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Undergraduate Bulletin College of Arts and Sciences
Department of English

Bachelor of Arts in English

Students on Summer 2019, Fall 2019, or Spring 2020 requirements ENGBA

The Bachelor of Arts in English provides majors with marketable skills in writing, text analysis, and critical thinking and allows them to explore the power of the English language in all its historical, persuasive, and expressive range. Requirements for the English major provide in-depth training in literary history and culture. Majors take courses in all periods of British and American literature, as well as more recent periods of ethnic and contemporary world literature.

In addition to core requirements, students choose from an array of elective options in genre (poetry, fiction, and drama), media studies, popular culture, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, rhetoric, creative writing, and public and professional writing. In the department, majors can work with novelists and lexicographers, biographers and poets, rhetoricians and bloggers, experts in everything from medievalism to modernity, from nature writing to digital gaming, from Jonathan Swift to Taylor Swift.

Requirements

The major requires at least 33 credit hours (with at least 21 credit hours at the 300–499 level), including the requirements listed below.
  1. Introductory Course. One (1) course:
    • ENG-L 260 Introduction to Advanced Study of Literature
  2. Introduction to Genre. One (1) course:
    • ENG-L 203 Introduction to Drama (must be approved for CASE Intensive Writing)
    • ENG-L 204 Introduction to Fiction (must be approved for CASE Intensive Writing)
    • ENG-L 205 Introduction to Poetry (must be approved for CASE Intensive Writing)
    • ENG-L 206 Introduction to Prose (Excluding Fiction) (must be approved for CASE Intensive Writing)
  3. Literary History.
    1. Beginnings through the Seventeenth Century. One (1) course:
      • ENG-L 305 Chaucer
      • ENG-L 306 Middle English Literature
      • ENG-L 307 Medieval and Tudor Drama
      • ENG-L 308 Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Drama
      • ENG-L 309 Elizabethan Poetry
      • ENG-L 310 Literary History 1: Beginnings through the Seventeenth Century
      • ENG-L 313 Early Plays of Shakespeare
      • ENG-L 314 Late Plays of Shakespeare
      • ENG-L 317 English Poetry of the Early Seventeenth Century
      • ENG-L 318 Milton
      • ENG-L 350 Early American Writing and Culture to 1800
      • ENG-L 367 Literature of the Bible
    2. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. One (1) course:
      • ENG-L 312 Literary History 2: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
      • ENG-L 320 Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Literature
      • ENG-L 327 Later Eighteenth-Century Literature
      • ENG-L 328 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama
      • ENG-L 332 Romantic Literature
      • ENG-L 335 Victorian Literature
      • ENG-L 347 British Fiction to 1800
      • ENG-L 348 Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
      • ENG-L 351 American Literature 1800-1865
      • ENG-L 352 American Literature 1865-1914
      • ENG-L 355 American Fiction to 1900
      • ENG-L 356 American Poetry to 1900
    3. Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. One (1) course:
      • ENG-L 316 Literary History 3: Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
      • ENG-L 345 Twentieth-Century British Poetry
      • ENG-L 346 20th and 21st Century British Fiction
      • ENG-L 354 American Literature since 1914
      • ENG-L 357 Twentieth-Century American Poetry
      • ENG-L 358 American Literature, 1914-1960
      • ENG-L 359 American Literature, 1960-Present
      • ENG-L 360 American Prose (Excluding Fiction)
      • ENG-L 363 American Drama
      • ENG-L 365 Modern Drama: Continental
      • ENG-L 366 Modern Drama: English, Irish, American, and Post-Colonial
      • ENG-L 374 Ethnic American Literature
      • ENG-L 375 Studies in Jewish Literature
      • ENG-L 380 Literary Modernism
      • ENG-L 381 Recent Writing
      • ENG-L 396 Studies in African American Literature and Culture
  4. Critical Practices. One (1) course:
    • ENG-L 371 Critical Practices
  5. Concentration or Electives. One of the following options:
    • Electives Option. Each of the following:
      1. Two (2) courses at the 200–499 level (ENG-W 202 and ENG-W 205 are not approved for inclusion in the major)
      2. Two (2) courses at the 300–499 level
      3. One (1) course at the 400–499 level
    • Concentration Option. One (1) of the following concentrations (see requirements below):
      • Creative Writing
      • Cultural Studies
      • Public and Professional Writing
  6. Major GPA, Hours, and Minimum Grade Requirements.
    1. At least 18 credit hours in the major must be completed in courses taken through the Indiana University Bloomington campus or an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.
    2. At least 18 credit hours in the major must be completed at the 300–499 level.
    3. Except for the GPA requirement, a grade of C- or higher is required for a course to count toward a requirement in the major.
    4. A GPA of at least 2.000 for all courses taken in the major—including those where a grade lower than C- is earned—is required.
    5. Exceptions to major requirements may be made with the approval of the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies, subject to final approval by the College of Arts and Sciences.

  • ENG-L 111 Discovering Literature
  • ENG-L 112 Experiencing World Cultures through Literatures in English
  • ENG-L 198 Freshman Literature
  • ENG-W 101 Critical Literacy
  • ENG-W 103 Introductory Creative Writing
  • ENG-W 130 Principles of Composition
  • ENG-W 131 Reading, Writing, and Inquiry I
  • ENG-W 143 Interdisciplinary Study of Expository Writing
  • ENG-W 170 Introduction to Argumentative Writing: Projects in Reading and Writing
  • ENG-W 171 Projects in Digital Literacy + Composition
  • ENG-W 131 Reading, Writing, and Inquiry I*
  • ENG-W 170 Introduction to Argumentative Writing: Projects in Reading and Writing*
  • ENG-W 202 English Grammar Review
  • ENG-W 205
  • ENG-X 101 Pre-Composition

Concentrations