English is a popular major at Dartmouth in part because of the skills that derive from reading, appreciating, and interpreting great literary texts. In addition to reading the classics of British and American literature, as a Dartmouth English major you study a variety of "hyphenated" literatures--such as Native American, Asian-American, and African American--as well as a wide array of non-American Anglophone literatures, from Caribbean to South African. A long-lasting benefit of the English major is thus a developed awareness of the varieties of literary forms generated by a host of different cultures. These cultures range over time, from the eighth century to the twenty-first, as well as over the entirety of the English-speaking world.
A corollary set of intellectual skills developed in the Dartmouth English major is a knowing deployment of a sophisticated critical vocabulary. All English majors will soon be required to take a course in literary theory. By focusing on major theoretical schools of the twentieth century--such as structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, queer theory, psychoanalysis, and post-colonialism--an English major learns how to integrate an array of demanding analytic paradigms. These acquired skills enhance your abilities to critique from a variety of perspectives a variety of texts, ranging from Old English elegies and Renaissance plays to Trinidadian memoirs and digital hypertexts.
Writing is of paramount importance to the English major. Typically, you write at least two long papers in every English course, and in your senior seminar, the capstone course to the major, a hefty research paper is required. About 25% of majors choose to write an honors thesis--somewhere between 90 and 150 pages long. And in the popular major in literature and creative writing , you take a series of seminars that culminate in a portfolio of poems, short stories, non-fictional prose, or a novel. Since clear, intelligent, and personable writing is a skill highly valued in the world after college, its development under the tutelage of attentive professors is another benefit of majoring in English.
In recent years, approximately 100 members of each senior class have graduated as English majors. Some English majors intend to continue their study of literature in graduate school; others prepare to teach English in secondary schools; others choose to become journalists, writers, and editors; many go on to law school and medical school. But all have selected English as a major because of an abiding interest in literature and a fascination with the varied means through which texts can be interpreted. There is no way of predicting precisely where your English major may lead you. In a recent colloquium, five alumni/ae who had majored in English at Dartmouth—a lawyer, a film director, a physician, a psychologist, and a magazine editor—testified to the enduring importance of literary analysis in their professions and in their personal lives. Majoring in English, they agreed, does not prepare you for a single profession but rather instructs you in critical modes of thinking that are beneficial in almost any career path. And, very importantly, it instills a love of literature that is most likely to remain with you throughout your life.
