English Major (B.A.), English for Educators Concentration

Professors Allison, DeMarco
Associate Professors Butcher, Comorau, Long, Merkel
Professor Emeritus Musser
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 250 is required for all English majors, and prospective and declared majors are strongly encouraged to take ENG 250 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 250 and has successfully completed several upper-level English courses, then the student may petition to the Department chair to substitute ENG 380 for ENG 250 . Unless this petition is approved by the chair, ENG 250 will be required to complete the major. Students are encouraged to plan ahead with regard to required seminars and advanced workshops.

English for Educators Concentration:

The English for Educators Concentration is 10 units.

Please note: Courses taken to fulfill requirement 1 - V may not overlap (i.e., the same course cannot be used to fulfill more than one requirement). However, courses taken for requirement VI may overlap with those taken for requirements 1 - V.

I. Foundation Course: ENG 250 - Introduction to Literary Study (1 unit)

II. Literature courses in the following categories

British Literature (choose 2 units):
- ENG 252 Vengeance
- ENG 256 Tragic Vision
- (ENG 330 - ENG 356) - Studies in Medieval Literature
- ENG 332 The Legends of King Arthur
- ENG 334 Chaucer and his Contemporaries
- ENG 258 Studies in Shakespeare
- ENG 338 Shakespeare: This Great Stage
- ENG 340 The Renaissance Author
- ENG 342 Premodern Theatre in the Modern World
- ENG 344 Drama, 1700-1900: The Development of “Realism”
- ENG 346 Eighteenth-Century Literature in the Digital Age: Gender, Genre, and Engagement
- ENG 348 The British Romantics
- ENG 350 The Victorians
- ENG 352 Modern British Literature
- ENG 354 Contemporary British Literature
American Literature (choose 2 units):
Transnational Literature (choose 1 unit):
- ENG 145 - Reading the Global Kitchen
- ENG 145 - Reading Indigenous Oceania
- ENG 145 - Reading Native Literature: The Reservation and the City
- ENG 176 - Utopia
- ENG 190 16 - Honors Tutorial: Queering the Canon: Global LGBTQ+ Literature
- ENG 226 - Images of American Indians
- ENG 228 - Re-Placing Great Britain
- ENG 270 Caribbean Women Writers
- ENG 273 - The Black Novel Transnationally
- ENG 278 Native American Literature
- ENG 300 7 - The Literary Politics of Ireland
- ENG 356 Race, Power, and Identity in Postcolonial Literature
- ENG 484 - Art & Aesthetics in the Postcolonial Novel
- ENG 486 - Native American Women Writers

III. Multimedia Narratives (choose 1 unit):

ENG 100 5 Graphic Literature
ENG 224 - Black Feminist Readings of Visual Texts
ENG 224 - Black Women Filmmakers
ENG 254 Introduction to Film
ENG 369 - Narratives of Slavery in Literature and Film

IV. Language/Linguistics (choose 1 unit):

ENG 334 Chaucer and his Contemporaries (with instructor permission)
ENG 391 Issues in Linguistics
ENG 395 History of the English Language

V. Writing courses in the following categories:

Nonfiction Writing (choose 1 unit):
Writing Elective not already taken above (choose 1 unit):

VI. Overlap Requirements

Of the above courses:

At least four (4) must be upper-level (numbered 250 or above).
One (1) must be on literature written prior to 1800 (ENG 252, 256, 330 - 348 or ENG 360).
One (1) must be on Ethnic American Literature:
- ENG 145 - Reading Jewish American Literature
- ENG 145 - Reading Native Literature: The Reservation and The City
- ENG 226 American Images
- ENG 268 Black Women’s Literary Traditions
- ENG 273 Approaches to African American Literature
- ENG 278 Native American Literature
- ENG 369 Genre Studies in African-American Literature

Note(s):

ENG 105 does not count toward the major. Internships, 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.