Goals for our Majors

AS READERS our graduating majors should be able to . . .

  1. Summarize, analyze, and evaluate any piece of writing in any genre: to be able to articulate what the writer is saying (content), how he or she has chosen to present the message (techniques and strategies), and why he or she might have chosen to do it that way (effects and purposes). (critical-interdisciplinary thinking)
  2. Recognize how contexts (historical, cultural, biographical, literary) frame the work and shape its meaning. This includes both the context in which the writer produced the work and the context in which the reader reads it. (active societal and intellectual engagement and diversity)
  3. Access scholarly material using appropriate online bibliographic tools (e.g., MLA International Bibliography, World Shakespeare Bibliography, JSTOR, Humanities Index, Article First) (research and technology)
  4. Understand a variety of theoretical approaches to literature, and be conversant with a wide variety of literary critical terms now in use. (critical-interdisciplinary thinking)
  5. Recognize how the skills involved in literary criticism pertain directly to the skills needed for participation in community life-being able to:
    (1) hear how words are being used or abused
    (2) raise pertinent questions
    (3) understand point of view
    (4) listen for subtexts and for significant omissions. (active societal and intellectual engagement and diversity)
  6. Bring a wide repertoire of questions from other disciplines to bear upon literary texts-asking how a work raises political, psychological, sociological, or theological questions, how it challenges accepted ideas, how it reframes conventional notions. (active societal and intellectual engagement and critical-interdisciplinary thinking)
  7. Be familiar with the “map” of literary history, and be able to compare and contrast the work of writers from different periods and understand the continuities that shape what we call a literary tradition. (active societal and intellectual engagement)
  8. Understand the characteristics of different genres, and the ways in which a given work can fulfill or play off of those expectations. Discern what poems do that prose can’t, what novels do that films can’t, what drama does that prose can’t, and vice versa. (critical-interdisciplinary thinking)
  9. Recognize and employ the power of metaphor, analogy, allusion, allegory, and symbol in shaping argument. (written and oral communication)
  10. Understand how poetic devices and figures of speech work to particular ends in shaping what a writer delivers and a reader receives. (written and oral communication)
  11. Be able to account for their own tastes and evaluations of the merits of literary texts. (active societal and intellectual engagement)
  12. Read generously, prepared to do what good writers require to get the gift they’re offering. This includes taking their own cultural assumptions into account and recognizing how those might limit their angle of vision. (Christian orientation and active societal and intellectual engagement)
  13. Practice negative capability-tolerance for ambiguity or paradox that doesn’t demand simple resolution. Honor the complexities of language and human situations and character when they read. (active societal and intellectual engagement)
  14. Connect their reading habits and practices with their life of faith (as readers of scripture), with their lives as citizens (as readers of public media and participants in public discourse) and their growth in spiritual and intellectual discernment. (Christian orientation)

AS WRITERS our graduating majors should be able to . . .

  1. Value language, and to understand that using language with care and precision is a good stewardship of a great gift. (written and oral communication)
  2. Write correct, clear, readable, persuasive and lively prose. This includes mastering the basics of grammar and mechanics, and basic grammatical terms. (written and oral communication)
  3. Make deliberate and effective use of poetic devices. (written and oral communication)
  4. Honor the complexities of the issues and situations they represent, avoiding oversimplification and overgeneralization. (critical-interdisciplinary thinking and diversity)
  5. Move comfortably among the various modes of writing-expository, argumentative, descriptive, narrative, and lyrical-with awareness of their strategies and purposes. (written and oral communication)
  6. Find and develop their own voices as writers, cultivate their creative imaginations, and bring them to bear any time they work with words. (Christian orientation and written and oral communication)
  7. Incorporate the voices of others into their writing, skillfully acknowledging their indebtedness to the thinking and research of others while providing appropriate documentation in MLA or Chicago Manual of Style format. (research and technology)