English Revamps Course Selection

The English department’s new curriculum was approved on Tuesday and will be introduced next fall. Under the revamped system, large surveys of British literature will no longer be mandatory, and will be replaced by smaller discussion-based courses, grouped in four common-ground categories: “Arrivals,” “Diffusions,” “Poets,” and “Shakespeares”.

The new curriculum, which the English department began in March and ratified in December, was approved outright by the Educational Policy Committee. Stephanie H. Kenen, EPC member and associate dean of undergraduate education, said that the committee refers about half of curriculum proposals back to departments, but in this case it only sent back questions.

English professors said the new curriculum, after the department’s first major reform in over two decades, will be unlike any other they had researched. It will begin offering four common-ground courses in the fall, and a full selection of eight per semester in the spring. These courses will replace the required survey courses English 10a and 10b, the American literature requirement, and the sophomore tutorial.

The survey courses were slated to be cut, but the EPC has expressed hope that they will continue if only as electives, said Daniel G. Donoghue, the department’s director of undergraduate studies. Current requirements in literature before 1800 and Shakespeare will be offered in new forms.

Concentrators will now take more electives and fulfill one requirement in each of the four common-ground categories. According to Donoghue, the guiding mission for the new curriculum was to improve pedagogy by reducing class sizes. The new courses will be capped at thirty students.

While current introductory courses survey British literature, the new curriculum will emphasize cross-cultural interaction. “Arrivals” focuses on cultures coming to England through the seventeenth century, while “Diffusions” covers the spread of the English language during the British Empire. The “Shakespeares” category will consider the playwright’s works in multiple contexts.

“The particular emphasis on cultural mobility derives from a sense of the way the discipline is going now,” said English Professor W. James Simpson, who sat on the committee that drafted the new curriculum.

The common-ground courses are intended primarily for sophomore and junior English concentrators. Current sophomores and juniors may enroll in the new courses, which will have equivalents under the current curriculum. Donoghue said that non-concentrators and underclassmen may be allowed to take common-ground, but that it is not clear. He said that one possible course, “English Lyrics,” proposed by English Professor Helen H. Vendler, would cover Shakespeare, Herbert, Wordsworth and Keats.

The English’s departments changes will also bring students closer to faculty outside the classroom. In addition to the current undergraduate advising on requirements, each concentrator will be paired with a professor. “There are broader advising questions that we plan to make a part of this program—guidance in pursuing interests,” said Donoghue.

Donoghue said it is important to note that the English department’s new plan does not herald the end of studies of Western civilization. “If anything,” he said, “it will give students more of a share in pursuing the English canon.”

English concentrator Amber A. James ’11 said she is happy with the new curriculum. “I joined the English concentration to learn the canon of literature, but there is also a certain degree of agency I want in that,” she said. She added that she believes students will learn more in smaller classes, though she said she hopes concentrators will still have the choice to take English 10a and 10b as electives.

-Staff writer Alex M. McLeese can be reached at amcleese@fas.harvard.edu.

English Concentration Requirements