Academic Program and Curriculum

The study of English helps students develop a broad range of practices that are valuable for a wide variety of career paths and life aspirations. In addition to offering courses that satisfy the core requirements in literature and writing and the core Human Diversity requirement, the Department of English offers three major tracks of its own and one joint major with the Department of Modern and Classical Languages:

• The general English major that allows students to take a variety of literature courses in early literature, American literature, British literature, multicultural literature, and to incorporate writing and cultural studies into their programs.
• The writing emphasis that combines a foundation of literary study with a sequence of writing courses focused on poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction, or on a range of nonfiction prose forms, including academic writing and the pedagogy of writing.
• The teacher education emphasis that prepares students for teaching middle and secondary school as part of the Minnesota teacher licensure program in Communication Arts and Literature. This program requires courses in linguistics, literature, writing, and writing pedagogy.
• The literary studies major allows highly motivated students the opportunity to deepen their mastery of English and another language through the study of literature in the English Department and the Modern and Classical Languages Department.

Students graduating with a major in English will be able to write thoughtfully about literature and life, in forms that range from engaged responses, to close readings of primary texts, to critical papers using secondary resources. They will understand and practice writing as a process that involves substantial revision and be able to reflect thoughtfully upon the writing process that works best for them. They will be able to read sophisticated literary works with imagination and intelligence and will be able to respond critically to their empathetic, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions.

Each of the majors offered by the English Department requires 44-credits of work. The literary studies major requires a mimimum of 40-credits of work.