OVERVIEW OF REVISIONS IN LITERATURE CURRICULUM

 
(1) Rationale

Although our curriculum in literature has had many strengths in recent years, it has suffered from at least two weaknesses: there has been no introductory course in literature, and nearly all of our courses have been offered at the 200 level, with ENG 100 the only prerequisite.  (The only exceptions have been ENG 160, ENG 182, and one or two 300-level seminars in literature each semester.)  As a result, we have found ourselves working with the entire range of literature students in virtually every class.  Even good students come to our courses without any common and necessary preparation; what they learn about the basics of reading and writing about literature they pick up here and there as they go.  Moreover, our majors take their English courses (with the exception of the seminar) in no particular order, and so it is hard for them to see any coherent diachronic design in their education.  This situation also works to the disadvantage of general education students, who now regularly end up sitting in the back of medieval or eighteenth-century English literature, bewildered and disaffected, trying to meet a core requirement.
 

(2) Changes

Working within the limits set by our staffing, we have made the following changes in the curriculum:

(a) We have instituted a new four-credit 100-level course in literary analysis and interpretation (ENG 181) for students with literature majors and concentrations.  This course will now be required as a prerequisite for all later work for students with literature majors and concentrations.

(b) We have developed two 200-level foundation courses, one of them a new course in  British literary history (ENG 249), the other a revised version of the old American survey  (ENG 270).   These courses will serve as prerequisites for 300-level work in British and American literature, respectively.

(c) We have revised and retained many other 200-level courses, with an eye toward meeting the demands of both majors & general education students.  These courses will include, for example, Shakespeare, Early Masterpieces of Western Literature, Native American Literature, Writers of Maine, and Twentieth-Century American Literature.

(d) We have instituted a series of 300-level courses, each of which would require  ENG 181 & either ENG 249 or ENG 270 as prerequisites.  Many of the standard British  and American period courses have moved to this level--including, for example, Victorian Literature, Early English Literature, and the American Renaissance Reconsidered.  We will offer approximately four of these advanced courses each semester.

(e) We have replaced the rotating 300-level seminars with a single 400-level capstone course (ENG 402), which will require two 300-level courses as prerequisites.

The Curriculum Committee approved these changes on December 2, 1998; we will begin offering the new and revised courses in fall, 1999.  A complete list of new and revised courses is attached, along with a draft schedule showing when each will be offered during the next two years.
 

(3) Advantages of the New Curriculum

The new curriculum should improve on our current program in several respects:

• we will be able to give majors appropriate preparation for further study in a solid introductory course

• we will be able to offer a few genuinely advanced courses each semester

• the program as a whole will have increased stratification and a clearer design, with most students moving from an introductory course to two required 200-level foundation courses, and then on to advanced work in more specialized areas at the 300 level, followed by a capstone experience in the 400-level Senior Seminar

• while allowing open access to all 200-level courses, we will be able to define a group of courses particularly welcoming to general education students, and thus advisors should have a clearer sense of the level of preparation appropriate for various courses

(4) Administrative Concerns

As we have worked on this new curriculum during the last fifteen months, we have consulted with the Dean, the Provost, and various concerned departments, and we have developed a tentative schedule for the next four semesters to see what the new program would look like in practice.  As a result of these deliberations, we are confident that the new curriculum will allow us to enroll at least as many students as we currently do and to generate an equal or greater number of credit hours.  There should also be about the same number of places available for general education students.  Finally, we have calculated demand for specific courses and groups of courses as well as we can, based on the data available to us, and we have scheduled an adequate number of sections to meet that demand in each case.  It is, of course, impossible to predict all of the effects of  this sort of comprehensive change, but we have thought it through as well as we can at this stage.
 

Department of Humanities
December 7, 1998

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