Mar 28, 2024  
2021-2022 College of Liberal Arts 
    
2021-2022 College of Liberal Arts

English


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About the Program

As English majors, students read widely, engaging with many kinds of texts from multiple periods, geographical areas, genres, and literary traditions. Within the major, students choose a specific emphasis (Literature, Creative Writing, or Writing and Communication Studies) as their focus and develop their skills and knowledge through in-depth exploration within that emphasis.  Through the major, students develop flexibility of thought, attentiveness to language, an ability to engage with the world around them, and to understand difference (gender, race, class, ability, religion, nation), capacities which they may apply in almost any area of study or employment after college.  Upon completion of the major, students will particularly demonstrate the following:

Close Reading: In their reading of a text, students demonstrate attentiveness to language, technique, structure, cultural/historical reference, and forms and genres.

Range of Approaches: Students use critical frameworks to open texts in different ways.

Historicizing: Students analyze texts in relation to the historical period and culture in which they were produced.

Writing: Students write clearly and flexibly, using writing to develop and express ideas, to construct narratives, to connect with multiple audiences, and as a tool for thinking.

Information Literacy: Students can find, evaluate, and engage with sources using disciplinary research tools.

Synthesizing: In creating their own arguments, students draw on a variety of texts, scholars, and/or theories and place them into conversation with each other.

Faculty

  • Chair: Shakti Jaising, Associate Professor
  • Professors: Sandra Jamieson (Director of Writing across the Curriculum), Wendy Kolmar, Neil Levi, Amy Koritz (Director of the Center for Civic Engagement)
  • Associate Professors: Summer Harrison, Lisa Lynch (Director of the New York Semester on Media and Communication), Hannah Wells
  • Assistant Professors: Courtney Zoffness
  • Assistant Teaching Professor: Jens Lloyd (Director of First-Year Writing)
  • Professor Emeriti: Janet Burstein, James Hala, Nicky Ollman, Frank Occhiogrosso, Robert Ready, Peggy Samuels, Gerry Smith-Wright

Advanced Placement (AP) Examinations

A student receiving a 4 or 5 on the English Language and Composition examinations may apply that to satisfy one writing intensive course. AP credit may not be applied to the major or minor in English literature, nor may it be used to fulfill the general education requirement in literature. See pages 15-16 for further information about AP credits.

London Semester

See the program’s catalog entry  for details.

Programs

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