<p>My son has decided he wants to major in English, with an emphasis on literature as opposed to writing. How can I help him evaluate colleges and know if the English Department at a school is good and what its strengths and weaknesses are? He is looking at a wide variety of colleges and trying to get close to full ride scholarships, so he can't just look at a list of colleges with known good English departments and decide to go to one. If you remember me from a previous post, he is interested in outdoor recreation also, but only as a minor or double major, not as his primary major.</p>
<p>One way is to check the credentials and publishing records of the faculty at the colleges of interest. With modern search engines this is relatively straightforward. Harder to determine is if individual faculty members are well regarded as educators.</p>
<p>I teach English at the college level. Neither of my kids majored in English but I did look at English departments to understand the academics of a particular school.</p>
<p>Although I am left leaning politically, I guess I am more conservative about what constitutes a good English department.</p>
<p>It’s best if a school offers both Comparative Literature and English. Then the student can get the grounding s/he needs/wants in English language literature. If the student is more eclectic, s/he can major in literature in translation along with English (and American, Canadian, Indian, Pakistani, South African etc – works in Englsh) works.</p>
<p>I would want a department that demanded some historical breadth either in survey courses or successful period courses. I would want a department to offer genre studies: the novel, modern poetry, etc. I would also want requirements to include Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton for English literature and a historical approach including Puritan writers for American literature. Ideally a student would concentrate on one or the other – they are both such full traditions, but there are other options, such as Modern Literature in English.</p>
<p>I have seen some departments whose course offerings are limited to courses such as “Monsters in English and American Literature” and things like that. I would not want my kid to major in English at such a school.</p>
<p>I would want someone to read Beowulf, medieval romances, Chaucer, Renaissance poetry and drama, the Restoration, Neoclassical literature, romantics, Victorian and modern and post-modern works in English literature.</p>
<p>An Americanist should read early travel diaries, Puritan sermons, Anne Bradstreet, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Wharton, James and modern and post-modern writers at a bare minimum.</p>
<p>And a good department requires a study of criticism as well. A really good department requires either British or American History as well a study of history and dstructure of the English language.</p>
<p>As I said, I would avoid those departments whose course offerings are all souped up things to interest kids, like Detective Fiction. That’s fun for an elective, but it’s nt the nuts and bolts of the discipline.</p>
<p>And I would want a demonstrated emphasis on stretching the canon to include works by women writers: Austen, Brontes, of course but other more obscure writers too, as well as the writings of people of color, Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatley, the Harlem Renaissance, etc.</p>
<p>Good in what sense? Does he have any understanding of different schools (approaches) of literary theory that different colleges emphasize? I’d look for schools (especially LACs) where the English classes will be small so that the professors have real time to read and respond to writing (and thinking).</p>
<p>Well since the substantial scholarships are the priority, it would be helpful possibly to have that list, if you want specific comparisons. </p>
<p>When I look at English departments, I investigate the department pretty thoroughly, if the department does not have a widely known reputation (such as Brown, Berkeley, Kenyon, Bennington, Vassar, to name only a few). I look at the course descriptions and especially the faculty. Often there are faculty bios on the website or in print literature that can be ordered, such as a print catalog. A thin English department with a narrow range of courses (such as one course per literary era – yes, I’ve seen that) and which doesn’t look at literature from a variety of approaches – genre, culture, gender – would not be one I would choose. A strong literature department should include classic approaches and more modern, “edgy” sensiibilities. Somewhere in there should be real consciousness of literary theory, including contemporary literary theory. Finally, an increasingly important feature of English departments is an interdisciplinary thread, such as relating literature to other art forms (film, for example). This indicates both an understanding of influences on literature and also an appreciation of literature as art.</p>
<p>Wow – all of us practically posted at once, I see.</p>
<p>No, he does not know about different literary approaches, etc. How does one know how to determine the approach used in a school? This is all new to him. I think he is mainly interested in classic works.</p>
<p>This is all good advice, but be sure to check the school’s course schedule. Don’t just rely on the catalog. See which courses have been offered the previous fall and spring. Sometimes the school catalog can be chock filled with courses that are no longer offered or are offered only every other year, or more rarely.</p>
<p>^ Yes, the catalog must be current, and I often do check out the recent and upcoming schedules myself when comparing English departments, school to school.</p>
<p>Mythmom – what a great, informative and useful post! Really helpful in concrete ways.</p>
<p>Most departments at good schools nowadays have websites that list faculty interests and publications. Look for faculty with PhDs from excellent institutions–given the job market for academics in the humanities, they are all over the place nowadays. Also, look for a healthy publication record. Even at a teaching-intensive institution, you want people who are engaged with a research field and with others in their scholarly community.</p>
<p>Because people major in English for all sorts of reasons, very few departments, reputable or not, have the kind of very stringent historical requirements that mythmom lists. At most they will demand a two or three-semester introductory survey, plus some historical range–“two courses before 1800” is common. A serious student of literature, especially one possibly headed to grad school, will want to plan the major so that he or she far exceeds the minimum requirements. Such a student should take a curriculum like the one mythmom outlines, trying to cover as much historical range as possible and especially emphasizing the earlier stuff. He or she should also be exposed to writing in a variety of genres, and should take at least one course in literary theory.</p>
<p>It’s helpful to have at least reasonably fluent reading knowledge of one or two European languages other than English. Many English departments will accept one or two courses in another literature, taught in the original language, toward the English major. Courses in history, philosophy, religion, and related fields are also good.</p>
<p>Teaching English is extremely labor-intensive because grading papers well takes a lot of time and skill. I’ve heard that some cash-strapped state universities, e.g. SUNY Stony Brook, have cut back so severely on personnel that hardly any writing gets assigned in English courses, which pretty much deprives the major of any meaning or usefulness. Lecture-based teaching can be very effective, but make sure there are discussion sections attached to the lectures, and also that students have plenty of small-class options as well. </p>
<p>Most good departments offer the possibility of a Distinguished Major project, which I strongly recommend to serious students. Even when the end result is lame, the experience of working one-on-one with a faculty advisor, doing independent research over a period of several months, and writing/revising a really long paper is invaluable.</p>
<p>For a really ambitious student, it can be good to attend a school with a PhD program. That means there will always be plenty of visiting lecturers, special presentations, and so on; and if the student toward the end of his/her undergrad career starts to run out of options at the BA level, he/she can often enroll in grad courses.</p>
<p>mythmom, I wish I (and my D) had seen your post before she started her college search. She has ended up at one of those LAC’s which is supposedly strong in English and writing, but seems to lean towards the “detective fiction” type of course offerings. It doesn’t seem very rigorous to me, but seems to suit my D, who is not all that scholarly. I do wonder at the depth of her education there, though.</p>
<p>Lovesthe heat, if you look through the course catalog, it will be immediately apparent to you what kind of English dept it is. The harder part is for your S to figure out, before he has even started, where his interests lie. He might get a sense, reading the course descriptions, but probably the best thing is for him to schedule a visit with someone at the English dept. when he does a campus tour so he can ask in depth questions, and to sit in on a few classes. If he tells the admissions office about his interest, they may be able to put him in touch with the right person.</p>
<p>Wow- these are some extensive, very helpful posts. Thank you so much. I have a lot to look up and research now!</p>
<p>jingle’s post #10 is obviously very well imformed and very insightful.</p>
<p>In my own defense I would like to say that even the local community colleges offer the survey courses I mentioned as did my D’s elite LAC. Although she wasn’t an English major, she was an American Studies major and she was required to take all four survey courses in American literature. The community colleges (and many other colleges) will offer them as a two semester, not four semester, option. Her school is very rigorous.</p>
<p>Still, jingle’s points are well taken.</p>
<p>Here’s a much easier assessment tool. Assume that the experience in your undergraduate English classes will be richer and more insightful in schools at which the student body is better qualified and prepared. The very best instructors can’t do much with a class of students who haven’t read the assigned works or found anything within them that triggers a thought or opinion.</p>
<p>I have a BA in English Literature, and I couldn’t agree more with mythmom. The survey (covering all eras) and genre requirements are very, very important. Small classes are nice, and reputable professors are always a good thing, of course. Getting a solid grounding in literature is the most important aspect of the degree, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I would add that a senior thesis/paper is a very great opportunity. I don’t think I would feel I had truly completed my degree without writing one. But I wouldn’t cross off a school based on this, since many excellent schools don’t require them. Often you can do one as an option, however, and I would urge anyone to do this.</p>
<p>I took one English course that resembled “Monsters in Fiction” described above, during my time in college. It was so obvious to me that it was not really a part of a true English degree curriculum, and it was filled with people outside the major who thought it would be “fun.” Some non-English major friends had convinced me to take it with them, and I was so sorry to have wasted time I could have spent enriching my understanding of the field and doing work that was integral to a solid English literature degree. I am sad for anyone who has ended up at a school where these courses are the norm in the department.</p>
<p>And this was at a very top-ranked school, and all of those “fun-loving” students in the class I hated (I hated the class, not the students) were very qualified and prepared, and did all the reading. I do feel the degree, I daresay like other degrees like biology, etc., depends on the thoroughness of the curriculum, regardless of the “status” of the institution. Even if the other kids are blowing off the readings, a good student can work with the professor to gain insight into the texts and learn to read and write critically. What’s important is for the course to focus on worthwhile curriculum content.</p>
<p>Great question, great posts.</p>
<p>First, I want to say that there has been such a diaspora of English PhDs over our generation and the next that you can find excellent English Departments almost anywhere. My most intellectual relative, AB Harvard magna, and PhD Princeton, originally a specialist in Old and Middle English, winner of several teaching awards as a junior faculty member at Princeton, has spent most of his career at a third-tier state university in the rural Midwest. (Where he has been very happy, by the way, and has enjoyed his students.) </p>
<p>That said, I think that many English departments at such institutions (including his) don’t really teach English literature. They teach teaching English to future teachers, and basic expository writing to future nurses, engineers, and chemists.</p>
<p>So, before you get to mythmom’s rather stringent criteria, the first question is “Is this department in the English literature biz?” That should be apparent from the course offerings without a lot of fine analysis. Of course, if it’s a university, and there is a PhD program in English Lit, that’s a pretty good sign.</p>
<p>I love mythmom’s post, but I have no idea what she is talking about. I grew up on the fringes of a pretty good English department, I attended a college with a great English department, I hung out with the faculty and grad students in another great English department when I was in law school, I have taken courses at a top LAC, and my daughter just graduated with a BA in English from a very good department . . . and I have never seen anything like mythmom’s list. All of that stuff should be available, ideally, but required? No way, not even of grad students. Jingle is much closer to reality.</p>
<p>The presence of “Detective Novel” courses should NOT be a turn-off, because (a) everybody has them, (b) they can be good, and (c) often they are taught by grad students and offer real access to what is hot right now, and also to a young scholar modelling passion for his or her subject. (My daughter had a course in “Forensic Literature”, in which it turned out that she was the only person in the room, including the teacher, who was not obsessed with CSI and Sue Grafton. She learned a lot about different approaches to literature in that class.) That shouldn’t be ALL that’s offered, but if there isn’t SOME of it I would worry that the department is hidebound.</p>
<p>You also want to see at least a few buzzwords of the moment: A department where no course description says “post-colonial” or “queer” or “technology” is a department that is stuck in some eddy far from the mainstream. Again – not everything, but some.</p>
<p>Edit: part of this cross-posted with JHS, oops</p>
<p>I would agree mostly with the above posts, except to add (in concurrence with one other poster) that many English departments, though they OFFER a wide breadth of courses on the “classics,” do not necessarily “require” taking all of the classes they offer ;). So, I would say as long as the OPTION is there for rigorous study, the requirements themselves need not be rigid.</p>
<p>Further, I would disagree with the general sentiment about such classes as “Monsters in Literature”, etc. While I agree that an English department should include more than this if only to showcase that it offers diverse classes, catchy titles does not necessarily indicate a bad or anti-intellectual class. It does not even necessarily indicate a “trite” thematic focus…</p>
<p>For example, a Women in Science Fiction class could include real literature, real feminist theory, and even some “oldies but goodies,” including pre-1800s utopian writing. I imagine similar classes on Arthurian Literature and tradition, and even “Monsters in Literature” could showcase really great works - I can think of bucketfulls of classics right off the top of my head with “monsters” in them! And really, are we talking “monster” as in Frankenstein, or “monster” as in “villian”? Or simply “monstrosities”? Now we have broadened the possible scope of the literature and themes in the class to really encompass 1000s of challenging, relevant works that pack a real punch.</p>
<p>If you see some “catchy” looking class titles…e-mail the prof for the syllabus. The kind of things you see on there will be more illuminating than the title.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the level of rigor in an English class is dependent on 1. the kind of class discussion, either as directed by the prof’s lecture (in which case publishing record would be important), or as directed by your peers (in which case how “intellectual” the environment is plays in, how small the classes are play in). It is secondarily dependent on 2. The amount of work the student puts in. Is that 10-page paper going to skim the surface and get an A because most people can’t write, college kids included? Or is it something that you really pored over, something that you talked about with the prof before writing, something that you really lept out of your intellectual comfort zone to write?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, 1 may be severely impacted if your S chooses to pursue a full ride. The level of discussion in the class is probably never going to “astoud” him, and he may be responsible for picking up a lot of the slack (after all, a scholarship annoints the “smartest” students at the school). The existence of the 2nd vein, at least, will ensure the self-motivated’s success and depth of education at many institutions…and in many classes…including “detective literature” :).</p>
<p>(On buzzwords: usually that kinda thing is implied and would not necessarily be found in course descriptions…I have taken many classes that emphasize post colonial analysis - is that still new? - or touch on queer theory or technology, but I have very, very rarely seen these words mentioned in the course titles or descriptions).</p>
<p>I just looked at my daughter’s requirements (at the University of Chicago, which uses a quarter system, with a minimum of 42 courses to graduate, and is not particularly known for lack of rigor):</p>
<p>Outside of the major, as part of the core curriculum, every student would have taken a total of 9 courses divided among a double/triple humanities course that would be literature-focused, a triple social science theory course, a double civilization/history course, and one or two courses in art/music/drama. They would also need at least a year of a foreign language.</p>
<p>On top of that, students would be required to take two additional quarters of the same foreign language, one additional art/music/theater course, and 10 or more English courses. The 10 English courses had to include at least 2 pre-1750 and 2 1750-1950, 1 each on novel, poetry, and film, 1 each British and American, and 1 required critical theory course. Particular courses could double-count towards the requirements, but there would still have to be 10 courses taken. A thesis in one’s senior year was optional (required for honors), and about half the majors did them.</p>
<p>^Interesting.</p>
<p>These requirements are very similar to UMCP’s CORE and English requirements.</p>
<p>Yet UMCP’s English department is NOT known to be particularly rigorous relative to Chicago :P</p>
<p>I think that just hammers home the fact that the course titles, descriptions, and major requirements unfortunately don’t tell the whole story (though you can get basic information like “how many of these types of classes are offered”). Again I think it’s going to come down to the faculty, the level of discussion in the class, and the level of expertise expected on assignments and exams. That is really hard to judge from the outside-looking-in :/.</p>
<p>I’m really, really anti-rankings/prestige-hunting, etc. but in terms of English as a major, going to a school that’s known to be challenging and that’s known to attract intellectuals is going to make the grading harder (since English teachers can’t help but grade papers relative to the rest of the class) and the class discussion more vibrant. But if student is very self-motivated and there’s a good breadth of class offered, then maybe those things don’t make as big of a difference.</p>
<p>JHS: It was required of me as an undergraduate and I benefitted from each an every course. And while someone might not find <em>all</em> my criteria in one department, it does show what direction to look in.</p>
<p>However, I can assure you that I had to meet each and every one of those criteria. It’s true that I am the only one from department who graduated with honors, but the result was that my dissertation won the best in the US in 1987, due in part to the excellent undergraduate training I had.</p>
<p>I funny aside. My teacher for “History and Structure of the English Language” was a regular Henry Higgins. He was able to hear “a little Texas twang” in my speech. By BF’s (and future H and then ex-H) mom grew up in Lubbock, Texas and apparently after dating for a year I had borrowed some of her pronunciations.</p>
<p>I know you attended a fabulous institution but it might not be the benchmark for every department. I am not familiar with its English Department. I <em>do</em> know that Brown, for example, is particularly lax. A young, dear friend of my D’s graduated with a major from Brown. His course in “Creative Non-Fiction” was simply reading Harper’s magazine. I wouldn’t even teach a course that lax in community college when there is so much wonderful creative non-fiction written. He graduated without looking at any medieval literature and not ever even hearing the name Jack Kerouac. He asked my D who he was when she mentioned him in conversation.</p>
<p>I am not worried about him because he is going to Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and plans to be a surgeon, and he is awesomely gifted. However, the reputation of an institution is no guarantee that its English Department is well set-up.</p>
<p>I stand by my post, and I know that the English Department at my D’s institution was just this rigorous. Part of the reason she chose to be an American Studies Major. Still, I think English is the second largest major there so it doesn’t discourage everyone.</p>
<p>As for your D, I know she attended a wonderful institution and I’m sure got a great education. I am sure it went beyond “Monsters in Literature.”</p>