English department unveils new undergraduate curriculum
Students majoring in English can now focus on literature or creative writing. Graphic by Elizabeth Wong.
After two years in the making, the University of Rhode Island’s English department introduced its new, modernized undergraduate major curriculum this semester.
Students are now able to choose between two English major tracks: literature or creative writing. Previously, the curriculum required students to take classes on literature throughout different historical periods, but now students can take courses focusing on literature beyond timelines. Students already enrolled in the major can continue with the old curriculum or transfer to the new if they wish, but all incoming students will use the 2020 curriculum.
Among the new courses offered this semester are: Poetry Out Loud (ENG 120), Outrage! Literature of Protest and Dissent (ENG 121), Reading Sport, Seeing Life (ENG 210) and The Sensuous Sentence: Grammar for Grammarphobe’s (ENG 333).
The curriculum’s face-lift also adds a new creative writing minor to the program. The University has also developed an accelerated bachelor’s-to-master’s degree program in English.
Department Chair and Associate Professor of English Travis Williams said the new changes are more representative of what the department and students both wanted to see.
“[The major] was no longer representing what have come to be the best practices in the design of an English major,” Williams said. “It was no longer representing what we wanted our majors to learn about or the kind of people we wanted them to be coming out of the program.”
According to Williams, the old program had seen lowered enrollment over the past decade, giving the department another reason to go ahead with the change.
“It wasn’t allowing us to present the full scope of English studies in the way that our curriculum otherwise allows us to do with individual courses,” he said.
As English department chair, Williams supervised the process of seeking approval from the Faculty Senate, ensuring the new curriculum was in accordance with major requirements and standards. Among his responsibilities in aligning the department with the University’s guidelines included budget allocation and guaranteeing the new curriculum would be ready for URI’s 2020 to 2021 academic outcomes assessment.
Williams believes the new programming should be considered a success because it had a “somewhat unpredictable” and timely responsiveness to the current political climate of the country.
“One of the things that was a problem about the old major was that, although we had many courses that spoke to Black, Indigenous [and] people of color (BIPOC) experiences, or literature or culture, they were all scattershot,” he said. “They were not coherent in any way, as a group. And so it happened by accident. That’s no longer acceptable in the world we live in now; so we created a requirement specifically for that in the new major.”
Carolyn Betensky, a professor of English who teaches Outrage! Literature of Protest and Dissent (ENG 121), cannot think of a better time to have diverted the program from the norm.
“The English department had, until this fall, subscribed to kind of an old-fashioned structuring of the major,” Betensky said. “We’re not old fashioned, but the structure itself was based on what the department used to call a coverage model.”
The coverage model, she explained, was designed for students to take courses based on every important historical period in literature.
While students are still required to take courses from various time periods, Betensky’s hope is that there will be more of an interest in the general department with new courses that speak to students and are also relevant to today’s society.
“Literature is about meaning making,” Betensky said. “Meaning making and meaning deciphering. We decided to put meaning in a central position of beauty; we want to invite students to see what’s beautiful and enriching and important about literature from different periods, and very importantly, about literature from our own period. We want students to see how their lives can be expanded by including literature they haven’t known about before.”
Associate professor of English Derek Nikitas hopes this revival of URI’s English department will inspire students to leave the dated generalizations of literature at the door.
“I think there’s an unfortunate but present impression that the study of English is the study of books by dead writers written 100 years ago,” Nikitas said. “But the truth is we are deeply interested in, and our students are deeply interested in, life today, politics today, culture today and society today.”
According to Nikitas, the development of the general education program will include useful, purposeful courses that are meaningful to students and affect their lives.
Overall student response to these changes have been generally positive, according to Williams. At their own choice, many current students within the English major have chosen to move to the new major, instead of remaining in the original one.
“That’s very heartening to see because in some ways, they might be taking on more work depending on how the courses shake out between the old and the new, but it clearly is resonating with them,” Williams said. “And we’re hopeful that it will start to resonate with incoming students.”