Choosing Your Courses
The major requirements allow considerable leeway in selecting the literature and linguistics courses that will be most useful and interesting for each student. This places increased responsibility on you to choose courses that form a coherent and also diverse experience in the major. You should also think about career options and how your coursework might affect them. It is vital that you work closely with your advisor and other professors to see which selection of courses will work best for you. Students considering graduate school or secondary education need to pay particular attention to their course distribution.
The department offers the following guidelines. Please read those that apply to you:
Literature guidelines:
- You should study multiple national literatures, including literature by historically marginalized groups.
- Your coursework should include multiple time periods.
- Your coursework should also include multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction).
Literature guidelines for students interested in pursuing an MFA in creative writing:
- Follow general guidelines but add coursework in contemporary literature, particularly in the genre the student intends to write.
Literature guidelines for students interested in teaching:
- For Virginia 6-12 licensure, you will need 24 credits of upper-level literature coursework, of which at least six must be in American literature.
- You should study multiple national literatures, including literature by historically marginalized groups.
- Your coursework should also include multiple time periods, including British literature both before and after 1800. (ENGL381 and 382 are an efficient way to establish British coverage for teaching; a separate course in Shakespeare is often recommended.)
- Your coursework should also include multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction).
Literature guidelines for students interested in graduate school in English:
- To demonstrate breadth, you should study multiple national literatures, including literature by historically marginalized groups. Your coursework should also include multiple time periods, including British literature both before and after 1800.
- To demonstrate depth, you should take more than one course in the period or genre you intend to focus on in graduate school, plus courses in the periods immediately before and after.
- To demonstrate familiarity with contemporary literary theory beyond English 295, you should take at least one upper-level course that emphasizes theoretical approaches.
- To demonstrate the ability to do high-level literary analysis, and to be prepared with a writing sample, you should take at least one seminar or individual study course (preferably one of each) in which you produce an extended research essay. Group individual studies are an additional option.
- To obtain the strongest recommendations, take more than one course from potential recommenders.