Graduate Seminars
MA Students must take at least six graduate seminars (700 or higher)
PhD Students must take at least 13 graduate seminars (700 or higher)
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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 604 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 674 A1 Hernández
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Critical Studies in Literature and Gender:
Medieval Romance: The Origin of Love
Th
EN 675 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 697 A1 Chodat
TR 2:00 – 3:15p
Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture
Fall 2025 Topic: Personification Allegory and Medieval Literature
Wh
Reading foundational Latin and French works in translation (Prudentius’s Psychomachia; The Romance of the Rose) the course will explore the workings of personification allegory in a series of early English texts, including the The Owl and the Nightingale, the complex and influential dream vision, Piers Plowman, body and soul debates, and early drama such as Mankind.
EN 728 A1 Goodrich
R 12:30 – 3:15
Narrative and Literary Conceptions of Time 1750-1930
Th
EN 743 A1 Henchman
T 12:30 – 3:15p
American Popular Writing, 1776-1900
Historically-informed survey of best-selling, steady-selling, and otherwise widely-embraced writing (fiction, poetry, journalism, and otherwise) from the American Revolution to the turn of the twentieth century. Questions to be considered will include the nature of “popularity,” particularly with respect to race, class, and gender; the power of literary conventionality and the problem of canonicity; the cultural work of sentimentalism, especially in the context of “reform”; the changing shape of the American literary marketplace. Possible authors include Paine, Rowson, Weems, Poe, Fern, Brown, Douglass, Alger, Longfellow, Keckley, and Baum.
EN 777 A1 Howell
M 2:30 – 5:15p
Postcolonial Studies and the Humanities
Th
EN 795 A1 Krishnan
W 2:30 – 5:15P