The Millsaps English
department has designed a curriculum which reflects both our respect
for intellectual traditions and an appreciation of the way those
traditions have been transformed by the inclusion of other voices:
Sir Philip Sidney and Mary Sidney Herbert, Nathaniel Hawthorne
and Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Faulkner and Richard Wright.
We offer courses organized in different ways: around historical
periods, single authors, cultural studies, or interpretative problems--to
name a few.
We offer courses in both expository and creative writing,
and we encourage students to share their work with others either
informally or in the Stylus, the college literary magazine, which
recently won an award at the Southern Literary Festival as the
best literary magazine. Although we come from
diverse backgrounds and with different experiences, we can find
common ground as readers, writers, and thinkers. English majors
will learn how to read and interpret complex texts, how to relate
one text to another and to a tradition, and how to read texts
as part of their cultural and multicultural contexts. These skills
are both essential to living productive and imaginative lives
and are also excellent preparations for careers in advertising,
business, journalism, law, government, or teaching, to name a
few of the most common choices of English majors.
|
| Photograph of Eudora Welty and Dr. Suzanne Marrs by David G. Spielman. Copyright David G. Spielman. |
Framed by the "Introduction
to Interpretation" and the "Senior Colloquium," the English program
allows students to pursue particular interests and lines of inquiry
within broad distribution requirements. We encourage students
to enrich their advanced study by taking courses in philosophy,
history, and other disciplines.
Objectives:
A student majoring in
English will acquire four types of literary critical proficiency:
Majors will be exposed
to a broad historical overview of the literature of Great Britain
and the United States, and will study several of the periods of
literary history in greater detail. They will be asked to trace
transformations in literary history, recognize major literary movements,
understand the relation between text and cultural context, and synthesize
and compare the literature of several periods.
2. Depth
Majors
will be encouraged to study an author in depth, absorbing the writer's
entire oeuvre, as well as her or his work's reception history and
influence. This area of proficiency is designed to provide the student
an opportunity to gain expertise and comprehensive knowledge in
a limited area. Students also attain depth by studying particular
literary periods or genres in detail.
3. Techniques of
Reading
Majors will learn the
practical techniques of reading texts closely, including formal
analysis of genre, style, tone, and poetics. They will also become
comfortable with applying various interpretive theories to literary
texts (e.g. feminist, deconstructive, Marxist, new historicist,
psychoanalytic).
4. Cultural Contexts
Majors will expand their
sense of literary possibility by studying literature defined in
terms of region, gender, ethnicity, race or religion.
These objectives complement
those of the Millsaps core curriculum, which emphasizes the development
of critical and analytical skills as well as a broad understanding
of the diverse world in which we live. Another basic objective of
the College is to educate effective writers, an objective that the
English department reinforces with its teaching of critical and
creative writing in a variety of courses.
Extracurricular Activities:
The Millsaps English Club sponsors
programs and parties for English majors. See Drs. Miller and Franey, faculty advisors,
for more information. The English House, the brick house adjacent to Sullivan-Harrell, is the location for most of the offices of the English faculty,
and provides a place for formal and informal gatherings of students and
faculty, such as Sigma Tau Delta initiations, poetry readings, our annual
senior breakfast at graduation, receptions for visiting writers and scholars,
and parties. The department and the English Club welcome your ideas for
using the public areas of the English House fully. |
