Program Learning Objectives
Learning Outcomes
- Explicate texts from a diverse range of traditions, including texts from historically underrepresented groups.
- Analyze how power structures and cultural practices shape textual production and reception.
- Critique and produce texts that account for the rhetorical relationships among audience, writer, text, genre, and discourse.
- Write clearly and effectively in a variety of genres and media.
- Successfully incorporate scholarly research into papers.
- Identify and define an array of historical and critical literary, rhetorical, and linguistic terms and categories.
Learning Goals
- Understand how texts reflect, critique, and produce culture and power structures.
- Pursue deeper knowledge of particular authors and works, including those from underrepresented groups.
- Explore the ways identities and affiliations shape texts and traditions.
- Understand the structure of language and how language varies over time, across social situations and social groups.
- Participate in face-to-face exchanges of ideas with faculty, fellow students, and authors in the classroom and other academic or social settings.
- Participate in small seminars where ideas are tested and sharpened.
- Cultivate relational thinking that encourages students to make connections between the arts and humanities and other fields of study.
- Sustain a life-long engagement and involvement in aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual matters, including social and political issues.
- Draw upon multiple literacies to interpret literary, visual, and cultural texts.
Degree Requirements and Curriculum
In addition to the program requirements listed on this page, students must also satisfy requirements outlined in more detail in the Minimum Requirements for Graduation section of this catalog, including:
- 60 units of upper-division courses
- Graduation Writing Requirement (GWR)
- 2.0 GPA
- U.S. Cultural Pluralism (USCP)
Note: No Major or Support courses may be selected as credit/no credit.
| MAJOR COURSES | ||
| ENGL 202 | Introduction to Literary Studies | 4 |
| ENGL 203 | Sequence I: Fifth Century to Fifteenth Century | 4 |
| ENGL 204 | Sequence II: Sixteenth Century to Late Seventeenth Century | 4 |
| ENGL 205 | Sequence III: Mid-Seventeenth to Late Eighteenth Century | 4 |
| ENGL 220 | Introduction to Writing Studies | 4 |
| or ENGL 221 | Introduction to Technical and Professional Communication | |
| ENGL/HNRS 251 | Introduction to Classical Literature (C2) 1 | 4 |
| ENGL 290 | Introduction to Linguistics | 4 |
| ENGL 303 | Sequence IV: Late Eighteenth to Mid-Nineteenth Century | 4 |
| ENGL 304 | Sequence V: Mid-Nineteenth Century to Late Nineteenth Century | 4 |
| ENGL 305 | Sequence VI: Late Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Century | 4 |
| ENGL 306 | Sequence VII: Mid-Twentieth Century to Present | 4 |
| Select from the following (Upper-Division C) (USCP): 1 | 4 | |
| Women Writers of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries | ||
| Ethnic American Literature | ||
| African American Literature | ||
| Asian American Literature | ||
| Gender in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature | ||
| Diversity in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century American Literature | ||
| LGBT Literature and Media | ||
| ENGL 300-level Elective | 4 | |
| ENGL 300-level Non-literature Elective, select from the following: | 4 | |
| Corporate Communication | ||
| Advanced Rhetorical Inquiry and Composing | ||
| Translingual Rhetorical Inquiry and Writing | ||
| Technical Editing | ||
| Information Design and Production | ||
| Reading Instruction for the Teaching of Young Adult Literature | ||
| Theory and Practice of Peer-to-Peer Writing Instruction | ||
| World Cinema | ||
| Film Styles and Genres | ||
| Film Directors | ||
| Topics on Gender Representations in Film | ||
| Fiction Writing | ||
| Poetry Writing | ||
| The Linguistic Structure of Modern English | ||
| Topics in Applied Linguistics | ||
| History of the English Language | ||
| ENGL 400-level Diversity Elective, select from the following: | 4 | |
| Advanced Topics in Technical and Professional Communication (Topic: UX Writing & Research for Social Impact ) | ||
| Topics in British Literature (Topic: Fiction and Non-Fiction of Virginia Woolf) | ||
| Topics in British Literature (Topic: Gender in Medieval Literature) | ||
| Topics in British Literature (Topic: Jane Austen Fiction and Film) | ||
| Topics in American Literature (Topic: American Modernism in Black and White) | ||
| Topics in American Literature (Topic: Califia, Delany, & Pornography) | ||
| Topics in American Literature (Topic: Mixed-Race Subjects in the US Literary Imagination) | ||
| Topics in American Literature (Topic: Walt Whitman and James Baldwin) | ||
| Topics in American Literature (Topic: Women's Fiction, 1861-1914) | ||
| Topics in Transatlantic and/or World Literature (Topic: Trickster Literatures) | ||
| Topics in Rhetoric and Writing (Topic: Women's Rhetoric(s)) | ||
| Topics in Applied Language Study (Topic: World Englishes) | ||
| ENGL 400-level Electives (see Optional Creative Writing Emphasis, below) 2 | 20 | |
| ENGL 461 | Senior Project | 4 |
| SUPPORT COURSES | ||
| Foreign Language at the Intermediate Level | ||
| Select from the following: 3 | 4 | |
| Intermediate Mandarin Chinese I | ||
| Intermediate Mandarin Chinese II | ||
| Intermediate French I | ||
| Intermediate French II | ||
| Intermediate German I | ||
| Intermediate German II | ||
| Intermediate Italian I | ||
| Intermediate Japanese I | ||
| Intermediate Spanish I | ||
| Intermediate Spanish II | ||
| Arts and Humanities Breadth: | ||
| Upper-Division C (General Education) course not in ENGL (GE Electives) 1 | 4 | |
| GENERAL EDUCATION (GE) | ||
| (See GE program requirements below.) | 60 | |
| FREE ELECTIVES | ||
| Free Electives | 28 | |
| Total units | 180 | |
| 1 | Required in Major or Support; also satisfies General Education (GE) requirement. |
| 2 | Minimum 12 units in literature (ENGL 439, ENGL 449, or ENGL 459). |
| 3 | Student can substitute for this requirement by demonstrating a comparable level of proficiency in a foreign language. |
Optional Creative Writing Emphasis
Students interested in creative writing may use 16 of their upper-division ENGL units and their senior project to pursue a fiction- or poetry-writing emphasis. Examples are:
| Fiction Writing Emphasis: | ||
| Fiction Writing (4) | ||
| Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction (4, 4) | ||
400-level ENGL literature course in modern or contemporary fiction (4) | ||
| Senior Project (4) | ||
| Poetry Writing Emphasis: | ||
| Poetry Writing (4) | ||
| Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry (4, 4) | ||
400-level ENGL literature course in modern or contemporary poetry (4) | ||
| Senior Project (4) | ||
General Education (GE) Requirements
- 72 units required, 12 of which are specified in Major and/or Support.
- If any of the remaining 60 units is used to satisfy a Major or Support requirement, additional units of Free Electives may be needed to complete the total units required for the degree.
- See the complete GE course listing.
- A grade of C- or better is required in one course in each of the following GE Areas: A1 (Oral Communication), A2 (Written Communication), A3 (Critical Thinking), and B4 (Mathematics/Quantitative Reasoning).
| Area A | English Language Communication and Critical Thinking | |
| A1 | Oral Communication | 4 |
| A2 | Written Communication | 4 |
| A3 | Critical Thinking | 4 |
| Area B | Scientific Inquiry and Quantitative Reasoning | |
| B1 | Physical Science | 4 |
| B2 | Life Science | 4 |
| B3 | One lab taken with either a B1 or B2 course | |
| B4 | Mathematics/Quantitative Reasoning | 4 |
| Upper-Division B | 4 | |
| Area C | Arts and Humanities | |
| Lower-division courses in Area C must come from three different subject prefixes. | ||
| C1 | Arts: Arts, Cinema, Dance, Music, Theater | 4 |
| C2 | Humanities: Literature, Philosophy, Languages other than English (4 units in Major) 1 | 0 |
| Lower-Division C Elective - Select a course from either C1 or C2 | 4 | |
| Upper-Division C (4 units in Major) 1 | 0 | |
| Area D | Social Sciences - Select courses in Area D from at least two different prefixes | |
| D1 | American Institutions (Title 5, Section 40404 Requirement) | 4 |
| D2 | Lower-Division D | 4 |
| Upper-Division D | 4 | |
| Area E | Lifelong Learning and Self-Development | |
| Lower-Division E | 4 | |
| Area F | Ethnic Studies | |
| F | Ethnic Studies | 4 |
| GE Electives in Areas B, C, and D | ||
| Select courses from two different areas; may be lower-division or upper-division courses. | ||
| GE Electives (4 units in Support plus 4 units in GE) 1 | 4 | |
| Total units | 60 | |
| 1 | Required in Major or Support; also satisfies General Education (GE) requirement. |
San Luis Obispo, California 93407