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.
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  • 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 501: Research Seminar in American Studies
  American Studies majors and minors complete their program of study by undertaking a one- or two-semester (AM 501 and/or AM 502) senior project based on original research or criticism. Topics vary by semester. Topic for Fall 2026. Section B1: Adaptive Reuse. Effective Fall 2023, 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 AM 502: Research Seminar in American Studies
  Prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar. - American Studies majors and minors complete their program of study by undertaking a one- or two-semester (CASAM 501 and/or AM 502) senior project based on original research or criticism. Topics vary by semester. Topics for Spring 2027: Section A1: Preservation and the Vernacular Environment. Section B1: Film Theory & Methodology Effective Spring 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Writing-Intensive, Research and Information Literacy.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS AM 505: The American South in History, Literature, and Film
  Explores the American South through literature, film, and other sources. Considers what, if anything, has been distinctive about the Southern experience and how a variety of Americans have imagined the region over time. Also offered as CAS HI 505. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS AM 525: American Cultural Landscape Studies
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor. - This seminar provides an introduction to analyzing and interpreting American cultural landscapes and acquaints students with the historiography of interdisciplinary study of the built environment. Also offered as CAS AH 525.
• CAS AM 538: Arctic Studies
  Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120). - The Arctic is home to 4 million people and has played important roles in global exchanges for millennia. This class explores the Arctic as a source of resource extraction booms, aesthetic currents, scientific advances, Indigenous knowledge, and unique governance systems.
• CAS AM 546: Places of Memory: Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
  Covers key aspects of the history, theory, and practice of historic preservation. Preservation is discussed in the context of cultural history and the changing relationship between existing buildings and landscapes and attitudes toward history, memory, invented tradition, and place. Also offered as CAS AH 546 and CAS HI 546.
• CAS AM 548: Global Heritage Conservation
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Examining global approaches towards heritage conservation through a study of concepts, charters and case studies, using themes such as world heritage, cultural tourism, historic towns, new design, intangible heritage, authenticity, integrity, recent past, historic landscapes, conflict, disasters, revitalization and reconstruction.
• CAS AM 554: Preservation Planning
  Introduces students to local, state, and national government policies and practices intended to protect historically significant structures. In addition, the course covers planning approaches aimed at managing redevelopment in established neighborhoods, to create livable and sustainable communities.