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 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 588: Studies in African American Literature
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. - Topic for Spring 2026: Black Feminist Theory. Explores the dynamic nature of Black feminist theory. In doing so, we trouble the creative-critical divide by examining how objects of expression—novels, poems, visual art—function as sites of Black feminist theorizing in tandem with what is traditionally recognized as theory. By analyzing the diverse methodological approaches of the assigned texts, we grapple with the myriad ways Black feminist knowledge is produced.
• CAS EN 596: Studies in Literary Topics
  Undergraduate prerequisites: junior or senior standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Religious Lyric, Cinema of David Lynch. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
• 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 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 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 666: Critical Studies in Literature and Society
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Environmental Imaginaries, Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
• CAS EN 676: Critical Studies in Literature and Gender
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Introduces major movements and texts in gender and sexuality studies central to literary studies. Sub-topics include race, nationhood, family, erotics, the self, public/private spheres, and literary forms. Readings include theoretical works (feminist, queer, transgender, etc.), novels, graphic novels and films.
• CAS EN 677: Critical Studies: Black Diaspora Theory and Practice
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Explore "diaspora" as a keyword for black studies, intervene in the term's emergence, usage, and many theorizations. Beginning with Paul Gilroy's take on diasporic culture and consciousness, course goes on to complicate/extend/challenge through lens of black gender and sexuality studies. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Critical Thinking
  • The Individual in Community
• 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 for Fall 2024; Gender and Sexuality in the Neo-slave Narrative. Examines how neo-slave narratives intervene in the sexual and gendered silences of slave narratives and the power relations that produced them. Students who are hesitant to study depictions of sexual violence might consider taking another course.
• CAS EN 695: Critical Studies in Literary Topics
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Topic varies by semester. Past topics include Literature and Affect Theory, Multiethnic Speculative Fiction, Literature and Conceptions of Time, etc. Please see English Department's website or contact instructor for current topic.
• CAS EN 697: Critical Studies in Literature and Philosophy
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - Truth, beauty, reason, emotion, interpretation, justice, meaning--this course reads literature from specific philosophical perspectives, and understands philosophical texts using literary methods. It also examines historical, theoretical, and aesthetic relationships between literature and philosophy. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Critical Thinking
  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
• CAS EN 700: 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.
• CAS EN 705: Seminar: The Writing of Plays 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor, to whom one act or a full-length play must be s ubmitted in the period just before classes begin. - A workshop in the writing of plays. Manuscripts are read using professional actors from the Boston community, and plays are discussed in class. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment.
• CAS EN 706: Seminar: The Writing of Plays 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor, to whom one act or a full-length play must be s ubmitted during the period just before classes begin. - A workshop in the writing of plays. Manuscripts are read using professional actors from the Boston community, and plays are discussed in class. Individual conferences. Limited enrollment.
• CAS EN 716: Sonnet
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing. - This seminar foregrounds authors engaged on the wide-ranging experimentation that shaped the development of the sonnet as a verse-form in English between roughly the 1530s and the 1630s.
• CAS EN 720: Dramatic Theory and its Foundations
  An examination of dramatic theory and an exploration of essential elements of theatre and performance across cultures and eras, with an eye towards contemporary application.