Course Catalog

The English Department at Saint Vincent College is an expressly active environment of mentoring and collaborative learning. Students work with departmental faculty and in small groups on independent and extracurricular projects, as well as in regular courses. Students can choose to concentrate in Literature, Secondary Education, Professional Writing, or Creative Writing to prepare for graduate school, law school, or medical school, to receive training in journalism, business, and technical writing, to achieve certification in secondary or primary teaching, or to pursue a career in writing fiction or poetry. As part of their chosen concentration, students can gain direct work experience through internships.

In their courses and assignments, English majors at Saint Vincent can expect to pursue the processes of reading and writing as investigations of the world and its events. Working with novels, poems, plays, and other creative media, all of which represent the values and ideas of past and present thinkers, students have the opportunity to learn by discovering, examining, analyzing, and discussing literature. In these pursuits, students gain fluency in thinking, reading and writing, and the ability to express ideas and values in a number of ways. Most important, students develop a critical awareness of self.

Requirements for the major are set to ensure that students study language, criticism, genres, periods, and figures; they include three distinctive emphases within the Department’s offerings:

• Writing courses focus on the ability to read critically and to gain skill in established rhetorical modes. In these courses, students are introduced to a variety of forms and styles of writing and provided with the opportunities to master these modes themselves;
• Literature courses emphasize treatment of an individual work in relation to literary history, as well as the effect that writers and works have on readers. Students develop an understanding of primary texts and secondary texts, as well as the ability to explicate any kind of text;
• Thematic courses explore the connections literature makes with other disciplines and thus with other ways of finding meaning and expressing it in human activity.
  

Students who major in English are eligible to participate in a cooperative program between Saint Vincent College and Duquesne Law School that allows them to earn their bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctor degree in six years. In this program, qualified students who complete their first three years of study at Saint Vincent, fulfilling the Core Curriculum requirements and the requirements for the major, may transfer into the Law program and complete the requirements for the Juris Doctor in three years. For details, see the explanation of this program in the Pre-Law section of the Bulletin.

Note: all students at Saint Vincent, including English majors, take EL 102 Language and Rhetoric. In addition to that course, English majors take the following courses; two of the requirements listed below can be used to fulfill the remaining core requirements that apply to all students.

English Major Requirements for ALL majors (15 credits):
(See Core Curriculum requirements)

Concentration requirements in the English Department (see below): 27-30 credits.
Extra Concentration Requirements (see below): vary by concentration.
Regardless of concentration, at least one of the literature courses that students choose must be a course in minority/multi-cultural literature. In addition to the course requirements, all students must develop a portfolio in which they file a sample of their written work in their concentration-related courses and a self-assessment of their learning each semester. Department faculty will evaluate student work after the Junior Seminar.

Major Requirements for the Literature Concentration (27 credits)

Extra Concentration requirements for the Literature Concentration (18)

Students may substitute a declared minor for the extra concentration requirements OR a declared second major for the extra concentration requirements and free electives.

Major Requirements for the English Secondary Education Concentration (27 credits):
Students should consult the English Department Chairperson, as well as the Education Department Chairperson, for the guidelines to complete the teacher certification requirements in Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, or Secondary Education. Students begin the Education program (usually in the sophomore year) by registering for ED 100 Foundations of Education.

Extra Concentration Requirements for the English Education Concentration (37)
Students must complete the Minor in Education and/or the Certificate for Secondary Education in English; some requirements will also fulfill Core.

Major requirements for the Professional Writing Concentration (27 credits)
The professional Writing concentration prepares English Majors for careers in Technical Writing, Grant Writing, Editing, Documentation Manual Writing, and Corporate Communications. This concentration consists of stipulated major requirements and electives that will give students a background in professional written discourse, design, electronic media, and publishing. In addition, English majors concentrating in Professional Writing will be encouraged to secure a professional writing internship during the junior or senior year, and
will be required to enroll in a Professional Writing Seminar during the fall semester of their senior year.

Extra Concentration Requirements for the Professional Writing Concentration (18)

Major Requirements for the Creative Writing Concentration (30 credits)
The concentration in creative writing is for students interested in writing and editing fiction, poetry and nonfiction. The program also leads to graduate study in publishing and, especially, in creative writing. Upon completion of the program, students should have a portfolio of creative work suitable for submission to MFA programs. The creative writing concentration consists of both the departmental requirements for the English major and additional courses specifically designed to teach and enlarge writing, reviewing and editing skills. Many creative writing classes include a service learning component. During their studies, creative writing students take a required course in magazine production for firsthand editorial experience. Students must also intern within the fields of writing, publishing or editing during the junior or senior year. All students will give a public reading of their work in their final semester of study.

Extra Concentration Requirements for the Creative Writing Concentration (18)

English Minor Requirements (18 credits):