Departmental Honors
According to Centenary College of Louisiana’s Catalog:
"To be considered for English Departmental Honors, students must fulfill general College requirements for honors programs."
In addition they must:
- Apply to the chair of the department during the junior year.
- Complete a substantial project based on scholarly or creative work in three hours of Independent Study (ENGL 491-496W) during their senior year. (Note: Candidates for departmental honors must earn those three hours in Independent Study in addition to the requirements for the English major.)
- Present the project in a colloquium of English faculty and students.
- Pass an oral examination by English faculty on the departmental reading list.
General college requirements state that students must:
- Have a 3.25 GPA in both major and overall course work.
- Have participated in the program/major for at least two semesters.
- Collaborate with a faculty supervisor in a committee that oversees the student’s project.
- Have one committee member from outside the student’s major or program.
To receive honors in English, students must read on their own a reading list selected by department faculty. For each text there is a designated expert, a faculty member who can work with students to develop their understanding of individual texts and how those texts relate to the larger list. Here is the current reading list with faculty “experts.”
- Chaucer, Troilus and Criseide
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
- Fielding, Tom Jones
- Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
- Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- Derek Walcott, Omeros
- Wilfred L. Guerin, et al., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature
Important points to keep in mind as you make your bid for Honors:
Prior to your submission to an oral examination testing your knowledge of the Honors reading list, you should:
- Consult with your faculty supervisor about the appropriate way to prepare for the exam and the appropriate way to conduct yourself during the exam.
- Prepare questions to be given to the examination committee. This list must be approved by your supervisor and should address such things as period, genre, key themes/issues, critical approaches, historical and cultural context, and the relationships between texts.
- Seek concrete advice from other faculty members on how best to prepare for the oral examination.
- Arrange a “mock exam” with the department chair and your supervisor so that you will know what to expect on the day of your actual oral examination.
