The new bachelor of arts degree offers its majors the opportunity to learn, through increasingly challenging practice, to write with creativity, clarity, and force in a wide range of genres. The major is shaped to help students explore and transform ideas, emotions, and experiences through their writing as well as to become aware of the aesthetic diversity and power of language. The program is distinct from those at other colleges because of its comprehensiveness, requiring both broad genre study and specialization, and the wide range of offerings. Students will individually design their concentrations within the field in areas such as fiction, poetry, professional or technical writing, the literary essay, creative nonfiction, the journalistic essay, personal narrative, and arts criticism. The chosen concentration will specify a particular subset of courses within the major.
All students work culminates in a major, self-designed senior project.
By the end of the sophomore year students will also have declared an outside field of study, equivalent to a minor, to inform their work as writers. For example, a student with a concentration in a creative writing form might elect a minor in English literature, while a student concentrating in arts criticism might choose a theater minor. The major will offer them a combination of theoretical, experiential, and professional preparation. Writing majors must also be proficient in a second language. The department believes students will use language study to understand not only the structure of language but also the diversity of human societies.