Major Authors I
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 who declared an English Major prior to Fall 2022. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Writing-intensive Course.
EN 221 A1 Voekel
TR 2:00-3:15p
British Literature 1
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, Lanyer, Marlowe, Donne, Cavendish, and Milton. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
EN 322 A1 Burnett
TR 11:00 – 12:15
British Literature II
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 siècle aestheticism. Prerequisite: EN 322. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area(s): Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
EN 323 A1 Burnett
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Topics in American Literature: Fictions of the Modern American South
How has the US South been represented in American literature, film, and other media from the 20th century to the present? Why is the region portrayed in such conflicting ways, and as so different from the rest of the country? Why does the symbolism of the Southern past remain so prominent in social and political conflicts today? How are fictions of the South confirmed or undercut by the realities of the region? In contemporary works that reimagine historical slavery, for example, such as Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad (with miniseries adaptation), or that address slavery’s continuing legacy in today’s racism, such as Jordan Peele’s film Get Out; in recent novels like Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, and in endless television dramas, Southern reality shows, and music videos—the South continues to function prominently in our country’s imaginative life, its significance central in debates about who we are as a nation. Course includes major writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, Edward Jones, Lan Cao, and Jesmyn Ward, along with other media artists. This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Aesthetic Exploration.
EN 327 A1 Matthews
TR 11:00a – 12:15p
Women’s Literary Cultures : Gender and Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England
The English seventeenth-century has been called the “century of revolution,” but it might better be described as a time of many revolutions—in addition to witnessing the overthrow and execution of the king, England also saw challenges to structures of gender and sexuality, national debates about who got to vote, major shifts in scientific paradigms, an explosion of print media, and new ideas about race and the world beyond its borders. Through it all, English women took to the streets in political protests, spoke out in Parliament, and used literary forms to challenge ideas about marriage, hierarchy, sexuality, imperialism, religion, and government. From devout poems to bawdy ballads, from tragedies to comedies, from “serious proposals” to fantastic utopias, these women writers used literature to reimagine their worlds. By focusing on women writers of this period, we will not only explore the seventeenth century, but also consider how its legacy continues to shape our understandings of gender and sexuality today in both positive and negative ways. In order to do so, we will read some excerpts from current gender theory and an example or two of 21st-century literary works that brings these 17th-century women to life today.
Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Aesthetic Exploration.
EN 328 A1 Murphy
MWF 10:10 – 11:00a
American Literature: Civil War to World War 1
This course studies the vibrant literature of the United States from the Civil War to the first decade of the 20th century. Students should register for this course only if they are also willing to hone their oral presentation skills. Public speaking is a top fear among Americans; college-educated people need practice.
Required texts: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) Mitchell, ed., ISBN: 978-1554815029
Levine, et. al., eds. Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th edition, Volume C, ISBN: 978-0393696806
This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area(s): Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness. It also fulfills the 1700-1900 Literature Requirement.
EN 334 A1 Mitchell
TR 5:00 – 6:15p
Contemporary American Fiction
US fiction from the first quarter of the 21st century, exploring questions of individualism, community, identity, technology, media, religious belief, violence, migration, and geopolitical change. Texts will include novels by Jennifer Egan, Percival Everett, Cormac McCarthy, and others as well as work from The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community.
EN 349 A1 Walsh
TR 9:30 – 10:45a
Auteurs at Work
This course surveys the work of one or two auteurs, paying special attention to the aesthetic dimensions of their films. Alongside the study of films, students explore the work of auteurs by collaborating to make a short film. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Creativity/Innovation, Teamwork/Collaboration.
EN 361/ CI 354 A1 Staff
W 2:30-5:15
Shakespeare II
Six or seven plays chosen from the following: Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and The Tempest. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness.
EN 364 A1 Voekel
TR 11:00 – 12:15p (Will be added to the University Schedule shortly)
Studies in Non-Cinematic Media
Topic: TBA
This course covers a range of aesthetic and cultural issues related to non- cinematic media, encompassing the study of photography, television, video art, video and online gaming, new media and more. Topics vary by semester. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation.
EN 365/CI 367 A1 Staff
TR 12:30 – 1:45p
Haruki Murakami and His Sources
Students read works by Haruki Murakami and by writers who shaped him or were shaped by him, reflect on the nature of intertextuality, and gain a perspective on contemporary literature as operating within a global system of mutual influence. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation.
EN 369/LJ 460/LJ 660 A1 Zielinska-Elliott
MWF 11:15a – 12:05p
Introduction to African American Women Writers
Nothing about American society teaches citizens to take Black women’s contributions seriously. This is especially the case if those contributions are intellectual and/or artistic. This class is an opportunity to practice refusing the nation’s encouragement to ignore what Black women writers and artists have offered.
While examining African American literature, we will foster an appreciation for this literary tradition that does not assume that it revolves around responding to “dominant” culture. This will require everyone to practice critical thinking skills because so much of the education system in the United States is designed to erase the contributions of, and to deny the intellect of, anyone who is not straight, white, male, and propertied. Seeing value in anyone else (and in the art they produce) requires challenging what we have all been taught nearly every day of our lives.
Authors will likely include Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. (Not an exhaustive list.) We will supplement our engagement with the literature by also reading scholarly essays.
Students should register for this course only if they are also willing to hone their oral presentation skills. Public speaking is a top fear among Americans; college-educated people need practice.
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.
EN 370/AA 304 A1 Mitchell
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Black American Cinema
In A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See (2021), Tina Campt asks, “…rather than looking at Black people, rather than simply multiplying the representation of Black folks, what would it mean to see oneself through the complex positionality that is blackness–and work through its implications for oneself?” (7). By looking at the different eras of race films, civil rights dramas, horror and Blaxploitation films, postcolonial cinema, the LA Rebellion school, Black independent film, Afrofuturism, and more, this class will move through time in a survey of important genres and movements in the history of Black American cinema to begin exploring “the complex positionality that is blackness.” This interdisciplinary, discussion-based seminar strives to answer the questions: What exactly do we mean by “Black American Cinema”? How do class, gender, and sexuality further complicate questions about race and nationality? Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Aesthetic Exploration. Students will be given the opportunity to submit and vote on additional materials of study, such as a film, music video, short film, or podcast to include in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester.
EN 397/CI 430/AA 430 A1 James
MWF 2:30 – 3:20p
Global Shakespeares
Why do contemporary writers parrot and parody “Shakespeare,” and how much of this activity is about Shakespeare at all’ This seminar provides an introduction to reading and writing about Shakespeare’s plays. But it also takes a step back to consider Shakespeare as a phenomenon, inspiring adapters around the world. Beyond learning about particular offshoots and adaptations, the deeper point is to explore how playwrights think about their sources, their audiences, and their art. Effective Summer 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation.
EN 398/XL 344 A1 Staff
TR 12:30 – 1:45p
History of Literary Criticism I
A historical survey of western literary-critical standards from the earliest surviving formulations in classical Athens to the dawn of the twentieth century. Writers include Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Augustine, Dante, Sidney, Hume, Wordsworth, Marx, Nietzsche. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Aesthetic Exploration.
EN 404 A1 Francis
TR 5:00 – 6:15p
Critical Studies in Literary Genres:
Fall 2025 Topic: “The Artist Novel”
What is the relationship between an artist and their art? This course surveys novels that have tackled exactly that question. In this class, we examine one of the most important modernist subgenres, the Künstlerroman, or novel of the artist. We will identify the genre’s origins, chart its development, and consider its relationship to its precursor, the Bildungsroman. In doing so, we will learn how and why the twentieth century saw an explosion of artist novels. Through our readings, we will aim to understand the artistic sensibilities and social forces that shape the artist figure. We will also confront perennial questions about what it means to be an artist, such as the role of the artist in society; the relationship between the artist, their work, and the world; and the artist’s obligation to social, political, and national movements.
This course will be relevant to students who enjoy literature that captures inner life and experience as well as students interested in the following areas: genre studies, narrative theory, and literary theory; gender and sexuality studies, feminism, and masculinity; British, Irish, and American modernism; art, music, memoir, and creative writing. We will read novels and selections from the following authors: Alison Bechdel, Willa Cather, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Radclyffe Hall, Tomson Highway (Cree), James Weldon Johnson, James Joyce, W. Somerset Maugham, Marcel Proust, Richard Wright, and Virginia Woolf.
EN 474 A1 Hernández
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Critical Studies in Literature and Gender:
Medieval Romance: The Origin of Love
This course examines a central preoccupation of medieval poets: the nature, characteristics, and experience of love. Hundreds of stories of the tragic and adulterous affairs of figures such as Tristan and Isolde or Lancelot and Guinevere survive from the pre-modern period, intensely focused on a disquieting combination of illicit sex, ritualized violence, and quasi-mystical love. How do medieval romances negotiate conflicts between passion, marriage, family loyalty, and empire? How do our texts debate, reverse, or affirm gender and societal norms? Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Celtic, German and French romances (in translation) by Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassbourg, Hedris of Cornwall; Middle English romances including “Havelok the Dane,” “Sir Orfeo” (an English encounter with the Orpheus myth), “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” and Thomas Malory’s “Morte D’Arthur” (“The Death of Arthur”), a series of linked prose stories set in Arthur’s court, composed during England’s fifteenth-century War of the Roses. As a “Methods” course, we will also examine historicist literary studies as a critical approach, and participants will have the opportunity to research and situate these primary works in their medieval context for their final projects.
EN 475 A1 Appleford
TR 12:30 – 1:45p
Critical Studies in Literature and Philosophy: Art, Selves, and Artificial Selves
“There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry,” declared Socrates in Book 10 of Plato’s The Republic. What did Socrates mean? What understanding of the mind, of art, and of social life led him to say this? With Plato as our starting point, the rest of the semester will consider philosophers, critics, and artists from the last century whose work asks what we mean by “art,” what we mean by a “self,” and how these concepts intersect. Readings on aestheticism, formalism, tea ceremonies, cricket, film, religious “aura,” land art, “camp,” racial authenticity, pornography, cyborgs, social media, cultural identity, feminism, existentialism. Literary texts by Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Caryl Churchill, Ted Chiang. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
EN 497 A1 Chodat
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Our Contemporary: Henry James and the New Media
Of all the major literary figures of the late Victorian-early Modernist era, Henry James has had perhaps the most robust afterlife in the 20th and 21st centuries, influencing the methods of writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Dashiell Hammett, Philip Roth, and James Baldwin; providing standard fictional principles and theory for writing programs (both creative and compositional); his novels adapted by leading film makers, and his life the subject of numerous fictions featuring him as author protagonist (by Colm Toibin, Alan Hollinghurst, Cynthia Ozick, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others). The guiding claim of this course, team-taught by Professor of Philosophy, Juliet Floyd and Professor of English, Susan Mizruchi, is that James’s remarkable longevity, his status as ‘Our Contemporary,’ is a product of his formal, intellectual, and philosophical devotion to innovation, which runs through all his writings.
The professional author par excellence who produced a voluminous body of literary works in nearly every genre—short story, novella, novel, criticism, drama, biography, travelogue, memoir, and letters—there was no writer of his time more committed to his craft and to extending its boundaries, and no writer who experimented more deliberately with what the novel could reveal about the depths of human psychology, gender and sexuality, social life and economy, philosophical meaning and the power of language.
James’s writing developed radically new idioms, “new media” for the presentation of “experience.” His reflections on “perception” deepened and counterbalanced the introspective psychology of his brother William James. His philosophical and psychological meditations expanded the American tradition extending from Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne which viewed “experience” as not mere appearance, but as real, part of Nature itself. “Experience” here is about discovering what really matters. James pressed this self-conscious transcendentalist move toward ordinary reality and its phenomenology forward into the social “media” of his day, inventively demonstrating how criticism of criticism reflects insight into the invention of self, social relations, and experiential capacities.
This course asks how might the “new media” for representing social pressures and relations James developed in his novels, be re-expressed and represented in new media today – including not only social media but dating apps, the representation of courtship in popular ‘reality’ shows, and tv series which have come to replace the function of the novel in providing viewers with opportunities for moral reflection, reconciliation with reality, and discussion of present-day dilemmas.
Through close study of major works by James, alongside popular and influential contemporaneous works this course will draw on his insights to illuminate the social media and popular culture of our time, probing his complex texts to understand social issues connected with romance, economic drives, and pandemic responses that are part of contemporary reality.
Course readings will include: The Portrait of a Lady; The Turn of the Screw; The Bostonians; The Beast in the Jungle; In the Cage. Students will learn how to incorporate James’s inventiveness into their own thinking, building to a capstone project that will involve creating a video, graphic novel, or another form of new media.
Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation.
EN 500 A1/PH 489/PH 689 A1 Mizruchi and Floyd (Philosophy)
T 3:30 – 6:15p
Reading and Writing Literary Nonfiction
This seminar is for students who want to immerse themselves in the long tradition of literary nonfiction and make their own contributions to it. Ancient and modern masterworks as well as contemporary pieces will give us models to follow and break away from in our own work. Building on the prose skills that we bring to the course and drawing on these models and the feedback of classmates, we will cultivate our own voices as writers. We will also cultivate our skills as creators and innovators, learning how to generate an idea, imagine an audience, develop working strategies, offer and receive criticism, and risk productive failure. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Creativity/Innovation.
EN 502 A1 Staff
W 2:30 – 5:15p
Black Thought: Literary and Cultural Criticism in the African Diaspora
An introduction to literary and cultural criticism in African-America and/or the Black Diaspora. The course focuses on historical trends, critical themes, and intellectual characteristics of this work and assesses its relationship to broader political contexts, social movements and cultural transformations.
EN 537/AA 591 A1 Williams
TR 12:30 – 1:45p
Teaching American Literature
Focused on teaching American literature at the high school level, the course aims to provide students with a broad knowledge base in American literary history, model deeper learning and teaching of selected texts, address theoretical questions in English Language Arts pedagogy, and introduce practical classroom skills. In addition to studying diverse works of American fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiography from the perspective of literary criticism, the course will address issues of course design, skill development, curricular planning, and assessment. The class will be team-taught by Prof. Christina Dobbs (Wheelock) and Prof. Chris Walsh (English Dept.). Assignments include short writing exercises, collaborative projects, oral presentations, assessment design, curriculum evaluation, and a literary-critical essay. Also offered as SED EN538. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
EN 538 A1 Walsh and Dobbs
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
The Modern American Novel: Representative Works 1900-1950
Our course will examine representative works by significant American novelists published between 1900 and 1950. Our goal will be to understand how various American writers of this period responded to the extreme changes identified with modernity. How did novelists imagine the social, economic, political, intellectual, and artistic transformations of the first half of the last century? How did authors reimagine expressive styles and narrative methods to engage re-conceptualizations of human behavior; theories of race and culture; definitions of gender; understandings of individual consciousness, perception, and comprehension; the organization of society; the relations of labor, wealth, and consumption; attitudes toward the environment; modern ethics; etc.? We’ll be interested in looking at relations between the artist, the individual work, audience, and historical contexts in order to appreciate how novels represent society and address matters of interest to communities of readers. We’ll also ask how these expectations condition artists’ desires to express their individual sensibilities. We’ll study major developments in the genre of the novel during this time, including the emergence of technically experimental modernist style and form, and innovations in realism. We’ll note some of the effects film had on modern literature. We’ll consider questions about conflicting senses of modern national identity, regional distinctiveness, women’s enfranchisement, race relations and ethnicity, the increasing dominance of urban experience, the crisis of capitalism during the Great Depression, class relations, and the trauma of two world wars.
Taking up W. E. B. Du Bois’s assertion in 1903 in The Souls of Black Folk that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line,” our course this semester will center on works by principal American novelists in the first half of the century who explored questions of race as foundational to U.S. modernity. What does it mean to approach modern American fiction from the standpoint of the nation’s and the West’s long history of racism? In what ways does national modernity rest on a foundation of global racial exploitation? How does the problem of the color line structure the economic, social, and cultural transformations we understand as “the modern,” and how does fiction of the period explore the centrality of racism and devise imaginative responses to it? Authors include James Weldon Johnson, Willa Cather, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison.
This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
EN 546 A1 Matthews
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Joyce & After
Few writers have enjoyed as much acclaim and engendered as much influence as the Irish modernist James Joyce. This course centers Joyce’s writing to map his influence on transatlantic modernism. We will focus on select short stories and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before commencing Joyce’s Homeric epic, Ulysses. Alongside Ulysses, we will sample poetry and fiction informed by Joyce’s tour de force. In doing so, this course aims to register Joyce’s influence while also paying due attention to how retellings, revisions, and responses to Joyce lay bare the unique experiences and aesthetic projects of his contemporaries.
Paired with Joyce are short selections from authors such as James Baldwin, Alison Bechdel, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Ralph Ellison, Lucy Ellmann, William Faulkner, Tomson Highway (Cree), LeAnne Howe (Choctaw), Langston Hughes, Claire Keegan, Clarice Lispector, Sylvia Plath, Sally Rooney, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, and Virginia Woolf, among others. In his work, Joyce famously married the universal and the ordinary, the general and the specific; following this charge, then, we will focus on the universal and enduring aspects of Joyce while insisting upon the singularity of the voices he inspired.
Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Aesthetic Exploration.
EN 548 A1 Hernández
TR 5:00 – 6:15p
EN 570: Studies in British Literary Movements
Fall 2025 Topic – Radical Imaginings: Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, and the Power of Literature
Margaret Cavendish and John Milton lived through the English Revolution, including almost a decade of civil war, continuing battles over the Protestant Reformation, challenges to ideas of gender and sexuality, the explosion of print culture, the emergence of the New Science, shifts in ideologies and practices of slavery, and the early days of England’s development as an imperial power. Though Cavendish took the side of the monarchy, and Milton the side that executed the King, both took revolutionary positions. They shared an intellectual ambition and rigor that led them to explore ideas to their limit, even when those ideas led them to places they were not yet ready and/or did not want to go. Thus, they offer us profound insight into the ways that imaginative literature and political change dance through history together. Living through the century that saw the development of the writer as an “author,” Cavendish and Milton are some of the first English writers to understand themselves as creatures of print. They thus illuminate how literature takes shape in a moment of media revolution, with significant resonances with the way the digital age has changed our ideas of authorship and audience. In addition to Milton’s epic Paradise Lost and Cavendish’s proto-science fiction The Blazing World, our readings will also include plays, poems, romances, and political tracts. This course offers you the rare opportunity to immerse yourself in the work of two authors—reading big books, thinking deeply, and sharing with your classmates. Fulfills Hub units in Historical Consciousness, Writing Intensive, and Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy. Pre-requisites include two previous literature courses or junior or senior standing; and First-Year Writing (WR 120 or equivalent). The research component of this course will require self-directed work guided by the instructor.
EN 570 A1 Murphy (Will be added to the University Schedule shortly)
MWF 12:20 – 1:10p