<p>Hey guys. I'm deciding between Tufts and Barnard, and I like Tufts more overall but I'm thinking of studying english. Barnard has an amazing,renowned English/writing department and I haven't really heard much about Tufts'. Can someone tell me about its reputation, their experiences with it, whether its still easy to get good internships at publications? thanks :)</p>
<p>The English department is great here. If you like poetry, you may have heard of Deborah Digges. How about post-modern literature? Then maybe you've read Jay Cantor's works. Saul Bellow's widow and a literature scholar in her own right teaches here. Lecia Rosenthal is a wizard in English Modernism. Jonathan Wilson is an award-winning author and is an expert in contemporary literature, with a focus on experimental writing, memoir, and Jewish writers. Lee Edelman is one of the world's pre-eminent film and queer theorists; he ties this into many of his very engaging, unique courses on literature. These are just to name a few. The department offers very close interaction with faculty, which is great, as well as a broad range of courses. And if you want to go abroad, the programs at UCL in London and Pembroke College, Oxford, might be for you!</p>
<p>If you want to ask a more specific question, I'd love to try to answer it!</p>
<p>yay! How about the journalism classes? And, how is the writing center program? and are there usually some students who get internships at publications and boston?</p>
<p>I'm no literary expert the way lola is but I definately do not like post modern literature. </p>
<p>Ulysses, Finnegans Wakes, Searching for Lost Time...these books are just LONG, nothing more in my humble opinion.</p>
<p>English is still a great major though. :)</p>
<p>Rightbackatyou: Those books are all part of the Modernist vein. Post-modernism is comprised of the likes of Henry Miller, Burroughs, Pynchon, Brautigan, Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski, Roth, Barthelme...</p>
<p>Aube88: There are few journalism classes, but I would suggest that you get your journalism education by practicing it in a real-life setting, not in a classroom. I am an aspiring journalist myself, and have job offers from major magazines and newspapers now (I'm a senior) and I never took a journalism class at Tufts. What I did was I ran a department of the Daily for two years; then I have done five journalism-related internships at pretty well-regarded publications. Now I have an impressive body of clips, references, and a great resume, and that's why I've been so lucky finding jobs.</p>
<p>I should tell you that not one person who's interviewed me for an internship or job has questioned my decision not to go Northwestern's Medill school of journalism—they all agree with me that you can get an extra-curricular education in journalism; studying it in the classroom is not necessary. Journalists should be well-rounded people, and my double-major in international relations & English impresses every interviewer I've met. ;)</p>
<p>Regarding the creative writing classes (that's what you meant, right? The Writing Center at Tufts is an academic resource center for people who need help structuring their essays, bibliography, etc.) they're really good—take them especially with Downing, Ullman, and Wilson for fiction; Digges for poetry.</p>
<p>Well, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was at least a hilarious film...</p>
<p>I seriously haven't read any of those authors though. I guess I'll have to read one or two of them this summer before I come back here and tell you how much I dislike the entire genre ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for the correction though.</p>
<p>Also, is Kurt Vonnegut post-modernist?</p>
<p>Yes, he does. Check out a fairly extensive list here: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postmodern_authors%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postmodern_authors</a></p>
<p>It misses some and mis-identifies a few; but I think it's about 95% correct.</p>
<p>what's the difference between modern and post-modern? I'm a bit confused <em>_</em></p>
<p>ugh, don't even get that discussion started....it'll bring back painful memories of my IVLS Intro to Lit & Film class...postmodern basically started in the 60s. Think antiheros, antilinear thinking, and general chaos.</p>
<p>Wait, Sam, you didn't like that class? I thought it actually sounded interesting, and got high reviews from students.</p>
<p>I was really bored. A lot of people were, too, judging by the random things I saw on laptop screens and the crosswords in people's laps. And I was one of the people who'd participate in discussion, too.
Part of the problem was, I was expecting it to be half lit, half film. And wanting it to be more film than lit. But there was only a short section on film, and a strange one at that. The rest was strictly literary theory.
I was torn because the class was shared between two professors, one Chinese, one German. The German professor, Martin, was amazing. He had really interesting things to add to the class, so I always listened when he'd start to talk. The other professor, Zhong...seems like a nice person, but I don't think she was very good about getting her point across. As if literary theory wasn't whack already, she was also a confusing person.
The good thing about the class was that for each (annoyingly arbitrary) unit of the class, they had a guest lecturer from within the ILVS department come to talk to us. So I got a sample of all these different professor's teaching styles, which was the most valuable thing I took away from the class, I think.
Another good thing was that it was easy and didn't require as much work as other classes, but I was frustrated because we never, ever got a grade for any of our work until the final transcript, so I had no idea how I was doing until it was all over.
So the class had good and bad aspects, but at the end of it all I feel like it was a waste of my time.
Not everyone has this point of view about it; I was talking to one kid who took it 2 years ago, and he said "how could you not like that class? Everyone gets an A-, and it's the easiest A- you'll ever get."</p>