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English

   Member of the Division of Humanities

Chair(s):

Erik Simpson

Faculty:

Every English major at Grinnell receives a thorough grounding in the tools of literary analysis, studies the literary traditions of a variety of ages and places, and completes ambitious research projects. Many students also pursue creating writing, both within the English curriculum and through co-curricular events and publications.

The department offers students a range of choices as they pursue those ends. The flexible curriculum allows students to read American, British, Irish, and postcolonial literatures from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives. We represent the relationships among our courses, requirements, and departmental goals on our English curricular map.  Within this curriculum, English majors develop their own questions and interests.

The major begins with a 100-level course in which students develop their analytical skills by paying close attention to texts and developing an awareness of contemporary approaches to literary study. The 200 level includes courses that introduce students to the practices of creative and argumentative writing; the traditions of American, African-American, ethnic American, British, Irish, and postcolonial literatures; and the theoretical tools of historical linguistics and gender studies.

Those courses provide the necessary background for the three 300-level seminars that every English major completes. Courses at the 300 level require more advanced work in literary study and creative writing; these courses train students in advanced skills of self-directed research and writing. To complement this intensive study of English as a discipline, English majors also complete at least introductory study of a foreign language and once course that involves an interdisciplinary approach to humanistic inquiry.