English Courses
Design your English major with required and selected courses, concentrations
Required Courses for the English Major
As an English major, you are required to take two foundation courses. The first, a seminar, English 120, concentrates on close reading of poems and prose fiction: you'll learn to pay attention to a literary work's language and structure as a reflection of its many contexts and to interpret what you read.
The second required course, English 220, introduces majors to practical and theoretical questions about the discipline of English and the study of literatures in English. You'll continue to refine techniques of close reading and learn more about how literary and other cultural texts (film, music, television) work as forms of cultural representation.
Choosing Other Courses
With the exception of a senior seminar, no specific courses are required to complete the major. The department does ask all its majors to develop their awareness of the range of literary forms created in different times and by different cultures. Majors take at least two courses at the advanced level that bring them into contact with British or American literature written before 1830, at least one course in American literature or culture, and at least one course in subaltern literature. In the capstone for the major, the senior seminar, all students use the analytical and research skills they've developed as English majors to write a long essay.
A sampling of our courses
- Alien Beings, Alien Worlds
- Narratives of Black Travel
- The Body as Metaphor
- Medusa: Femme Fatales in Western Culture
- The Art of Close Reading
- Literature and Empire
- Indian Fiction, in English
- Bob Dylan
Choose a Concentration: Creative Writing or Race and Ethnicity
Writing is extremely important in English courses, and almost all of them are designated writing-intensive or writing-enhanced. The department offers a Concentration in Creative Writing, and a substantial number of English majors graduate with this concentration. They complete all the courses required for the major as well as additional courses in fiction or poetry writing under the supervision of one of the department's two writers-in-residence. Writing courses include Seminar in Fiction, Writing of Poetry, Intermediate and Advanced, and Seminar in the Teaching of Writing.
A new Concentration in Race and Ethnicity is being established, allowing students to gather into one track the coursework in race and ethnicity already distributed through the department's offerings. This concentration will be formally launched in the fall of 2010. Examples of courses include Literature and Race Criticism, The Literature of Passing, Jews and Moors in Renaissance Drama, West African Literature and Film and America in Contemporary Black African Literature.
Last Modified: Friday, September 18, 2009 11:21