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| Degrees :: Undergraduate :: | |||
| Bachelor of Arts in English |
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An important role of English departments has been
to create interpretations of the texts of various historical periods,
including the present. The major in English at Carnegie Mellon builds
on, and also extends, this tradition by training students to see texts
as part of a complex web of historical conditions and relationships;
by teaching major literary texts alongside nonfiction, functional
texts, and public documents; by teaching the overlooked works of women
and writers of color alongside well-known authors; by teaching comparative
texts that highlight differences across literature and culture alongside
the texts of the Western canon; by teaching film, television, and
other storytelling media alongside conventional texts.
The English major is distinctive in drawing from the artistic and research strengths of its faculty in creative writing, literary and cultural studies, and rhetoric. Creative writing helps students focus on language as a tool to explore and depict experience. Literary and cultural studies focuses on the way texts are formally constructed and how they function in historical and contemporary contexts. Rhetoric focuses on the principles through which speakers construct texts and audiences respond to them. Drawing from creative writing, literary, cultural and rhetorical perspectives, students in the English B.A. learn the research skills and writing strategies to enable them to analyze the language and texts of others and to report their research in effective texts of their own. Such training can prepare students for graduate work in literature, culture, or rhetoric, and also for careers in law, business, or government, which require similar skills in interpretation, writing and the analysis of how communication works. The 200-level core courses for the English major are designed to improve the range and quality of students' writing skills by introducing them to writing in different genres; to a knowledge of literary genres and other media forms; and to a basic theoretical knowledge of how texts are produced and interpreted. In the Study of Forms course, for example, students learn how to use language to express experience through poetic and narrative forms. In the Interpretive Practices course, students are introduced to basic concepts, methods, and practices of literary and rhetorical approaches to texts. Students move from the core to take at least two period courses designed to introduce them to the functioning of texts within specific cultural and rhetorical contexts, or to comparative texts addressing common social concerns in different periods. Topics vary from the religious and political controversies of the English Civil Wars, Renaissance Drama as part of Elizabethan England, the growth of youth cultures since the Vietnam War, Cicero's Orations, the Lincoln/Douglas debates, the development of legal and political rhetoric, to differences in the way news has been disseminated and read across time and place. Period study introduces students to a range of historical and cultural texts, and to a range of methods for analyzing these texts in their local context or across contexts. To complement these skills, students take a course in Research and Argument, designed to give them training in gathering information systematically and building arguments based on that information. Students learn how to gather information from interviews, surveys, and archives. They learn how to make hypotheses about ways of interpreting a text or a corpus of texts, and they gain practice testing their interpretations against alternatives. They also learn how to present their research to audiences within the discipline of English. Students complete three elective courses, one at the 200/300-level and two at the 300/400-level. Electives at the 200-level allow students to sample introductory courses in special topics within rhetorical, literary, and cultural studies, such as gender and media studies; or genre courses in the novel or comedy. Electives at the 300 and 400 level allow students to specialize in subfields of literary and cultural studies, cross-cultural studies, or rhetoric, subfields in which they can take capstone seminars. Students should consult closely with advisors when choosing their elective courses. At the advanced level, students take two capstone seminars, which enable them to build on their prior coursework to develop their own cultural and rhetorical interpretations of a given period or a network of texts crossing periods. In these seminars, students are expected to design and complete their own research projects, as well as to take part in seminar discussions. As with the period courses, topics vary. |
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