I wanted to ask what the best English undergraduate creative writing programs are. I’m a freshman at Holy Cross, and I am to some extent considering transferring later on. The English department here is definitely strong, but the courses that I would take later on study none of the literature that I enjoy. For example, they do not have anything dealing with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Eric Blair, et alia. I wanted to ask if there were certain English departments that specialized in specific branches of literature–preferably American literature if possible.
Have you looked through the literature offerings at colleges such as these?
http://contently.net/2014/11/06/resources/10-best-colleges-creative-writers/
http://flavorwire.com/409437/the-25-most-literary-colleges-in-america
https://education.seattlepi.com/university-united-states-creative-writing-courses-2243.html
If you don’t see what you’d like, then it’s possible you’ve already landed in a program that’s representative of how college literature is currently taught. Not incidentally, it would be perfectly fine, and perhaps preferential, to continue on in a broad and varied program while pursuing your own literary choices extracurricularly.
It’s difficult to find definitive lists, as most Google searches result in a bunch of schools that do not have undergraduate degrees in creative writing. For instance, Iowa has arguably the most famous graduate creative writing program, and, yes, the writers in that program will teach undergrad CW classes, but Iowa does not have a dedicated undergraduate major in CW (at least, last time I checked it didn’t).
Here is an article from ten years ago (but still relevant) that profile three LACs that have longstanding and well-regarded undergraduate majors in creative writing (Sarah Lawrence, Oberlin, and Knox): https://www.pw.org/content/workshop_revolution_sensibility
Look at Kenyon.