Writing Minor

To earn a writing minor, students will need to complete two required English courses, one course chosen from a selection of English options, and four courses chosen from a separate selection of English options.

• Introduction to Literary Studies: Provides students with a foundation of knowledge and skills for work in the major. It does so by introducing them to the subject matter, critical schools and methods, research strategies, forms of responsive and critical writing, and major contested issues of the discipline.
• Introduction to Creative Writing: A course in which students will read and write in four genres: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting/playwriting. The course will emphasize reading and research as the foundation for creative writing. It will also introduce students to workshopping creative writing and to an integrated understanding of faith and writing.
• American Multicultural Literature: In this course, students will read, discuss, and write about literature from several different American groups of various identities, including Native American, African-American, Asian-American, and Latinx. Students will examine various cultural understandings of what it means to be American and explore American ethnic subcultures through field trips. Writers discussed will vary but may include Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Viet Than Nguyen, Li-Young Lee, Sandra Cisneros, and Junot Diaz.
• Adolescent Literature: This course focuses on reading classic and contemporary works of adolescent literature. Students will consider this genre and its audiences, analyze several adolescent novels and stories, and think critically about the religious orientation and historical context of each work. The course will also explore contemporary issues crucial to adolescents and teenagers, including identity and adolescent psychology, sexuality, and social conformity. This course is appropriate for both majors and non-majors.
• American Literature I: This course surveys the literature of colonial North America and the early United States republic (1492-1860), including poems, novels, magazines, and newspapers. We will examine the influence of Calvinism, Catholicism, and the Enlightenment on American culture, and we will place American literature in a transatlantic and global context. Authors and texts include Edgar Allan Poe and other American Romantics, Benjamin Franklin, slave narratives, Puritan poetry, and Native American writings.
• American Literature II: This course surveys the selected prose, poetry plays, and other creative writing by Americans, from 1865 to the 1990s. It will investigate a number of major literary, cultural, and aesthetic trends that impacted the lives and history of Americans and beyond, including realism, naturalism, and modernism. Students will discuss literary works in relationship to major historical events and their lasting cultural effects, which may include the Civil War, World War I and II, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights movement.
• Reading and Writing of Poetry: In this writing course, students read and write various poems with fixed forms and in free verse. They will explore how other poets get started and where they get their ideas for poems. Time in class will be spent discussing each other’s poems, and each student will have at least three personal conferences with the instructor. By the end of the semester, each student will have a portfolio of at least a dozen poems.
• Songwriting: A study in the craft of songwriting, particularly in lyrical composition. The course will cover listening, reading, and analyzing songs and song structure. Students will write and workshop songs. No ability to write music is required.
• Advanced Non-fiction Writing This course will introduce students to types of non-fiction writing sought by online and print publications. It will seek to improve students’ narrative writing skills, especially an engaging voice. Major assignments include the profile, the review, and the personal essay. Students will also read and react to various types of non-fiction writing, both essays and longer works. Significant class time is spent in workshop format, with students reading and discussing their own work.
• Advanced Argumentative Writing: The primary goal of this course is to help students argue and persuade well in writing, in preparation for careers that demand high-level argumentation—such as seminary, law school, graduate school, political work, and research and grant writing. Students will study the art of rhetoric, writing for specific audiences in order to persuade, dissuade, or inspire them. They will also incorporate research, at an advanced level.
• Fiction Writing: Introduces students to the task of writing fiction. In addition to significant reading in the genre, the course will require several exercises in various aspects of the craft, as well as the completion of one original short story. Time will be spent in workshop format and discussing technique, as well as the ways in which one’s faith affects the work of writing fiction.
• Business and Technical Writing: Students will study the process, application, and characteristics of business and technical writing, and the way in which writing style, strategies, content, and clarity will relate practically to one’s profession. Concentrates on developing competence in a variety of writing tasks commonly performed in business, law, industry, social work, engineering, agriculture, and medicine.
• Screenwriting: Students will gain insight into the process and the techniques involved in scriptwriting by studying film scripts and creating their own. Students will receive hands-on instruction in concept development, character development, plot structures, dialogue, and visualization.
• Advanced Writer’s Workshop: Students will write a focused writing project in the genre of their choice (e.g., short stories, poetry, screenplays). The course will include craft lectures, writing and workshop time, and guest lectures and readings. Students will meet together in early May for 1-2 weeks, and then will work with a faculty mentor throughout the summer,, producing regular packets of original works, responses to assigned texts, and thorough revision.
• History of the English Language: Surveys the Indo-European languages; the emergence, development, and flowering of the Anglo-Saxon language; the seven English dialects; the Chaucerian dialect; and the contributions of the Greek, Latin, and French language and cognate words.
• English Grammar: A study of traditional and rhetorical grammar. Students will approach English grammar as not only a technical subject but also a craft, a field for research and scholarship, and a domain with socio-cultural, political, and ethical dimensions. As they develop their own arguments, voice, and editing skills, they will explore various topics through readings, discussions, practice exercises, research projects, and writing activities that require them to apply grammar knowledge in context.

See the course catalog for more information.