Spring 2026 Graduate Courses

The Black Pacific: Feminisms and Futurities

CAS AA 500 – Jewel Pereya

This course engages theories and debates in emerging studies of the “Black Pacific” by directing conversation between diasporic African American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander literature, art, and cultural productions from the twentieth century to the present.

Topics in African American Literature

Undergraduate Prerequisites: two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. – Topic for Fall 2022: Tracking Changes in the Twentieth-Century African American Novel: Negotiations of Genre and Gender. Readings of Slave Narratives and Neo Slave Narratives, and the Urban Novel. Authors include Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Walter Mosley.

CAS AA 502 – Kelsey Desir

Labor, Sexuality, & Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World

CAS AA 514 – John Thornton

Undergraduate Prerequisites: junior standing. – The role of slavery in shaping the society and culture of the Afro-Atlantic world, highlighting the role of labor, the sexual economy of slave regimes, and the various strategies of resistance deployed by enslaved people. Also offered as CAS HI 584. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.

Religion in the Digital Age

CAS AA 656 – Margarita Guillory

How has technology impacted religion’ This hands-on course explores how digital technologies like the Internet, social media, gaming, and artificial intelligence have changed the way that people think about religion.

Seminar: Minority Relations

CAS AA 808 – Saida Grundy

Formation and position of ethnic minorities in the United States, including cross-group comparisons from England, Africa, and other parts of the world. Readings and field experience. Also offered as GRSSO 808.

The Life, Times, & Work of W.E.B DuBois

CAS HI 500 B1 – Chad Williams

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.

Topics in Art and Society: Black Feminist Art & Performance

CAS AH 527 B1 – Nicole Smythe-Johnson

This course explores the work of ten Black women artists, coupled with theoretical and critical texts written primarily by Black women thinkers. It is structured as a semester long reading group. Each week, students will give presentations on a single artwork and facilitate discussion of the assigned readings. Over the semester, students will debate what black feminism is, and what makes a work of art or set of ideas black feminist. Is it an identity, a method, an interpretive frame?