<p>I plan on majoring in English in college, but I don't know much about the English department at Cornell. Can I get some feedback on it - good points, bad points?</p>
<p>Thanks guys!</p>
<p>i dont know a whole lot about it, but I do know that it's ranks among the very best programs at Cornell and in the US. One of my professors said that literary criticism was pretty much invented at Cornell ... pretty impressive.</p>
<p>The English department has a pretty rich modern history; Nabokov used to be a professor and Pynchon is a Cornell English grad. There is also the famous grammar book Elements of Style written by former Cornell professor William Strunk and updated by Cornell alum E.B. White (of Charlotte's Web fame).</p>
<p>gomestar...that's a little funny, because literary criticism wasn't really invented anywhere, especially considering there are so many schools of criticism.</p>
<p>I think your professor was just trying to make a point...That point being that Cornell has one of the top English departments in the country, and has for some time. A number academic superstars in the humanities got their Ph.D.s from Cornell (I'm thinking specifically of Gayatri Spivak).</p>