Learning Aims
In addition to the goals for the core program, all of which apply to the major program, the English department sets the following as goals for its majors:
- Learn to write clearly and effectively about literature and language and to construct evidence-based written arguments.
- Understand different literary genres and forms and the aesthetic dimensions of literary texts.
- Recognize that texts can be approached in multiple ways.
- Understand how works of literature reflect their own times, engage great moral issues, and advance or undermine justice.
- Understand how works of literature challenge readers to recognize difference, build communities, address racial, social, and economic inequities, and participate critically as active members of society.
- Develop habits of reading for both pleasure and intellectual edification.