English Undergraduates: Writing Specialization

We live in an increasingly technological world whose medium is language, image, and sound. Our writing major is designed to prepare students to successfully compete in this environment. This major provides a comprehensive undergraduate program of class offerings -- introductory to advanced levels -- that combines the rigor of creative writing in poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, playwriting, and screenwriting, with the practical elements of magazine editing and layout, desktop publishing, web design, technical writing, and internships with companies that need writers and editors. The major’s interdisciplinary range and depth allow students to shape their major through course combinations that best suit their interests and abilities -- from the more creative to the more practical -- using classes offered by faculty in English, Drama, Communications, Information Technology, and Film and Video Studies departments.

The writing courses give students an in-depth understanding of the construction and analysis of literary texts. They create opportunities for students to develop their critical reading and writing abilities in oral and written formats. Majors learn to ask important questions about the intellectual, rhetorical, and emotional issues implied or embedded in texts; to push beyond platitudes and easy ways of recording and presenting ideas; to find ways of giving feedback to fellow writers that is good-spirited as well as useful and productive; to engage meaningfully with our beliefs, our assumptions, the history of ideas, global literatures, and language itself. The production courses and the internships give students practice making websites, editing, work experience in companies and government offices that specialize in producing text and images, and marketing a literary magazine.