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 AH 596: Seminar: Contemporary Art
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior or senior standing, or consent of instructor. - Rotating topics in art, criticism and theory since 1960. Examines major themes such as formalism, minimalism, conceptual art, the neo-avant-garde, art and politics, postmodernism and globalization in their social and political contexts. Topic for Fall 2025: Contemporary Exhibition Practices. This seminar explores how, over the past forty years, artists, curators, critics, and architects have played various roles in the expansion of large-scale exhibitions and the emergence of new museums of contemporary art around the world.
• CAS AH 727: Colloquium in Chinese Art
  Graduate Corequisites: (GRSAH728) - (Students must also register for required co-req GRS AH 728.) This graduate-level colloquium will critically examine issues of Chinese art covered in AH327 Arts of China. Special attention will be given to recent scholarship that engages with Chinese art in a greater socio-cultural context. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Research and Information Literacy. Must attend MWF section with AH327.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Research and Information Literacy
• CAS AH 733: Colloquium in Greek Art and Architecture
  Graduate Corequisites: (CASAH 734) - (Students must also register for required co-requisite CASAH 734.) This graduate-level colloquium will critically examine issues of Greek Classical art and architecture covered in AH333 Arts of Classical Greece. It fulfills the art-historical methodologies requirement for MA students.
• CAS AH 734: Colloquium in Greek Art and Architecture Discussion
  Graduate Corequisites: (GRSAH733) - Required discussion section for students registered in CASAH 733. Students must also register for CASAH 733.
• CAS AH 791: Colloquium: Contemporary Art and Globalization
  Rotating topics in modern and contemporary art. In addition to weekly meetings, students audit lectures in AH391, 392, or 393, depending on the colloquium topic, gaining a broad understanding of international developments in art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
• CAS AH 805: Professional Development and Placement Seminar
  Graduate Prerequisites: completion of PhD oral exam. - Offers advanced PhD students the opportunity to present and discuss works-in-progress and structured guidance for the tasks involved in academic and curatorial job applications.
• CAS AH 853: Renaissance Portraiture
  This seminar will consider some aspect of early modern art and/or architecture in Italy. Specific topic varies each semester.
• CAS AH 863: Seminar: Baroque Art and Architecture
  A World Art: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art in Global and Material Perspectives. Explores the so-called “Golden Age” of Dutch art from the perspectives of the global and material turns in art history. Classes are conducted at the MFA's Center for Netherlandish Art.
• CAS AH 867: Material Culture
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor. - Introduction to the theory and practice of the interdisciplinary study of material culture, which includes everything we make and use, from food and clothing to art and buildings. Explores contemporary scholarship from a range of disciplines. Also offered as GRSAM 867.
• CAS AH 887: Seminar: American Art
  May be repeated for credit as topics change. Topic for Fall 2025, Section A1: Crafting Counterculture in America's Information Age. This seminar explores various countercultures within the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Students learn about analog and technology-based craft practices alongside burgeoning media theories to consider how makers interrupted the status quo through artistic innovation and experimentation.
• CAS AH 891: Seminar: Photography
  Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor. - Historical, archival, and theoretical examinations of photography, with emphasis on its role both as document and as art. Topic for Fall 2024: The Photographic Book. Examines the photographic book from 1839 to present. Concentrates on the book as a unique form for the medium. Study image/text relationships, narrative structures, cultural constructions of message, serial quality of grouped images, and differences/similarities between literary and photographic languages.
• CAS AH 895: Seminar: Contemporary Commemorative Art in Latin America
  This seminar studies symbolic reparations within the Inter-American human rights system and relates it to commemorative artistic practices. It raises questions about the values and limitations of art for social healing in contexts of gross violations of human rights.
• CAS AM 735: Studies in American Culture
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Introduction to handling of primary materials from a number of disciplines in order to develop an American Studies perspective. Required of all American Studies PhD students.
• CAS AM 736: The Literature of American Studies
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Introduction to classic problems in the interpretation of American society and culture. Required of all American Studies PhD students.
• CAS AM 775: Independent Research Project Colloquium
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Preservation Studies master's student standing. - Restricted to students in their final semester of the Preservation Studies Master's Program. Provides for the research and writing of an independent, rigorous, and original capstone project in the preservation field, with guidance from faculty.
• CAS AM 867: Material Culture
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor. - Introduction to the theory and practice of the interdisciplinary study of material culture, which includes everything we make and use, from food and clothing to art and buildings. Explore contemporary scholarship from a range of disciplines. Also offered as GRS AH 867.
• CAS AM 899: Professional Development Seminar
  Graduate Prerequisites: Completion of required coursework. - A seminar offering advanced AMNESP PhD students the opportunity to present and discuss works-in-progress and structured guidance for the tasks involved in job applications. Open to PhD students after completing required coursework. Does not fulfill PhD course requirements.
• CAS AN 506: Regional Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: one archaeology course or consent of instructor. - Graduate Prerequisites: one archaeology course or consent of instructor. - Use of advanced computer (GIS) techniques to address regional archaeological problems. This applied course examines digital encoding and manipulation of archaeological and environmental data, and methods for testing hypotheses, analyzing, and modeling the archaeological record. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Historical Consciousness
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS AN 508: Landscape Archaeology
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or 120) - A seminar-style introduction to "landscape archaeology," a theoretical and methodological approach that explores how past and present communities create (and are in turn affected by) "cultural landscapes" formed through the interplay of sociocultural values and the natural environment. Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Critical Thinking
  • Social Inquiry I
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS AN 510: Proposal Writing for Social Science Research
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Graduate Prerequisites: graduate student standing in the social sciences or humanities. - Workshop-based course designed to turn students' intellectual interests into answerable, field-based research questions. Goal is the production of a doctoral level research project proposal and/or dissertation prospectus.