English and Creative Writing (BA, Minors)

English and Creative Writing courses offer all students the opportunity to expand their study of literature and to write critically and creatively.

English and Creative Writing

The BA in English and Creative Writing joins the advanced study of literature with training in analytical and creative forms of writing. The major prepares students to become innovative, ethical, and human-centered thinkers and communicators in an increasingly global, networked, and digitally-mediated world. The curriculum emphasizes the study of diverse literatures in English– from British to American, multiethnic literature, diasporic to postcolonial, as well as global literatures in translation–across a range of historical periods and grounded in critical theoretical frameworks in areas including gender, race, and sexuality studies; disability studies; performance studies; narrative medicine and health humanities.

All majors take 24 units of required courses that balance across the following skills: writing, close reading, literary analysis, and, creative praxis. Students then choose 12 elective units in either Literature or Creative Writing. In their senior year, students develop a Capstone Project, which may take the form of a sustained work of literary criticism or an extended work in Creative Writing within a chosen genre, such as fiction, poetry, drama, a screenplay, memoir, or other creative non-fiction. Students also complete a one unit internship with opportunities such as working with our campus literary magazine, Tuxedo, or a local theater company. Students interested in Creative Writing also have the opportunity to complete an accelerated track to the MFA program.

The program’s flexibility also affords students the opportunity to gain practical skills in the media arts (e.g., making films and other digital productions) by taking courses in related departments such as Art and Design and Communication and Media Studies- potentially completing a double major or minor in these areas. In recent years, English and Creative Writing majors have also elected to double major in areas like History and Political Science, and Psychology.

English and Creative Writing is a flexible degree with well-documented outcomes for long term employment in diverse fields such as education, academia, politics, advocacy, speechwriting, the film industry, business and marketing, digital content creation, politics, public relations, and law.

Minor in English and Creative Writing

The minors in English and Creative Writing emphasizes on careful analysis and innovative writing. The minor is a valuable complements to majors in any discipline.

Program Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to:

Demonstrate advanced critical thinking through such methods as summary, evaluation, synthesis, and integration of research;
Create effective, original, and argumentative rhetoric across media (oral, visual, and written) appropriate to topic, purpose, and audience; topics and issues may include problem solving, civic engagement, and/or posting policy or social change;
Apply understanding of how communication shapes and is shaped by difference (including but not limited to categories such as race, gender, sexuality, age and class) and reflect on one’s own place in a broader social context;
Evaluate source material, synthesize new concepts, and apply deduction, induction, and/or logic for advanced argumentative research purposes; use proper citation and documentation.
Demonstrate the disciplinary practices of close reading; apply critical theory to written, verbal, and visual literatures in order to grapple with the complexities of human experience with care and attention.
Analyze literary forms of genres including fiction, poetry, drama, film, and oral narrative; recognize hybrid forms and literary adaptation, as well as historical and cultural contexts for literary production.
(Creative Writing Concentration) Literary Craft. Produce a focused and sustained creative writing portfolio, interrelating form and technique appropriate to a specific genre or genres