In
the English Department at Earlham,
we read and write to expand our ways of seeing and responding to
the world. As
we engage with works of literature, we encounter the experiences,
cultures, values and truths of many kinds of people, like us and
unlike us, in the present and in the past. In the process, faculty
and students together ask important questions about the works we
study, such as: How do we define our own identities and recognize
and respond to the experience of others? How do we respond to
suffering and injustices? How can we live well and pursue our
ideals in difficult
situations, or reconcile contradictory values? How should we
understand our own feelings of love, fear, desire, anger, joy
or loyalty? |
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When
we read, write and discuss literature in these ways, we seek not
only to gain wisdom, but also to change our lives, societies
and world in pursuit of social justice. At the same time, by studying
literature we encounter and respond to beauty. We read to gain
wider perspective, but also because we love literature for its own
sake
and because the experience of reading and writing enriches us spiritually,
emotionally and intellectually.
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The
major in English is designed for students who wish to become sophisticated
readers of literature, attentive to the ways imaginative
works are made and the impact those works have on the lives of
human beings. The Department hopes to serve students preparing
for graduate
work in English; students planning further study in fields such
as philosophy, law, religion, business, or history; and students
not
intending to continue formal education beyond the Bachelor
of Arts degree. Many Earlham English majors go into such professions
as
teaching, publishing, journalism, writing, business, or law,
but the range
of possibilities is quite wide. Earlham English majors have
become
workers and leaders in a wide range of positions in various
places around the world. Whatever their future careers, Earlham English
majors are encouraged to become confident writers and life-long
readers.
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The English major introduces students to the most
influential works of the English and American literary traditions,
together with
voices that have been silenced throughout history. The Department
strives
for maximum inclusion of works by women, minorities, and writers
from underprivileged classes. English majors are required to
take a mixture of courses emphasizing period, genre and/or literary
theory, as well as special topics courses in areas of particular
student
or faculty interest and introductory and capstone courses in
the
discipline. There is no required thesis, but senior majors write
a long, integrative essay as part of the senior seminar. Although
there is no single, dominant mode of teaching
in the English Department, frequent use is made of discussion
and other collaborative methods
that ask students to speak with integrity and listen with respect.
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Course
work in English draws broadly on faculty and student interests
in other languages, disciplines and interdisciplinary studies.
Special Topics courses and Independent Studies are often designed
in response
to student requests. Individual students sometimes combine work
in English with courses from other fields to create a self-designed
or double major. Current faculty members teach outside of the
Department in African American Studies, Environmental Studies,
Jewish Studies
and Women’s Studies, and often share their research interests
with students. These faculty interests include individual authors
such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Queen Elizabeth, George Eliot, Virginia
Woolf, and Toni Morrison; and broad subject areas such as feminist
theory; Irish poetry; South Asian autobiography; American imperialism,
popular culture, and slavery around the end of the nineteenth
century; and the relationship between literature and environmental
issues
and philosophy.
The Department also offers beginning and advanced
Creative Writing courses, including a Creative Writing minor.
In these classes,
students develop their own creative voices and craft as writers
though a variety
of creative exercises, peer workshops, and explorations of
the process of writing. Students also have opportunities to hear
and meet with
visiting writers, including in recent years the poets Saul
Williams, Alex Olson, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Donald Hall,
Gwendolyn
Brooks, and Maxine Kumin and the fiction writer Ron Hansen,
as well as the yearly winners of the GLCA New Writers Awards in
both Fiction
and Poetry. A number of Earlham English majors have become
successful writers themselves, such as recent graduates Matt Johnson
(novelist),
Margot Rabb (young adult novelist), and Maurice Manning (winner
of the 2000 Yale Younger Poets Prize).
Halloween in the Classroom
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