 799: Topics in Contemporary Literature and Culture
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. Explores texts, contexts, and theories that have shaped contemporary literary cultures. Interconnections between modern and contemporary literatures alongside theoretical paradigms such as critical studies of gender, race, sexualities, and class, global and comparative approaches to challenges, aesthetic experimentation, and more.
• CAS EN 993: Directed Study in English
  DS ENGLISH 1
• CAS EN 994: Directed Study in English
  DS ENGLISH 2
• CAS EN 996: Directed Study in Play Production
  Graduate Prerequisites: thesis-level student in the MFA in Playwriting. - Directed study devoted to production of the student's thesis play.
• CAS HI 500: Topics in History
  May be repeated for credit as topics vary. Topics for Spring 2026 - Section A1: Indigenous Cinematic Pasts and Futures. Examines how Indigenous Peoples have interacted, influenced, and involved themselves in cinema from 1894 to the present, exploring concepts of visual sovereignty, cultural activism, and Indigenous futurism. Throughout the course, we examine the arguments pertaining to three central questions on visual sovereignty. Section B1: The Life, Times and Work of W. E. B. Du Bois. Traces the life, intellectual career and dominant themes animating the art and activism of W. E. B. Du Bois. Historically contextualizes Du Bois and his work to demonstrate his importance to Black Studies and African diasporic history. Section C1: African City Life. Explores the lives of Africans in urban areas during different historical periods. Examines cities as sites of political, social, and cultural innovation, debates and negotiations among urban residents, and the relationship between urban and rural spaces.
• CAS HI 502: Drafts of History: Reporting, Revising, and Renewing Modern US History
  Considers episodes from US history, comparing initial reports and subsequent historical accounts. Analyzes how new evidence alters understanding of events, but also how different eras ask different questions about the past, interrogate different sources, and appeal to different audiences. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry 2, Oral and/or Signed Communication.
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  • Oral and/or Signed Communication
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS HI 503: Race, Ethnicity, and Childhood in US History
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar. - The history of childhood in US History intersects with the interdisciplinary area of childhood studies. Within that, the histories of Black children and children of ethnic minorities and historically marginalized young people is a burgeoning subfield. This course examines how identities inclusive of (and structural inequities associated with) race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexuality have differently affected the lives and experiences of young people in the United States from the colonial period through to the 21st century. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness (HCO), Creativity/Innovation.
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  • Creativity/Innovation
  • Historical Consciousness
  • Writing-Intensive Course