Degree Overview

Degrees Offered:

B. A.: Major in English
B. A.: Major in English leading to AYA (grades 7-12)

Minor: English, Creative Writing, Journalism

The Mission:

• In all its courses, the English Department aims to:
• Enhance writing, speaking, critical and analytical skills
• Engage students in the creative processes of reading and writing
• Encourage an appreciation of literary art and the way it enriches personal and public life
• Help students understand how language and literature both express and shape culture & identity
  
• Enable students to listen to a rich diversity of human voices

In addition, the department serves its majors by preparing them for:

• Lifelong enjoyment of reading and writing
  
• Continued use of critical reading, writing, and analytical skills gained through practice
  
• Careers or graduate programs in which the broad skills of communication and interpretations are essential, such as law, communications, or public relations
  
• Careers or graduate programs that demand specific knowledge of literature or writing, such as journalism, publishing, and teaching.

Learning Goals:

The English Department has designed a sequence of courses as requirements for majors that should allow them to:

• Learn to write and speak effectively in a variety of forms and for diverse audiences and purposes
  
• Learn to apply skills of close reading and analysis to a variety of texts and, in the process, begin to understand the complex ways meaning is made
  
• Understand the variety of interpretive strategies through which readers may approach a text; become aware of their own interpretive strategies
  
• Understand the interconnectedness of literary texts and the conversation between them
  
• Understand that literary texts both shape and are shaped by their historical and cultural contexts
  
• Learn to conduct independent literary research, using appropriate resources and technologies.