Student Work
When senior Shannon Boyer won the 2006 Kidd Prize for fiction, she decided, together with the prize’s second
place winner for poetry, Hajara Quinn, to use the money to start their own creative literary journal called Dry Erase. “Starting it took most of our winnings,” Boyer says. “We’ll publish most anything and it’s a spot for students to get their work out there.”
Boyer decided on the English program because of the vast array of classes, and because it offered small workshops
where she could delve into her self-exploration as a writer. But, she says, there is more to English than writing prize-winning stories and analyzing literature. “English makes you a critical reader and writer,” she says. “But, English also helps you with your problem-solving skills in any situation.”
“I have loved to write as long as I can remember,” says senior Chelsea Maricle. “And I just eat up books, so a degree in English was a no-brainer.” Maricle is also majoring in International Studies and will receive a minor in dance.
Last year Maricle took a class that ended up being her favorite of her undergraduate career: Literature Editing for the Northwest Review.
“It was a really good experience,” she says. “The class gives you a competitive edge for getting a job. Most jobs and internships don’t want you unless you have experience, but how are you supposed to get it in no one will hire you? It’s a Catch-22. So, this class was great at giving you real-world experience.”
Junior Nicole Dalton has always known that she wants to be a teacher. “I took a teaching class in high school and decided that I wanted to teach English instead of math and science,” she says. “I decided on English because it is hard. We talk about complex things and it is a very rewarding mix of challenge and reward.”
Dalton volunteers at a local high school, working with students to improve their reading and writing skills. Her involvement at the school started as an internship requirement for one of her English classes, but she enjoyed the work so much she continued as a volunteer after the class ended. “It’s fun because I started working there as a sophomore, when a lot of the students I was helping were also sophomores, so we’re going to graduate at the same time.”
Her advice for new students is to “go to office hours and build relationships with your professors. Office hours are great; they really help you finalize your thoughts.”
Selected Faculty Work
Professor John Gage’s interests are in rhetorical theory, composition pedagogy, and twentieth-century American poetry. His publications include The Shape of Reason; In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism; “An Adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspectives;” and “Rhetoric and Dialectic in Robert Frost’s ‘A Masque of Reason’.”
Professor Linda Kintz’s fields of focus are modern literature, British and American ethnic literature, literary theory, and women and literature. Professor Kintz’s interests include performance studies, psychoanalytic criticism, cultural studies, and the rhetoric and signifying systems of political economy and the religious right.
Assistant Professor Ben Saunders specializes in Renaissance/Early Modern studies. His primary areas of interest are the poetry and drama of the English Renaissance, and in the study of sexuality. His other interests include poetry and poetics, literary theory, the history of pornography, the relation of violence to the sacred, and Anglo-American popular music.
Associate Professor Shari Huhndorf’s primary fields of focus are ethnic literature and film studies. Her other interests include Native American literature, history, and politics; film, autobiography, American cultural history and popular culture. Associate Professor Huhndorf is currently working on Topographies of Race and Gender: Mapping Cultural Representations (co-edited with Patricia Penn Hilden).
Career Prospects
A background in English can take you so many places. You might continue writing and research through a master’s or doctoral program. It provides a strong foundation for a career in law. An ease with the English language will help you in any endeavor both in and out of the workplace. You might be interested in filmmaking or film criticism.
You can use an English background to develop community literacy programs. English hones essential reading, writing, and comprehension skills that will serve you well, whether you’re writing the great American novel, teaching elementary grammar, or designing websites.