How to evaluate whether a college's English Department is good?

Parents Forum
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<p>This thread makes me want to go back to college as an English major!</p>

<p>I went to art school where I had 1 (yes, one) English requirement. I chose to take “Love and Death in the Novel”. That course introduced me to what are still my favorite books/authors: Madam Bovary, Anna Karenina, Shakespeare, and more. The teacher was a PhD from an Ivy and incredibly inspiring. </p>

<p>And speaking of professors and their bios, there must be quite a glut of English PhD’s out there. Even the smallest colleges in the middle of nowhere has profs from the top schools in the country.</p>

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<p>My son loves English and writing but hasn’t decided what his major will be. He ultimately wants to write but wants to learn all he can about a lot of things. He applied to many schools of all shapes and sized. Discarded Tufts, BU and BC due to weather although he loved Boston. Discarded Tulane. So I think he is deciding between Wash U and Rice. I received some earlier info on this sight but just wondered when we were leaning toward English,etc if both schools would be about the same or does one off more than another.</p>

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<p>They offer different things, but both are excellent schools. I am not personally familiar with either English Department. DD’s BF graduated from Wash U and was not impressed with his English and Creative writing courses and majored in neuro-linguistics. However, he’s just one person. I am sure there are many satisfied English majors from Wash U.</p>

<p>Rice has the house system, a music conservatory and is a slightly different atmosphere than Wash U. Have your son look at the English Departments himself or speak to a professor (even my very shy son moved himself to do this.)</p>

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<p>Here are the Yale requirements: [Department</a> of English | Yale University](<a href=“Welcome | English”>Welcome | English)
Basically, it’s two courses of prerequisite (which if I remember correctly is a Greatest Hits of British Poetry course – Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth et al.), a senior seminar and senior essay, and ten other courses, with very mild distributional requirements (3 pre-1800, 1 19th Century, 1 American lit, at least two upper-level seminars, no more than 2 creative writing courses unless a creative writing concentration is selected, no more than 4 introductory courses).</p>

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<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>Outside of maybe one required class few students are taking an advanced level English class for giggles. All your posts are designed to lead to the conclusion that only the most competitive high SAT colleges are worthy of interest. Hardly a fact.</p>

<p>"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>Or maybe it just respects standards. The MLA is legendary for having gone off the deep end in moving away from classics and into HIGHLY dubious theory.</p>

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<p>mythmom,
Just had to chuckle as D1 is currently an English major. She had Chaucer last semester and is taking a seminar on Hawthorne right now. Both classes were to fulfill period requirements and I’m not sure they’re ever going to be her favorites, but she has gained some appreciation for their work and recognizes the importance of reading a wide breadth of of literature.</p>

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<p>Really? Not favorites? They’re all favorites of mine, (even Pope if I’m in the right mood) and the Miller’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (Canterbury Tales by Chaucer) are both quite racy.</p>

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<p>Peace, JHS. I was just expressing an opinion as asked. As always, opinions differ. And I <em>do</em> have stories about English at Yale, too, but let’s let it lay.</p>

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<p>

As the holder of a BA and MA in English, I couldn’t disagree more. I would say that if you can complete an English BA without in-depth reading of works written before 1600, then that’s not a good program. Pre-1750 is too lax; you could fulfill that with relatively easy reads like Fielding and Pope. A good English degree should force you to wrestle with the historical development of the language by reading literature that is really challenging for a contemporary speaker to understand. That doesn’t mean you have to concentrate in that stuff, obviously, but it should lie within your comfort zone if you’re an English major. </p>

<p>This is not only a question of rigor, but of the broadening of taste and understanding that a good literary education should produce. I didn’t know I loved Chaucer until a period requirement forced me to read him; now I can’t imagine my life without him. The fact that very old books can be just as fascinating, funny, beautiful and moving as new ones is one of the best-kept secrets in our culture, but it should not be a secret to anyone who graduates with an English BA.</p>

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<p>And now Beowulf is a cultural phenomenon since Angelina Jolie was in the cartoon/movie as Grendel’s mother.</p>

<p>Seriously, Seamus Heany has done a gorgeous translation of it and the book comes with him reading it on CD. I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying it. Hey, he stays under water just like Harry Potter in Harry Potter IV.</p>

<p>Just as a side note – one course I routinely teach is the first half of the British Lit survey. Since I teach at community college very, very few of my students come in as intellectuals or prepared for that kind of material. Many kids from criminal justice (meaning they’re going into the police force) take it because by some weird quirk it got on the recommended list of courses from the program. Our college requires four English courses for an AA degree – two in writing, two in literature. So kids take it, and kids who will take the second half and then never read a book again. Many of them have never read a book.</p>

<p>My reading list: Beowulf, Chaucer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Morte d’Arthur by Mallory, sonnets of the Renaissance including Shakespeare’s and Donne’s, a Shakespeare play, a book of Paradise Lost, some Swift, carpe diem poets, Pope, and Johnson. And then comes the second half.</p>

<p>And they all do absolutely fine with it. I have dropped out any reading of the Faerie Queen. Too difficult out of context and long, but they do read some Spenser sonnets.</p>

<p>And they memorize a Shakespeare sonnet. (That way they only have to read one.) Sadly, no time for Austen.</p>

<p>And the second half (which I’ve also taught) includes a Woolf novel, Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse, Bronte, George Eliot, the Romantics and some contemporary materials.
Sometimes I’ve started with Austen.</p>

<p>And our American Lit surveys are just as comprehensive and start with Native American myths, travel diaries of Columbus, de Vaca and John Smith and go from there and include sermons (the city of the hill sermon mentioned in Reagan’s second inaugural address, which we look at, for example. And usually we end with Beloved or The Crying of Lot 49 in the second half, though those aren’t quite contemporary anymore, they are post-modern.</p>

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<p>mythmom - I’ve looked at lots of English departments and a few CompLit departments. However, it seems to me that most CompLit majors require the student to work in the original language… I mainly looked for an English department with relatively flexible requirements, to allow for literature-in-translation electives. Your thoughts?</p>

<p>Advanced courses on Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton are must-have offerings, simply for breadth… though I’ve yet to see a college require all three (2/3 is not unusual for a more conservative department).</p>

<p>If you want to see examples, Bowdoin is a college off the top of my head with a traditional-emphasis English department, as is Smith. I can’t speak to quality, only my impressions of the course offerings. 4 semester surveys of American lit (at Barnard, where mythmom’s D attended) seems a bit excessive to me–are they all required for the English, as opposed to American Studies, major?
[Barnard</a> College Department of English](<a href=“http://www.barnard.edu/english/requirements.php]Barnard”>http://www.barnard.edu/english/requirements.php)
I’m not sure what “Colloquia” are, though I assume it’s a survey-type intro course.</p>

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<p>FOLKS, FEEL FREE TO SKIP MY POST – IT’S IN DIRECT ANSWER TO KEIL, AND SINCE SHE POSTED HERE AND NOT IN A PM I AM ANSWERING HERE, BUT SOME OF YOU MAY FIND IT BORING. I HOPE SHE DOESN’T.</p>

<p>Keil – I think comp lit programs with literature in translation are fine. I do think one spreads oneself a little think in really mastering one tradition, but I <em>can</em> understand the appeal. That’s what I did in high school, read the Russians, the French, etc, etc. In college I read all my French in the original, but I read Dante in translation and certainly the Greeks and Romans in translation (though my S reads them in the original.)</p>

<p>If you are clear that you just want a broad base of reading you will probably do more with theory then. You are such a brilliant girl, I’m sure you’ll make a success of anything you try.</p>

<p>Colloquia at Barnard are for juniors, and they go into topics in depth, in preparation for the thesis year. </p>

<p>I am quite well read in world literature, but I feel differently than I do about English which I know like the back of my hand. We read no literature in translation in my program except for things from Old English and a course in Classical Foundations which was a requirement at the Masters Level.</p>

<p>I am not such a snob (and I guess I am coming across that way, my cross to bear) that I would have anything negative to say about a broad based comp lit department that makes you happy. You will, of course, become more learned and literate and probably enjoy yourself a great deal.</p>

<p>I am a poet and novelist as well as an academic, and for me a grounding in the actual melodies of the English language has been invaluable. I also reasoned that many,many more jobs would be available to me with an English degree because everyone has to learn to write. I <em>do</em> think writing is a bit more stressed in an English degree than a comp lit degree.</p>

<p>However, Keil, I wish you all the success I would wish my own daughter, and I’m sure you will achieve it. If you’ll forgive me, I won’t peruse the Barnard requirements at the minute because I’m a bit involved with something else, but I take you at your word.</p>

<p>My daughter did not like all the theory requirements of the English major. She always wanted to go to law school and took many courses in law, including courses on Con law and the First Amendment and such as part of her American Studies work. She wrote her thesis on some aspects of lynching and the Montana vigilantes, so even though her adviser was technically an English professor, that wasn’t what she did. That’s probably more than you wanted to know, but I wanted to take your question seriously.</p>

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<p>(Similar disclaimer as mythmom because I’m too lazy to PM and it may be helpful to a lurker.)</p>

<p>Swarthmore has majors in both English and Comp Lit; I’d probably be an English major if I decide to take that path (it’s currently looking more like cognitive science, due to me being a bit disillusioned with lit). But you’ve guessed it correctly–my overarching English-major interest is in theory. Actually, I just adore theory in general; for instance, I’m not very fond of historical-context-based approaches to literature, though I love a lot of early literature itself.</p>

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<p>JHS, I think our years at Yale were roughly contemporary – did you take English 25 your freshman year? One of the very first assignments, at least in my class, was to memorize the first 16 lines or so of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. (Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, etc.) Oddly enough, I loved it so much (and Chaucer in general) that I still remember those lines. Probably the only thing I’ve ever memorized that I can still recite! I still have my copy of Norton’s Anthology, too. I wonder if people still use that.</p>

<p>I never had any desire to major in English, because as much as I love English literature and consider myself reasonably well-read for a mere history major, I’ve never particularly enjoyed discussing (or dissecting) the novels and poetry I read. Even though the English department at Yale, with Cleanth Brooks (and many others), was still very well-known as the center of New Criticism when I was there (if I recall correctly), and considered one of the two or three best departments in the country. In fact, I think I took only one other English course in college (on Dryden, Pope, and other 17th and 18th century writers).</p>

<p>My son feels a bit like I do, although he did love his Middlemarch course and is far better equipped than I ever was to think and write about literary theory; he has a natural affinity for theory and I’m sure his art history courses have helped. (His professor told him at one point that even most English majors aren’t as used to thinking and writing in those terms as he is; it simply isn’t taught in even the best high school English courses.) Not that the course was entirely theory-based; they studied Middlemarch in the context of contemporary English social and cultural history – something that I think is probably necessary for a true appreciation of almost any 19th century novelist.</p>

<p>I’m sure Chicago, like most places, has its share of “trendy” English courses. My son signed up this term for a course called “Queering the Text” (cross-listed as a gender studies course), but dropped it after a week or so despite his obvious interest in the subject. He thought the level of discussion was extremely superficial, and was bored.</p>

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<p>Nothing substantive to add, but I’m finding the conversation fascinating!</p>

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<p>Donna: We do still use the Nortons. My carpenter proudly recited the opening of Canterbury Tales in Middle English! My students read it in translation, but we do read the prologue in Middle English just for fun.</p>

<p>mathmom: Hi! Had your son decided where he’s going yet? Great choices, similar to what my son’s were.</p>

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<p>I didn’t take English 25 because I was in Directed Studies. I wished I WAS taking it, though. The DS Lit class was really underwhelming, and English 25 was substantive and tough, and lots of sections had great, great teachers (Leslie Brisman, Richard Broadhead, Marjorie Garber). Basically, I tried to read whatever the kids in English 25 were reading. I memorized the beginning of Canterbury Tales, too, because everyone else was doing it.</p>

<p>I studied more Spanish and French literature than English, actually. I still have real gaps in my English lit knowledge. There WERE some consequences to never taking any English classes.</p>

<p>I never used the Norton Anthology, but I bought the two-volume Oxford Anthology of English Literature when I was a sophomore, and I still have it (and use it).</p>

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<p>They’re still doing this, D1 recited it for me over Christmas break!</p>

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<p>Mythmom, no idea, but we are off to Chicago tomorrow, Vassar on Sunday and Tufts next week! Ack!</p>

<p>I managed not to take any English in college either - read historical history for my expository writing class (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Macauley’s History of England - great fun). I took a French lit class where I read big fat 19th century novels and a couple of slim ones and I took Greek Lit in translation - a gut but a great course nevertheless. I did read the Norton Anthology of American Lit cover to cover while driving across the country the year after I graduated which made me feel much better educated! I’ve always meant to read the other Norton, but never have.</p>

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<p>Well in my dreams I’m an architect mathmom. Those three are all wonderful schools. I don’t think he can make a bad decision. And fun to go visiting. Best wishes to him. My S had two out of three of those on his list. I loved all of them, so it was totally his choice.</p>