Introductory Undergraduate Courses in Language and Literature
Academic Year 2026-2027, Semester I
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All courses carry 4 credits, unless otherwise indicated.
Effective Fall 2020, one course numbered CAS EN 121 – 201 and 203 – 215 may count toward the seven additional courses, provided it was taken before or concurrently with EN 220.
If you are considering a major or minor in English, you should take EN 220 rather than WR 150, 151, or 152.
Please note that a class may not be used to fulfill more than one distribution requirement.
All of the courses listed below fulfill the Humanities divisional credit in CAS.
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Encounters: Reading across Time and Space
*Note that this course is the introduction to the English Major. Non-majors looking for Hub units should consider other courses, including 100-level English courses.
This team-taught course provides an introduction to English literature across the ages. We will stage encounters across time and space between authors working in the English language – from the middle ages to the present, and from England to the Americas and around the globe.
Highlighting canonical and non-canonical texts, we will discuss representative moments in the history of genre, including poetry, drama, travel narrative, autobiography, the novel, film, and performance. Alongside our early works, we will read and view the work of artists from various backgrounds who have responded creatively to texts from literary history, in gestures of homage, repudiation, or ambivalence. These conversations might be direct and explicit or more indirect and allusive. We will also pay special attention to how a later work might influence our understanding of an earlier work. Along with more formal thesis-driven assignments, students will have their own opportunity to speak back to our readings; like the artists and activists on our syllabus, students will be invited to draw on their specific histories and experiences to craft creative encounters with the early works we read. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration.
EN 101 A1 and B1 Appleford and Rezek
TR 9:30a – 10:45a
Freshman Seminar
Limited enrollment. Variable topics. Through discussions and frequent writing assignments, students develop skills in the close reading of literary texts and learn to express their interpretive ideas in correct and persuasive prose. Satisfies CAS WR 120 requirement. The Freshman Seminar fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: First-Year Writing Seminar.
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Race and Gothic Fiction
How does race show up in Gothic literature? How do authors from marginalized communities engage with the Gothic? This course will explore figurations of race in Gothic literature from the 19th-century to now. Over the course of the semester, we will read works by writers like Mary Shelley, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison. Students will encounter instances of haunting, monsters, vampires, and more through the occasional film, poems, short stories, and novels. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: First-Year Writing Seminar.
EN 120 A1 Ford
MWF 9:05 – 9:55a
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Reading Caribbean Literature
In this class, we will explore a wide range of written works that contribute to, or complicate, what may be considered Caribbean literature. We will encounter authors across the 20th and 21st centuries, including Derek Walcott, Claude McKay, and Nalo Hopkinson, while examining key concepts such as race, nationhood, and gender. Students will improve their methods of critical inquiry through the practice of close reading and produce writing that demonstrates prolonged engagement with the course’s texts. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: First-Year Writing Seminar.
EN 120 B1 Barry
MWF 10:10 – 11:00a
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Poets on Poetry
In this course, we will read both poems and writings about poetry from poets including Hopkins, Eliot, Perse, Moore, Bishop, Stevens, and Heaney. Students will engage in attentive close reading and develop a critical voice of their own through sustained writing practice. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: First-Year Writing Seminar.
EN 120 C1 Gerardin
MWF 11:15a – 12:05p
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The Body in Performance
How are bodies represented in art? How do writers explore the body’s role in perception, sensation, and aesthetic experience? In this course, we consider questions of embodiment alongside performance pieces spanning from ancient Greek tragedy to modern experimental drama. We examine how our understanding of the body has changed throughout time and how artists express their ideas through the staging of the body. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: First-Year Writing Seminar.
EN 120 D1 Kulczycky
TR 11:00a – 12:15p
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Reading World Literature
Study of literature in English or English translation — poetry, drama, and prose narrative — outside of British and American traditions. Attention to such topics as cultural self-construction, relationships of historical context to artistic expression, and development of literary forms. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy.
EN 121 A1 Krishnan
MWF 1:25 – 2:15 p
Reading American Literature
How does American literature inspire readers to reflect upon cultural developments in the United States, from the 1830s up through the Civil Rights movement? What genres, themes, and stylistic tendencies are central to American fiction, poetry, and nonfiction prose during this period? How and why do these works still speak to us today, representing the hopeful possibilities and benefits of community, as well as the challenges posed by communities-in-crisis to cherished individuality? This survey begins with texts by Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Whitman, and others who were deeply troubled by the effects of industrialization in America, protested against slavery, and confronted the crisis of Civil War. We will then turn to authors such as James, Du Bois, Hughes, Larsen, Cather, and Hemingway, exploring cultural changes brought about by expatriation and migration, including the New Negro Renaissance and the flourishing of modernism. Our concluding sessions will examine how wartime experience fostered the discovery of new forms in poetry by Eliot, H.D., and Gwendolyn Brooks, and consider how this American legacy lives on in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration and The Individual in Community.
EN 127 A1 Patterson
MWF 12:20 – 1:10p
Introduction to Poetry
Introduction to the understanding, interpretation, and appreciation of a wide range of poetry. Focus on poetic form, genre, and style, with explorations of cultural and aesthetic contexts. Particular emphasis on close, careful reading and discussion. Topics vary by instructor. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Oral and/or Signed Communication.
EN 142 A1 Voekel
MWF 9:05 – 9:55a
The Myth of the Family in Classic U.S. Literature, Film, & TV
The Wire and Breaking Bad, two of the most popular serials in television history, are exceedingly traditional in form and theme. It is not simply that they are serials, and that most major works of nineteenth-century fiction were also introduced in short increments designed to create an appetite for their plots and characters, while building collective audiences of readers (and viewers). It is also the way they combine graphic violence with verbal invention and eloquence, powerful characters with epic failure and criminality, and, above all, the way they represent the myth of family. Both The Wire and Breaking Bad portray contemporary U.S. families in grimly realistic terms; but no matter how provisional, battered, or broken these families appear the idea of family retains a mythic power. The more one studies these popular serial television mythologies of family, the more typical of a U.S. cultural tradition they seem. In canonical works of literature and film, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, for instance, or The Godfather and Boys Don’t Cry, the devotion of characters to the idea of blood bonds, their loyalty to kin, is inseparable from the abuse that prevails in the families these works represent. Yet each of these works also represents an original and lyrical dialect speech as the means by which this violence can be overcome and the myth redeemed. This course will offer intensive study of Huckleberry Finn, As I Lay Dying, The Bluest Eye, The Godfather, Boys Don’t Cry, and the first seasons, respectively, of Breaking Bad and The Wire. We will attend to the differences between novels, films, and television as cultural forms. N.B.: This course charts a U.S. tradition of great works that are as complex as they are unsparing. If you have difficulty (more than average) reading about or watching scenes where bad things happen to good people (or animals), you have been warned. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration and Social Inquiry I.
EN 155/CI 255 A1 Mizruchi
TR 12:30 – 1:45p
The Graphic Novel
Examination of the rise, nature, and status of the contemporary book-length graphic novel. Topics may include graphic vs. traditional novel, word and image, style and space, representations of subjectivity, trauma, and history. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
EN 170 A1 Ruliffson
MWF 11:15a – 12:05p
Introduction to Film & Media Aesthetics
Introduction to fundamental concepts for the analysis/understanding of film and media. Key concepts of formal composition (e.g. editing, mise-en-sc’ne, cinematography, sound and more) over a diverse set of media texts. Foundational skills in analysis appropriate to film, television and moving-image media. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking.
EN 176/CI 200 A1 Foltz
M 6:30 – 9:15p Film Screening
TR 2:00 – 3:15p Lecture/Discussion
Introduction to Asian-American Literature
What does it mean to be “Asian American?” What are the racial legacies of U.S. imperial expansion, race-based incarceration, and immigration exclusion? How do these meanings relate to gender and sexuality throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? This course grapples with these questions and more by studying the literature and culture of Americans of Asian ancestry in the United States. Through this class, students will critically engage works of fiction by authors such as Hisaye Yamamoto, Jhumpa Lahiri, R. Zamora Linmark, Maxine Hong Kingston, and lê thi diễm thúy; theater by Frank Chin and Lauren Yee; poetry by Janice Mirikitani, Al Robles, and other more contemporary Asian American poets; essays by Lisa Lowe and Daniel Y. Kim; and graphic novels by Gene Luen Yang and more. Students will interrogate these works through a combination of critical essays and creative writing prompts in order to harness the intellectual vibrancy and ethical and political urgency that Asian American literature engenders. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
EN 177 A1 Rivera
TR 11:00a – 12:15p
Introduction to Literary Studies
EN 201 A1 Ivey Santaus
MWF 10:10a – 11:00a