Major Requirements
Major Requirements – 72 Total Credits
Foundations – Required 6 credits
One designated 100-level course that develops skills of literary analysis and introduces the concept of genre
- ENGL 100.01: Controlling Narratives (25/FA)
- ENGL 100.02: Literary Revision: Authority, Art, and Rebellion (25/FA)
- ENGL 100.03: Novel, Nation, Self (25/FA)
- ENGL 112: Introduction to the Novel
- ENGL 114: Introduction to Medieval Narrative (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 115: The Art of Storytelling
- ENGL 118: Introduction to Poetry
- ENGL 131: Speculative Fiction
- ENGL 135: Imperial Adventures (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 137: Terrorism and the Novel (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 141: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump
- ENGL 144: Shakespeare I
- ENGL 149: Tolkien and Herbert
- ENGL 187: Murder (not offered 2025-26)
Historical Eras – Required Minimum 36 credits
36 credits in literature courses numbered 200-394 (excluding 220 and 295) which must include:
Group 1: Literature Before 1660 – (12 credits)
- ENGL 202: The Bible as Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 203: Other Worlds of Medieval English Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 205: “Passing Strange”: Shakespeare’s Othello and its Modern Afterlives (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 206: William Shakespeare: The Henriad (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 207: Princes. Poets. Power (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 208: The Faerie Queene (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 210: From Chaucer to Milton: Early English Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 214: Revenge Tragedy
- ENGL 216: Milton and Modernity
- ENGL 219: Global Shakespeare
- ENGL 244: Shakespeare I
Group II: Literature Between 1660 and 1900 – (12 credits)
- ENGL 211: Haunting the Margins of American Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 213: Being Queer in Nineteenth-Century America (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 217: A Novel Education (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 218: The Gothic Spirit
- ENGL 222: The Art of Jane Austen
- ENGL 223: American Transcendentalism
- ENGL 224: Cruel Summer, 1816
- ENGL 229: The Rise of the Novel (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 256: Excavating Histories: Archival Research Methods
- ENGL 319: The Rise of the Novel
- ENGL 323: Romanticism and Reform (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 324: Cruel Summer, 1816
- ENGL 327: Victorian Novel (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 338: Dickinson, Moore, Bishop (not offered 2025-26)
Group III: Literature After 1900 – (12 credits)
- AMST 269: Woodstock Nation (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 215: Modern American Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 227: Imagining the Borderlands (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 228: Banned. Censored. Reviled. (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 230: Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 233: Writing and Social Justice (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 235: Asian American Literature
- ENGL 236: American Nature Writing (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 238: African Literature in English (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 241: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump
- ENGL 242: Queer Literature: The Pre-Stonewall Origins (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 245: Bollywood Nation
- ENGL 246: Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Beyond Bollywood
- ENGL 247: The American West
- ENGL 248: Visions of California
- ENGL 249: Modern Irish Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Politics (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 251: Contemporary Indian Fiction (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 255: The Poetics of Disability (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 257: Fandom and the Queer Digital Commons
- ENGL 258: Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 272: Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Representing Mumbai
- ENGL 274: Ireland Program: Irish Literary Pasts and Presents (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 288: California Program: The Literature of California (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 329: The City in American Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 332: Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 344: Reading Queerly
- ENGL 350: The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 352: Toni Morrison: Novelist (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 359: Contemporary World Literature
- THEA 242: Modern American Drama (not offered 2025-26)
- THEA 255: August Wilson: History and the Blues (not offered 2025-26)
Critical Methods Course – Required 6 credits
- ENGL 295: Critical Methods
Senior Seminar Course – Required 6 credits
- ENGL 395.01: The Writings of Virginia Woolf (25/FA)
- ENGL 395.01: The Romantic Mode (26/SP)
Senior Integrative Exercise – Required 6 credits
- ENGL 400: Integrative Exercise
A senior may choose one of the following:
- Colloquium Option: A group option in which participants discuss, analyze and write about a thematically coherent list of literary works.
- Research Essay Option: An extended essay on a topic of the student’s own devising. Open only to students who have completed their Advanced Seminar by the end of fall term senior year.
- Creative Writing Option: Creation of a work of literary art. Open only to students who have completed at least two creative writing courses (one of which must be at the 300 level) by the end of fall term senior year.
- Project Option: Creation of an individual or group multidisciplinary project.
Other Major Requirements
Of the 72 credits required to complete the major:
Traditions Courses – Required 18 credits
At least 6 credits must be taken in each of the following traditions:
T1: Literature of Ireland and Britain – 6 credits
- ENGL 112: Introduction to the Novel
- ENGL 114: Introduction to Medieval Narrative (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 135: Imperial Adventures (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 144: Shakespeare I
- ENGL 202: The Bible as Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 203: Other Worlds of Medieval English Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 205: “Passing Strange”: Shakespeare’s Othello and its Modern Afterlives (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 206: William Shakespeare: The Henriad (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 207: Princes. Poets. Power (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 208: The Faerie Queene (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 210: From Chaucer to Milton: Early English Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 214: Revenge Tragedy
- ENGL 216: Milton and Modernity
- ENGL 217: A Novel Education (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 218: The Gothic Spirit
- ENGL 219: Global Shakespeare
- ENGL 222: The Art of Jane Austen
- ENGL 224: Cruel Summer, 1816
- ENGL 229: The Rise of the Novel (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 244: Shakespeare I
- ENGL 249: Modern Irish Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Politics (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 274: Ireland Program: Irish Literary Pasts and Presents (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 281.07: London Lives (26/WI)
- ENGL 319: The Rise of the Novel
- ENGL 323: Romanticism and Reform (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 324: Cruel Summer, 1816
- ENGL 327: Victorian Novel (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 381.07: London Lives (26/WI)
- ENGL 395.01: The Writings of Virginia Woolf (25/FA)
T2: Literature of North America – 6 credits
- AFST 325: Slavery in the Africana Imagination (not offered 2025-26)
- AMST 269: Woodstock Nation (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 141: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump
- ENGL 211: Haunting the Margins of American Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 213: Being Queer in Nineteenth-Century America (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 215: Modern American Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 223: American Transcendentalism
- ENGL 227: Imagining the Borderlands (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 228: Banned. Censored. Reviled. (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 230: Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 233: Writing and Social Justice (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 235: Asian American Literature
- ENGL 236: American Nature Writing (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 241: Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump
- ENGL 247: The American West
- ENGL 248: Visions of California
- ENGL 255: The Poetics of Disability (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 256: Excavating Histories: Archival Research Methods
- ENGL 258: Playwrights of Color: Taking the Stage (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 288: California Program: The Literature of California (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 329: The City in American Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 332: Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 338: Dickinson, Moore, Bishop (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 352: Toni Morrison: Novelist (not offered 2025-26)
- THEA 255: August Wilson: History and the Blues (not offered 2025-26)
T3: Global Anglophone Literatures – 6 credits
- ENGL 238: African Literature in English (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 245: Bollywood Nation
- ENGL 246: Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Beyond Bollywood
- ENGL 251: Contemporary Indian Fiction (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 272: Film, Literature, and Culture in Mumbai and Seoul Program: Representing Mumbai
- ENGL 350: The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 359: Contemporary World Literature
English Courses Numbered 300-395 – Required Minimum 24 credits
Literature Other than English in the Original or Translation – Up to 6 credits
- ARBC 185: The Creation of Classical Arabic Literature
- ARBC 315: Readings in Premodern Arabic Anthologies (not offered 2025-26)
- CHIN 245: Chinese Vision of the Past in Translation (not offered 2025-26)
- CHIN 251: Heroes, Heroines, Exceptional Lives in Chinese Biographical Histories (not offered 2025-26)
- CHIN 355: Contemporary Chinese Short Stories (not offered 2025-26)
- CHIN 364: Chinese Classic Tales and Modern Adaptation (not offered 2025-26)
- CLAS 112: The Epic in Classical Antiquity: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts
- CLAS 116: Greek Drama in Performance
- CLAS 121: Meeting an Anti-Hero: Philoctetes
- CLAS 124: Roman Archaeology and Art (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 202: The Bible as Literature (not offered 2025-26)
- FREN 244: Contemporary France and Humor (not offered 2025-26)
- FREN 245: Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean (not offered 2025-26)
- FREN 253: The French Revolution, Then and Now (not offered 2025-26)
- FREN 259: French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
- FREN 310: The Art of Scandal (not offered 2025-26)
- FREN 359: French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
- FREN 360: The Algerian War of Liberation and Its Representations (not offered 2025-26)
- GERM 247: Mirror, Mirror: Reflecting on Fairy Tales and Folklore (not offered 2025-26)
- GRK 204: Intermediate Greek Prose and Poetry
- GRK 230: Greece at a Crossroads: Homer: The Odyssey
- GRK 240: Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (not offered 2025-26)
- JAPN 345: Advanced Reading in Modern Japanese Literature: The Short Story (not offered 2025-26)
- LATN 204: Intermediate Latin Prose and Poetry
- MEST 185: The Creation of Classical Arabic Literature
- RELG 162: Jesus, the Bible, and Christian Beginnings
- RUSS 242: Russian Short Story (not offered 2025-26)
- RUSS 244: The Rise of the Russian Novel (not offered 2025-26)
- RUSS 266: The Brothers Karamazov (not offered 2025-26)
- RUSS 267: War and Peace (not offered 2025-26)
- RUSS 336: Who’s Pushkin? Whose Pushkin?
- SPAN 242: Introduction to Latin American Literature
- SPAN 330: The Invention of the Modern Novel: Cervantes’ Don Quijote (not offered 2025-26)
- SPAN 366: Jorge Luis Borges: Less a Man Than a Vast and Complex Literature (not offered 2025-26)
Creative Writing Courses – Up to 12 credits
- CAMS 277: CAMS Production in Los Angeles Program: In the Writers’ Room (not offered 2025-26)
- CAMS 280: Advanced Screenwriting (not offered 2025-26)
- CCST 259: Creative Travel Writing Workshop
- CCST 270: Creative Travel Writing Workshop (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 160: Creative Writing
- ENGL 233: Writing and Social Justice (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 259: Creative Travel Writing Workshop
- ENGL 260: Ireland Program: Creative Writing in Ireland
- ENGL 263: Hybrid Memoir and Creative Nonfiction
- ENGL 267: Studies in Description (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 269: The Art of Time in Fiction
- ENGL 270: Short Story Workshop
- ENGL 271: Poetry Workshop (not offered 2025-26)
- ENGL 360: Ireland Program: Creative Writing in Ireland
- ENGL 370: Advanced Fiction Workshop
- ENGL 371: Advanced Poetry Workshop
Additional Departmental Notes
Double-majors considering completing the integrative exercise during the junior year will need written approval from the departmental chair.
Workshops in Writing
The Department of English offers workshop courses in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Students are encouraged to submit their work to college publications such as The Second Laird Miscellany, the Clap, and The Manuscript.
Writers on the Carleton faculty include poet Gregory Hewett and fiction writer Gwen E. Kirby. The department invites writers (most recently Jane Hamilton, Kao Kalia Yang, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Sun Yung Shin, and Joanna Klink) to teach workshops in creative writing. In addition, the department brings writers to campus for readings and lectures. Recent visitors have included Teju Cole, Edwidge Danticat, David Henry Hwang, Sarah Vap, Jaswinder Bolina and Jesmyn Ward.