English Composition & Literature

• MET EN 104: English Composition
  This four-credit course (or a MET-approved equivalent) is required for all undergraduate degrees. EN 104 reinforces the communication skills necessary for college work, offering instruction and practice in the fundamentals of critical writing, reading, and thinking. Course requirements include frequent papers and individual conferences. Spring 2024: This semester's course topic will explore the rich history of Boston’s North End from its early settlement in 1630 into the present. We will examine the early development of the neighborhood in the context of Boston’s founding and expansion, as well as its wider national and international context. Topics will include a witchcraft case in the North End and its relationship to the later Salem witchcraft trials; the smallpox epidemic of 1721 and debates over vaccines; Paul Revere and revolutionary Boston; the rise of the Tudor family and the development of the ice trade; the Irish influx and the rise of urban politics; the North End’s Jewish history; and then the incoming of the Italians and their ongoing struggle to maintain a presence in the North End. Sub-topics will include post-World War II Italian immigration, urban decline, organized crime, drug violence, community organization, restaurant tourism, and gentrification. We will write response and analysis papers, summaries, and commentaries, and will work towards a final research paper. If possible, class will include a tour of the North End.
• MET EN 125: Readings in Modern Literature
  Representative fiction, poetry, and drama from modern Continental, British, and American writers. Primarily for students not concentrating in English.
• MET EN 127: Readings in American Literature
  Selected American writers from the Colonial period to the present. Prose and poetry representative of the American tradition. Primarily for students not concentrating in English.
• MET EN 141: Literary Types: Fiction
  Representative English and American novels from the eighteenth century to the present. Required papers. Primarily for students not concentrating in English. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Aesthetic Exploration.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Ethical Reasoning
• MET EN 175: Literature and the Art of Film
  Survey and analysis of cinema as an expressive medium from the silent period to the present. Films are screened weekly and discussed in conjunction with works of literature. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Digital/Multimedia Expression
• MET EN 201: Intermediate Composition
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: or MET-approved equivalent or exemption. - Topic-based seminar emphasizing advanced critical reading strategies, methods for scholarly research, and models for writing relative to discipline, audience, and rhetorical context. Attention to argumentation, prose style, and revision. Exercises in reflection and self-assessment, peer-review, and one-on-one work with instructor. Spring 2024 topic: Contemporary Fiction's Otherworldly Glow In this course, our reading will take us to Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, regions more culturally different than we may imagine. Our close reading, however, will reinforce the universality of the human condition, as we examine issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. We will encounter postcolonialism, war, love, and political intrigue in three twenty-first century novels: Hala Alyan's Salt Houses, Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go, and Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing, Research, and Inquiry and Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing, Research, and Inquiry
• MET EN 202: Introduction to Creative Writing
  Designed mainly for those with little or no experience in creative writing. An introduction to writing in various genres: poetry, fiction, and plays. Students' works discussed in class. Limited enrollment.
• MET EN 304: Poetry Writing
  This is primarily a poetry writing workshop, in which students write and revise their own poetry, and read their peers' poems with generosity, providing constructive feedback. Students also learn to read closely the work of master poets past and present.
• MET EN 305: Advanced Writing of Fiction
  The writing of short stories and perhaps longer fiction discussed in a workshop setting, including one-on- one meetings to discuss student work.
• MET EN 322: Survey of British Literature I
  Prereq: MET HU 221. Beginnings of English literature from Anglo-Saxon period to end of the seventeenth century. Topics include the development of various poetic forms, medieval romance, and British drama. Authors may include Chaucer, Kempe, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, and Milton. Effective Fall 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
• MET EN 323: Survey of British Literature II
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: MET EN 322 - Overview of English literature between 1700 and 1900. Topics include London as urban center, modern prose fiction, Romantic and Victorian poetry, tensions between religion and science. Authors may include Pope, Swift, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Tennyson, Wilde. Effective Fall 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
• MET EN 355: Modern Drama
  A century's transformations of drama and stage. Reading and discussion of plays from early realism and expressionism to the theatre of the absurd and present trends: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Synge, Pirandello, Brecht, Sartre, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Pinter, and others.
• MET EN 363: Shakespeare I
  Six plays chosen from the following: Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV (Part 1), Troilus and Cressida, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter's Tale. Effective Fall 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
• MET EN 364: Shakespeare II
  Six plays chosen from the following: Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and The Tempest.
• MET EN 546: The Modern American Novel
  In this course we will read and discuss American novels and short stories published between 1900 and 1945. We will examine the roots of "modernism," consider various definitions of modernism, and identify characteristics of modernism in American narratives including short stories and films as well as novels--works by Chesnutt, Chopin, Perkins Gilman, Twain, Dreiser, Anderson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Toomer, and Hurston. We will also locate the historical and cultural contexts of these works. Some of these novels were widely read at the time they were published; other works had a more limited distribution, but subsequently have been recognized as valuable contributions to the American literary tradition. We will consider art forms in their larger cultural context and consider what "cultural work" any artistic expression does. How does literature convey the values and attitudes of the people who produce it? And conversely, how does literature influence the values and attitudes of the people who read it?
• MET EN 552: English Drama from 1590 to 1642
  The heritage of Marlowe and Shakespeare: the collapse of a historic world; Jacobean pessimism and decadence in the plays of Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Ford, and others.