English
Department
The Faculty
The professors and instructors who compose the English Department are award-winning scholars with diverse educational backgrounds and professional interests from Homer to Toni Morrison, Shakespeare to Jack London, genre studies to creative writing to cultural criticism. Their range of interests and expertise, evident in the various national and international forums where they have presented and published, benefits the Centenary classroom as we investigate all areas of literary study.
About the Major
Centenary English majors explore the world of words and images that compose pop culture, cyberculture, and the canonical past. Through study and production of poetry, fiction, literary non-fiction, drama, film, and theoretical criticism, our majors hone their skills so that they can express ideas with clarity and style in whatever medium.
People who communicate well excel in academic, business, and professional fields, so English students practice the art of communication online for the Web and in lines of verse, in essays, and in narratives. The department offers a curriculum emphasizing both the craft of writing and the study of literature (American and British as well as that of other traditions) along with the related areas of language, communication, and film. Course topics include advanced composition, women writers, medieval literature, grammar, film studies, the post-colonial novel, creative writing and literary criticism.
Centenary's English curriculum creates individuals strong in the humanities able to apply their skills to our college community and beyond. Our majors tend to involve themselves with on-campus media by writing for the newspaper, staffing the fine arts magazine, joining the film society, or hosting a show for the radio station. These allow our students to hone their skills while learning to express themselves in various genres.
Through Centenary's participation in the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program, English students enjoy, for a week at a time, one-on-one contact with distinguished creative writers and journalists. These fellowships and Centenary's own Attaway professorships allow our students to interact with individuals renowned for their work with words.
Since 1991 the English Department and Student Government Association have sponsored the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, named for a Centenary alumnus who was a successful novelist and screenwriter. Thanks to this annual event, students have interacted with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Eudora Welty, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, and C.K. Williams, as well as critically acclaimed poets and novelists like Ernest J. Gaines, James Dickey, Paul Auster, Elizabeth Spencer and Eleanor Wilner.
Career Opportunities
A strong writing background will serve any student entering the job market. Many Centenary English majors have become successful in business and law as well academia. Others enter the fields of primary and secondary education, technical writing, journalism, film or television production, screenwriting, advertising, and public relations.
