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 Outcomes
The English Department has designed a sequence of courses as requirements for majors that should allow them to:
Write and speak effectively in a variety of forms and for diverse audiences and purposes
Apply skills of close reading and analysis to a variety of texts and, in the process, articulate some of the complex ways meaning is made
Describe and demonstrate a variety of interpretive strategies through which readers may approach a text, and, in so doing, become aware of their own interpretive strategies
Trace genealogies within and between literary periods across a range of Anglophone traditions
Demonstrate how literary texts both shape and are shaped by their historical and cultural contexts
Conduct independent literary research, using appropriate resources and technologies
Describe how their own work demonstrates each of the skills listed above
