The mission of the Literature Program is to encourage, support, and direct students’ active engagement with and exploration of literature as expressed through our major requirements, our minor requirements, our individual courses, and our curriculum, through which we endeavor

• to teach students close reading and other interpretive approaches as embodied through literary theory;

• to impart to students an understanding of literary history; of how literary movements, periods and genres have evolved over time;

• to emphasize intersections of literature and history, literature and other arts, Anglophone and other literatures;

• to equip students with tools of analysis that will serve them in all aspects of life and allow them to be critics of their culture and society;

• to teach correctness, and the cultivation of an authoritative, clear and eloquent style, in writing;

• to teach students how to construct and articulate an argument, and to contend with multiple other arguments;

• to emphasize the importance of research in the writing of ambitious interpretive papers;

• to stress the necessity of revision;

• to emphasize literature as a window on the larger sociopolitical and historical world;

• to consider the political and ethical values of literature and of literary criticism;

• to cultivate spoken participation through oral presentations, class discussion and our capstone course.

Our mission culminates in the capstone experience, Senior Seminar, in which students read and analyze a group of texts united under a particular rubric, usually a contemporary issue in literary study, then organize and stage an academic symposium open to the entire department and the general public. Their final project is to extend and revise this paper, taking questions raised at the symposium into account.

The mission of the Program in Creative Writing is to encourage, support, and direct students’ active engagement with and exploration of the creative process as expressed through our major requirements, our minor requirements, our individual courses, and our curriculum, through which we endeavor

• to establish an environment of respect in which students regard themselves and their peers as literary practitioners;

• to offer students workshop experiences in multiple genres (creative non-fiction, fiction, playwriting, poetry, screenwriting, translation), wherein they can explore and experiment with the conventions of these genres;

• to explore the manifestations of the creative process in an additional visual or performing art;

• to emphasize formal and thematic literary concerns of historical and contemporary English-speaking cultures, and of diverse world cultures;

• to teach close reading and other interpretive approaches to literature, as embodied in our beginning writing courses;

• to develop intuitive, creative, and critical skills that will serve students in all aspects of life;

• to explore and enhance the relationship of memory and imagination to the creative process;

• to teach the practical, emotional, and ethical values of writing and creative endeavor;

• to stress the necessity of revision as process, and process as fundamental to artistic vision and production;

• to cultivate students’ active engagement and participation in a community of writers and artists, representative of a wide array of aesthetic and critical positions;

• to encourage spoken participation through oral presentations, workshops, class discussion, our student reading series, and our capstone course.

Our mission culminates in the capstone experience, Senior Portfolio, in which students trace the development of their voice and vision through the collection and revision of their entire oeuvre of creative writing. In a required critical introduction to their manuscripts, students explore their influences and aesthetic sources, situate themselves within the literary tradition, and consider current challenges and future prospects for their work.