LTA2075 Design for Living
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
Explores how profoundly our lives are shaped by the designs of graphics we see, objects we use and buildings we move through every day. Students will gain increased understanding of the role good and bad design plays in affecting them and in shaping the world in which they live.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: LTA2075
  • Number of Credits: 4

LVA2072 Detective Fiction, Noir, and Social Criticism
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
This course explores the uses and genre development of detective fiction and film noir and their functions as social commentary, applying examples from different times and places - in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. What do these works have in common, and what separates them? How do they reflect or interrogate the cultures that produced them? Why has detective fiction (in its various incarnations) remained so popular? We consider revisions of the genre in the so-called "hardboiled" or serial "pulp fiction" of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as its representation in film noir. We analyze later versions of the genre through films such as Chinatown and Blade Runner, and recent alterations in neo-noir films, evaluating them in relation to contemporary culture. Short works by canonical Latin American authors such as Borges and García Márquez, among others, provide an introduction to Latin American crime fiction. Through the works of current and popular writers and filmmakers we consider the legacies of dictatorship in Spain and Latin America, and the genre's use in investigating and exposing a conflictive past (or fear of what one might find). We will look at the female detective in varied works. How is she different (if she is?) from her male counterparts? And we examine how detective fiction can function to parody or subvert the possibility of an ordered solution, or the completion of justice.


Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: LVA2072
  • Number of Credits: 4

LTA2072 Detective Fiction, Noir, and Social Criticism
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
This course explores the uses and genre development of detective fiction and film noir and their functions as social commentary, applying examples from different times and places - in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. What do these works have in common, and what separates them? How do they reflect or interrogate the cultures that produced them? Why has detective fiction (in its various incarnations) remained so popular? We consider revisions of the genre in the so-called "hardboiled" or serial "pulp fiction" of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as its representation in film noir. We analyze later versions of the genre through films such as Chinatown and Blade Runner, and recent alterations in neo-noir films, evaluating them in relation to contemporary culture. Short works by canonical Latin American authors such as Borges and García Márquez, among others, provide an introduction to Latin American crime fiction. Through the works of current and popular writers and filmmakers we consider the legacies of dictatorship in Spain and Latin America, and the genre's use in investigating and exposing a conflictive past (or fear of what one might find). We will look at the female detective in varied works. How is she different (if she is?) from her male counterparts? And we examine how detective fiction can function to parody or subvert the possibility of an ordered solution, or the completion of justice.


Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: LTA2072
  • Number of Credits: 4

LIT4604 Documentary Poetry: Engaging Reality
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits
How do contemporary poets engage their work with what's real in the world? How can poetry describe, define, explain, and/or challenge the information, the facts, the multitude of voices that surround and at times overwhelm us? Documentary poetry, an increasingly popular poetic form, engages as its subject matter real events from history, and may apply data from a range of realms: science, economics, literature, politics, psychology, current events, personal life. While documentary poets use this form as a way to think, research, explore, and satisfy curiosity, they are also potentially engaged in modes of inquiry, even skepticism. Thus documentary poems may result in the discovery of alternative approaches to meaning, new ways of understanding and telling stories, even sites of social change and activism. In addition, documentary poets tend to go beyond the traditionally poetic by applying to their poems mixed genres and media, including direct quotations, letters, diaries, court transcripts, medical records, images, testimonials, even embedded graphics. In this course, we will examine the origins of this form and study pivotal poems and poets in its development using work from a recent anthology of documentary poems as well as from several single-author poetry collections by poets Patricia Smith, Claudia Rankine, Tarfia Faizullah, Maggie Nelson, C.D. Wright, and Martha Collins. Students will write short analytical responses and an essay, but they will also craft and share their own original documentary poems as a way of understanding the form and its potential in their own lives for inquiry and discovery.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: LIT4604
  • Number of Credits: 4

LTA2003 Dramatizing the American Dream (LIT)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
The American Dream is an indispensable, ubiquitous, and driving notion in this country. Its lure has brought millions of immigrants to our shores, given authors fodder for stories and novels, and allowed advertisers to sell the bigger car, the grander home, the better wardrobe. But what exactly is the American Dream? What are its tenets? Who gets to enjoy it? This course will examine how both male and female playwrights such as Susan Glaspell, Clifford Odets, Lorraine Hansberry, Sam Shepard, and Wendy Wasserstein have answered these questions in their dramatizations of the American Dream. As we study and watch various performances of the American Dream, we will take into account the voice telling the story and question the authority, privilege, and experience of that voice. We will evaluate how the plays speak to the American Dream, to each other, and to us. This course will require two papers, a mid-term and final exam.


Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: LTA2003
  • Number of Credits: 4

CSP2001 Introduction to Ethics

(Formerly CVA2001)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits

Discussions relate morality to the life and circumstances of contemporary society by offering a solid grounding in the major concepts of ethical theory and in the basic skills for analyzing ethical issues and making sound moral judgments.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Fall and Spring

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: CSP2001
  • Number of Credits: 4

ENG4615 Expository Writing

2 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This advanced writing course has two main goals. One: reviewing the fundamentals of grammar, style, and voice will help you face future writing situations in the professional world with greater confidence. Two: expanding your repertoire of expressive choices will help you articulate ideas more clearly and will connect you more effectively with intended audiences.
This is an "expository," not a "creative" writing course, with a focus on the tasks of explanation and persuasion, and on the genre of the essay. But it will also push generic boundaries and examine the role of creativity and imagination in non-fiction prose.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: ENG4615
  • Number of Credits: 2

HUM4630 Extremism: The Fanatic, The Militant, The Sectarian
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits
This course is committed to exploring "extremism" through the formation of dangerous sects: i.e. underground movements, secret societies, forbidden associations, cult gatherings, urban gangs, martial arts orders, outlawed artistic circles, rebel cadres, and terrorist units. We will use contemporary literary works from around the world to examine the way in which these dangerous, hidden alliances experiment with ideas of concealment, seduction, power, strangeness, and sacrifice in order to create antagonistic counter-currents to everyday society. We will therefore also study the many forms that such outsider factions can take as they banish themselves and plan their hostile-ecstatic return to the surface: revolutionary, criminal, religious, mystical, magical, and avant-garde. Ultimately, this topic will allow us to penetrate one of the darker quarters of the human imagination in the modern age, following the extremist mind into its most subterranean possibilities, where a certain intense passion/hatred toward the world allows one to generate an alternative reality of the most excessive nature.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: HUM4630
  • Number of Credits: 4

HUM4604: Feminish, Gender and Philosophies of Liberation

4 Advanced Liberal Arts credits

This course will overview the history of modern feminist philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present. We will focus on the emergence of feminism within in the context of colonialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the development of the modern nation state, and various revolutions. While much of the course will look at international examples and texts, we will also look at the specificities of the feminist movement in the United States from within indigenous struggles for sovereignty, the abolitionist movement, and feminist work specific to Boston. We will also study the emergence of LGBT movements in conversation with feminist struggles, as well as the emergence of transfeminism. The course is broken up into three units: Unit 1 will focus on the history of feminist philosophy and activism; Unit 2 looks at the modern racial and colonial history of gender; and Unit 3 focuses on contemporary abolitionist and decolonial forms of feminism as philosophies of liberation. There will be an in-class mid-term before spring break after we finish Unit 1, and the course will conclude with a final research paper.

Prerequsites: Any Combinations of 2 Intermediate Liberal Arts (HSS, CSP, LTA)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: HUM4604
  • Number of Credits: 4

LTA2032 Foundations of Western Art

4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is designed to introduce students to painting, architecture, and sculpture from the
Renaissance to the early 20th century and to give students an understanding of the general principles governing the visual arts. Topics such as the role of the artist, the functions of art in society, and the nature of visual language, among others, will be discussed as major artists and their works are presented in this survey of Western art. Class lectures and discussions are based on the presentation of slides.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring or Fall

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Arts and Humanities
  • Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
  • Course Number: LTA2032
  • Number of Credits: 4