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 LI 952: Directed Study in Italian Language and Literature
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor and department. - Hours arranged.
• CAS LL 690: Proficiency-Based Language Teaching 1
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - Introduces students to current language teaching methodologies and effective proficiency- and standards- based instruction. Students develop their own pedagogy projects with appropriate assessment parameters addressing all four language skills.
• CAS LL 691: Proficiency-Based Language Teaching 2
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (GRSLL690) or consent of instructor. - Fosters professional outlook on language teaching and learning. Students deepen their knowledge of instructional technologies, further develop proficiency-based pedagogy projects for their own courses, and prepare teaching philosophies, conference presentations, and other portfolio materials.
• CAS LP 631: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers 1
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: native or near-native speakers of Spanish only. - Designed to develop speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in Portuguese for Spanish speakers. Focuses on comparisons between Spanish and Portuguese language systems for students to communicate accurately and effectively within a diversity of cultural situations. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: The Individual in Community.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • The Individual in Community
• CAS LP 632: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers 2
  Designed to continue to developing speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in Portuguese. Focuses on comparisons between Spanish and Portuguese language systems for students to communicate accurately and effectively within a diversity of cultural situations. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: The Individual in Community.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • The Individual in Community
• CAS LP 951: Directed Study: Portuguese
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: graduate standing and consent of instructor. - Hours arranged. Consent of instructor and department.
• CAS LP 952: Directed Study: Portuguese
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: graduate standing and consent of instructor. - Hours arranged. Consent of instructor and department.
• CAS LS 606: Spanish Translation Workshop
  Graduate Prerequisite: Advanced proficiency in Spanish. - Advanced study of the Spanish language through the translation of written texts. Analysis of the theory and practice of translation as a catalyst of cultural transfer. Taught in Spanish.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Oral and/or Signed Communication
• CAS LS 850: Seminar: Theories of Literature
  Satisfies department theory requirement. Topic for Fall 2024: Literary Theories & Critical Practices. Traces, explores, and equips students to work with literary theories and critical methodologies, from influential twentieth-century works to the most recent trends in gender and sexuality studies, ecocriticism, disability studies, and critical race studies.
• CAS LS 860: Seminar: Topics in Hispanic Literature
  May be repeated for credit if topic is different. Topic for Spring 2026: Malas mujeres. Investigates normative discourses of womanhood in medieval and early modern Iberia through portrayals of prostitutes, witches, and other “bad women” in Arabic, Hebrew, and Romance literature.
• CAS LS 951: Directed Study in Hispanic Language and Literatures
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor and department. - Hours arranged.
• CAS LS 952: Directed Study in Hispanic Language and Literatures
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor and department. - Hours arranged.
• CAS LX 601: Phonetics & Phonology: Introduction to Sound Systems
  Introduction to the nature and patterning of sounds in human language. Presents articulatory and acoustic phonetics, and basic phonological analysis, focusing on cross-language typology and comparison. Hands-on development of practical skills, including IPA transcription, field techniques, and digital speech analysis. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry II, Quantitative Reasoning I, Critical Thinking.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Critical Thinking
  • Quantitative Reasoning I
  • Scientific Inquiry II
• CAS LX 617: Having and Being across Languages
  Graduate corequisite: CASLX 618. Languages differ startlingly in how they express the apparently basic concepts of "possession" and "essence". Students explore this variety and its implications, addressing fundamental questions about linguistic relativism, language universals, and the relationship between structure and meaning. Students must also register for CASLX 618 corequisite.
• CAS LX 621: Syntax: Introduction to Sentential Structure
  Introduction to syntax as an object of inquiry. Students build an increasingly sophisticated model of syntactic knowledge to account for data from English and other languages, constructing and evaluating alternative hypotheses about how sentence structure works.
• CAS LX 628: Questions
  Exploration of question formation across languages, and from several theoretical perspectives, integrating syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and philosophy in pursuit of a general understanding of one of the central phenomena driving theoretical linguistics.
• CAS LX 631: Semantics & Pragmatics: Introduction to Linguistic Meaning
  Systematic examination of how meaning is encoded in words and sentences, and how it can emerge from the complexity of the grammar. Also touches on various aspects of pragmatics--the study of how meaning is shaped by context. Graduate students situate their project in relation to prior literature in the final project. Effective Fall 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, The Individual in Community, Teamwork and Collaboration.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • The Individual in Community
  • Teamwork/Collaboration
• CAS LX 641: Sociolinguistics
  Introduction to language in its social context. Methodological and theoretical approaches to sociolinguistics. Linguistic variation in relation to situation, gender, socioeconomic class, linguistic context, and ethnicity. Integrating micro- and macro-analysis from conversation to societal language planning. Also offered as CAS AN 521.
• CAS LX 645: Languages in Contact: The High Stakes of Grammatical Border-Crossing
  Examines the mechanisms and outcomes of language contact by surveying cases around the globe from the past and present. Topics include lexical-borrowing, code-switching, pidgins and creoles, language death, and the emergence of entirely new language systems. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 515.
• CAS LX 646: Language Variation and Change
  Why do languages change over time? Who leads and who follows in situations of language change? The course answers these questions by examining the link between language change and linguistic variation, focusing on how synchronic variation leads to diachronic change. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, Teamwork/Collaboration.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Social Inquiry I
  • Teamwork/Collaboration