The Literature concentration explores the forces and phenomena of human creativity—and specifically the imaginative possibilities of language. Our courses explore the relations between culture and literary production, giving students tools to appreciate and to interrogate its complicated richness. Building off the foundation for all English majors, in courses like “Reading & Imagination,” Literature concentrators select from a broad variety of “deep dive” courses that pave the way for their own interpretive interventions, analytic or creative. Our reading is profoundly influenced and inspired by critical lenses such as gender studies, queer theory, performance studies, Black studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial theory, and more.
“Critical Reading”– a cornerstone of the concentration–provides a history of theoretical inquiry introducing several frameworks by which literature has been understood, such as historicism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. By studying these various approaches, students learn to sharpen their voices in dialogue with others. Your efforts in this course will also prepare you for advanced work in the Junior Colloquium and Senior Seminar, in addition to taking up co-curricular opportunities like the Undergraduate Research Conference. Our Literature concentrators have gone on to achieve success along numerous post-graduate pathways, including at highly regarded graduate programs, such as Cornell University, Northeastern University, Brandeis University and UMass Amherst.
Everyone takes:
Take two of the following:
Take one of the following:
Take two of the following (that you haven’t already taken):
*course may be repeated as topics differ
