English Literature
College of Arts & Sciences
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Representing Boston
CAS EN 128
Literary and cultural geography of Boston, from Puritan sermons to modern crime fiction. Readings by Winthrop, Wheatley, Emerson, Hopkins, Antin, Lowell, Lehane and others; required fieldwork, including four Saturday excursions: Freedom Trail, Black Heritage Trail, MFA, and Fenway Park. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 2 (July 1-August 7)
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Reading Shakespeare
CAS EN 163
A critical introduction to Shakespeare through intensive analyses of six or seven plays. Possible attention to such topics as literary sources, early modern stagecraft, performance history, and contemporary film adaptation. Effective Summer 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 2 (July 1-August 7)
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The Graphic Novel
CAS EN 170
Examination of the rise, nature, and status of the contemporary book-length graphic novel. Topics include graphic vs. traditional novel, word and image, style and space, representations of subjectivity, trauma, and history. Authors may include Spiegelman, Bechdel, Nakazawa, Sacco, Satrapi, Backderf. Effective Summer 2024, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 1 (May 21-June 27)
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Introduction to Film & Media Aesthetics
CAS EN 176
Online offering. Introduction to fundamental concepts for the analysis and understanding of film and media. Key concepts of formal composition (e.g., editing, mise-en-scene, 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. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 2 seven-week course (July 1-August 16)
O2 (IND) Arranged... Open SeatsJonathan FoltzOnline CourseMeets online every Mon & Wed 9-10 am for a live class. Nonstandard course dates. Mts w/CAS CI200Summer 2 Section O2: As a special provision of this summer online BU Hub course, BU financial aid may be available to BU need-based scholarship recipients for up to one course in summer 2024. For more information, please contact BU Financial Assistance at 617-353-2965 or finaid@bu.edu.For information about technology requirements for online courses at Boston University, see bu.edu/online/online-learning/technology. BU Virtual can be reached at buvirtual@bu.edu or 617-358-1960 for additional information. -
Seminar in Literature
CAS EN 220
Prereq: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CAS EN 120 or CAS WR 100 or CAS WR 120). Topic for summer 2024: Fictions of Formation. The Bildungsroman, or "novel of formation," has been the exemplary literary form for the "coming-of- age" story. Coming-of-age stories aim to provide insight into a matter of perennial concern: how, over time, do we come to make sense of the world and find our place in it? In this course, we will look at ways novelists have tried to represent this process, and consider the social and political perspectives these narratives convey. What norms and values do such works affirm? Which do they challenge? How have questions of gender and of sexual or racial otherness been handled in the coming-of-age tale? What can readers learn from these books? We will also attend to aesthetic aspects of the novel as a genre, and we will engage with past and current scholarship on the Bildungsroman and its evolution as we develop our skills in research, writing, and analysis. Likely authors include Charlotte Bronte, E.M. Forster, Anzia Yezierska, Jacqueline Woodson, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others. Required of concentrators in English. Satisfies CAS WR 150 requirement. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing, Research and Inquiry, Oral and/or Signed Communication, Research and Information Literacy. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 1 (May 22-June 26)
Topic: Fictions of Formation. Make-up class on Friday, 5/31 -
Major Authors I
CAS EN 221
Prereq: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). Introduction to the major works of ancient and medieval literatures that influenced later Continental, English, and American literature: the Bible, Homeric epic, Greek tragedy, Vergil's Aeneid, and Dante's The Divine Comedy. Required of concentrators in English. (Cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course by the same title that was formerly numbered CAS HU 221.) 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 2 (July 2-August 8)
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British Literature II
CAS EN 323
Prereq: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CAS EN 120 or CAS WR 100 or CAS WR 120) and (CAS EN 220 & CAS EN 221 & CAS EN 322). British literature from the Restoration in 1660 to the end of the nineteenth century. Authors may include Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Alfred Tennyson, and Oscar Wilde. Major topics include London as a developing urban center, the emergence of modern prose fiction, the growing emphasis on "sensibility," the rise of Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution, tensions between religion and science, and fin de siecle aestheticism. For students who have declared an English major prior to Fall 2022: fulfills British Literature II requirement. For students declaring an English major in Fall 2022 and after: fulfills British or American Literature from 1700-1900 requirement. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 1 (May 22-June 26)
Make-up class on Friday, 5/31 -
Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
CAS EN 377
Prereq: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CAS EN 120 or CAS WR 100 or CAS WR 120) and one previous literature course or junior or senior standing. An exploration of the literature of the "New Negro Renaissance" or, more popularly, the Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1935. Discussions of essays, fiction, and poetry, three special lectures on the stage, the music, and the visual arts of the Harlem Renaissance. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 1 (May 22-June 26)
Mts w/CAS AA507. Make-up class on Friday, 5/31 -
Reading and Writing Literary Nonfiction
CAS EN 502
Prereq: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CAS EN 120 or CAS WR 100 or CAS WR 120) and two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing. This reading and writing seminar explores literary nonfiction, a wide-ranging, sometimes controversial genre in which writers use techniques associated with fiction and poetry to make meaning of lives. How do writers describe their world, especially peoples, places, and things? What are different ways of using personal voice? Each weekly meeting includes discussion of published nonfiction along with writing short exercises, and workshopping writing. The learning goals of this course are to become better readers and more skillful practitioners of the craft of literary nonfiction. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Creativity/Innovation. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 1 (May 22-June 26)
Make-up class on Friday, 5/31 -
American Literature: Beginnings to 1855
CAS EN 533
A survey of American literature from its (contested) beginnings through the mid-nineteenth century. Focus on fiction, poetry, and autobiography from authors such as Rowlandson, Wheatley, Melville, Douglass, Thoreau, Jacobs, Dickinson, and Whitman. Also, brief encounters with other genres such as sermons, essays, and exploration narratives. Among our lines of inquiry are these: how do political and philosophical questions shape literary forms and styles (and vice-versa)? How do authors write themselves into (and out of) literary traditions, particularly in matters of influence and culture? How do the roots (and routes) of early American literature continue today? 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 1 (May 22-June 26)
Make-up class on Friday, 5/31 -
Studies in Contemporary Literature
CAS EN 598
Prereq: consent of instructor. Topic for summer 2024: Latinx Literature Now. Topic-based explorations of literature, 1945 to the present. Focuses on literary material produced by writers of U.S. Latinx heritage published within the past five years, as well as works of scholarship and criticism in Latinx literary studies to inform our analysis of the terms of this course: "Latinx," "literature," "now." Reading from a variety of authors such as Ana Menendez, Justin Torres, Manuel Munoz, and Silvia Moreno Garcia, students will become familiar with an emerging body of literary and cultural works by artists from the largest (and still growing) cultural minority population in the U.S. Students will have opportunities for critical reflection on how national, comparative, and "minority" literatures (and cultures) mutually interact and inter-implicate one another, and understand how forms of cultural production can both shape and represent the historical moments of their emergence--how they participate in determining what "feels" contemporary, or what presents itself as the "present" present, the here and now. The Anglo signifier "Latinx" already announces the contemporaneity of our exploration, that it can only be happening in the now, and in an U.S. cultural and political context that violently struggles to understand (and manage) the increasing complexity of diversity. Our work is also intersectional in nature, as the term "Latinx" insists on being read not just as a complex marker of ethnicity and/or race, but also of gender, sexuality, class, nation, and political orientation. 4 cr. Tuition: $3180
Summer 2 (July 2-August 8)
Topic: Latinx Literature Now