Program Overview

The Department of English offers a wide range of courses in British, American, and world literatures in English; film; literary theory; and creative writing. Though diverse, these offerings are unified by the study of textual production and the styles and practices of writing in English. Courses in the department examine literary works in their most illuminating contexts: historical, social, philosophical, and political. The department's courses in expository and creative writing enable students to refine their skills through reading, frequent writing assignments, and discussion.

The department serves the interests of students who plan to become teachers or writers of literature, as well as those preparing for other professions that put a high premium on cultural analysis, effective writing, symbolic interpretation, or media studies. Among the fields our students commonly enter are law, diplomacy, journalism, public-relations, publishing, teaching, and film-making. Students who have majored (or double-majored) in English are also seen as especially attractive candidates by medical, business, and law schools. Our courses are central to a liberal arts education, regardless of anticipated career, because they instill a mastery of critical thinking, linguistic analysis, and persuasive communication in a world that increasingly demands that we not only read but also read through the representations that we encounter.

Students graduating with a major in English will have developed:

1. an appreciation for the aesthetic, intellectual, and ideological complexity of literary and cultural texts;
2. a capacity for critical thinking through immersion in close reading, rhetorical analysis, and historical contextualization;
3. an ability to produce original questions for scholarly research or creative production and the skills necessary to carry that research, critical analysis, or creative project to completion with rigor and style.

They will have learned:

1. the logical, linguistic, and rhetorical skills to construct a compelling and persuasive argument based on evidence provided by a text and the means to convey such arguments successfully in written and oral form;
2. the historical contexts in which to locate important texts of American, British, and Anglophone world literature;
3. the intellectual programs, aesthetic strategies, and socio-political contexts within which English-language cultural producers have worked;
4. the variety of aesthetic standards that have shaped textual production over time and the ideological contexts that may inflect aesthetic judgments;
5. the distinctive characteristics of different genres and forms (poetry, novel, non-fiction prose, film, literary theory, etc.);
6. the distinctive contributions of the humanities to the ongoing debate about cultural values.

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