English Major, Literature Concentration

Professors Caplan, DeMarco, Olmstead
Associate Professors Allison, Butcher, Comorau, Long
Professor Emeritus Musser
Part-Time Associate Professor Stephens
Part-Time Senior Lecturer Burns

English majors develop both reading and writing skills. They gain a wide knowledge of authors, of texts originally written in English, of the English language, and of interpretive approaches to literature. They read literary works and watch films selected to illustrate the linguistic connections among texts, historical perspectives, cultural contexts, the development of English as a language, and the canon, its critics, and its alternatives. The major and minor foster curiosity about language, and the conviction that literature and film enrich human experience.

In English courses, students develop close reading skills—heightening their awareness of the conventions of literary and cinematic form, structure, language, genre, and rhetoric—and are introduced to current critical methods. Throughout the major, students test and revise their notions of what makes literature literature. They cultivate sensitivity to language as a medium of thought and communication, and they learn to ask penetrating questions about texts and language.

English majors and minors become thoroughly acquainted with the writing process, sensitive to the rhetorical situation, and alert to the demands for correctness and precision.

The English department expects that its students will explore the relationship of language and literature to social and cultural issues. It hopes they will become habitual, morally engaged readers, appreciating literature’s function in developing an imaginative sensitivity to and disciplined regard for the relation between words and the world, the writer and the work, the representing self and the represented other.

The English major and minor also provide practical preparation for the world of work. They equip students to communicate clearly, to write effectively, and to read critically and accurately. These skills are fundamental for success in numerous professions and occupations, especially in the age of the Internet.

Many English courses do not carry prerequisites. In general, however, courses at the 100 and 200 levels are most appropriate for first-year students and sophomores, or for those students who have not previously taken a college literature course. Upper-level students and those who have previously taken a college literature course may take courses at all levels.

Learning Objectives

1. Students will learn how to situate diverse literary, cinematic, and cultural texts within social, historical, and aesthetic contexts, including the history of literary periods and genres as well as the history of English as a global language.

2. Students will cultivate close reading skills, including the ability to recognize and analyze literary language, forms, and conventions, as well as a sensitivity to language itself as a medium of communication and expression.

3. Student will develop writing skills, including the ability to construct a thesis-driven argument supported by textual evidence and research, as well as facility with using or adapting the conventions of literary genres to argumentative or artistic purposes.

4. Students will come to appreciate the manifold ways in which literary, cinematic, and cultural texts enrich human experience, contributing to a person’s ability to understand the world and self in new ways.

Major Requirements

ENG 150 is required for all English majors, and prospective and declared majors are strongly encouraged to take ENG 150 in their first or second year, before enrolling in upper-level courses. However, if a Junior or Senior English major has not yet taken ENG 150 and has successfully completed several upper-level English courses, then the student may petition to the Department chair to substitute ENG 380 for ENG 150 . Unless this petition is approved by the chair, ENG 150 will be required to complete the major. Students are encouraged to plan ahead with regard to required seminars and advanced workshops.

Literature Concentration:

The English Literature Concentration is 10 units.

I. Foundation Course: ENG 150 - Introduction to Literary Study (1 unit)

II. Theme course (choose 1 unit):

ENG 145 - Reading [a text or texts]
ENG 176 - Alternative Worlds
ENG 180 - Narratives I, ENG 182 - Narratives II, and ENG 100 6 - Narratives III (any combination of two)
ENG 224 - African-American Images
ENG 226 - American Images
ENG 228 - British Images
ENG 266 - Women’s Literature in English

III. British and Postcolonial literature (choose 2 units):

ENG 330 - Studies in Medieval Literature
ENG 334 - Chaucer and his Contemporaries
ENG 336 - Studies in Shakespeare
ENG 338 - Shakespeare: This Great Stage
ENG 340 - The Renaissance Author
ENG 342 - Drama and the Theatre to 1700
ENG 344 - Drama, 1700-1900: The Development of “Realism”
ENG 346 - Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture
ENG 348 - The British Romantics
ENG 350 - The Victorians
ENG 352 - Modern British Literature
ENG 354 - Contemporary British Literature
ENG 356 - Race, Power, and Identity in Postcolonial Literature

IV. American Literature (choose 1 unit):

ENG 268 - Black Women’s Literary Traditions
ENG 273 - Approaches to African American Literature
ENG 278 - Native American Literature
ENG 360 - Early American Literature
ENG 362 - Nineteenth-Century American Literature
ENG 369 - Genre Studies in African-American Literature
ENG 372 - Modern American Literature
ENG 374 - Contemporary American Literature

❧ Note: At least one (1) of the above literature courses must be on literature written prior to 1800. (ENG 330 - 346 or ENG 360).

V. Language or Upper-Level Writing (choose 1 unit):

ENG 265 - Elements of Style and Rhetoric
ENG 391 - Issues in Linguistics
ENG 395 - History of the English Language

VI. Seminar (choose 1 unit):

ENG 484 - Seminar in British and Postcolonial Literature
ENG 486 - Seminar in American Literature

VII. Electives (choose 3 units): Any English courses except ENG 105 and ENG 495.

Note(s):

ENG 105 does not count toward the major. Internships and Apprenticeships, while encouraged, are viewed as an extension of the major, not as a substitute for a regular course. ENG 495 does not count toward the major.

A course taken credit/no entry may not be counted toward the major. At least seven courses must be taken at Ohio Wesleyan.