Overview

The English department believes that skillful, self-conscious reading, writing, and thinking provide a foundation for meaningful living. They seek to develop forms of analysis and expression that are both critical and creative and that help students comprehend the multiple cultural practices and values of the twenty-first century.

Villanova English majors acquire a broad understanding of Anglophone literary history as well as familiarity with the major genres of the tradition. A department of accomplished scholars, there is a focus on undergraduate education and the department makes its majors the center of its pedagogy. While preserving the value of literature as a cultural form, there is a focus on cultivating the analytical skills necessary for negotiating today’s rapidly changing world.

   Learning Goals and Objectives.

Expressive competences:
--Students use writing analytically and creatively.
--Students’ writing is clear, persuasive, insightful, and well-organized.

Analytic competences:
--Students demonstrate familiarity with Anglophone literary traditions and genres and are able to employ disciplinary vocabulary to interpret a wide variety of texts.
--Students are able to assess the historical contexts, ideological assumptions, and aesthetic values of the texts they analyze.

Research competences:
--Students are able to incorporate and evaluate secondary sources (critical, theoretical and historical) in their literary analyses.

 

Departments/programs/subject areas supported

Highly interdisciplinary by design, English department is manifest across the university through the programs in Africana Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Irish Studies, and Writing and Rhetoric, in all of which English faculty are prominent, and in recent innovations such as the “Creativity on the Page” Learning Community and the "Literary Experience in London" program for for first-year students in their second semester.

The English department offers both graduate and undergraduate degrees. 

Undergraduate Options:

  • Major exclusively in English.
  • Pursue a double major in English and another discipline (recent English graduates have had second majors in Communication, Cultural Studies, Economics, Education, French, Geography and the Environment, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, and Spanish);
  • Minor in English.

Graduate Options:

  • Master’s degree in English Literature
  • Post Master's Certificate
  • Master's degree in English with a Certificate in Communication.  

 

Resources Collected

NOTE: Electronic format is preferred for all Library holdings unless otherwise noted.

  • Scholarly monographs in electronic and print format (academic and trade press preferred)
  • Academic Journals in electronic (Peer reviewed preferred)
  • Academic Databases (especially those dealing specifically with English literature related content)

Resources and materials collected selectively or by request: 

  • Audiovisual materials
  • Academic journals in Print format (Only if electronic is unavailable)
  • Reference data, handbooks, dictionaries, and other material (electronic strongly preferred)

Resources not collected:

  • Microform
  • Non-Villanova theses and dissertations
  • Conference proceedings (selectively)
  • Ephemera
  • Preprints
  • Print government documents
  • Hardware and software manuals
  • Instructor’s materials
  • Juvenile works
  • Manuscripts
  • Pamphlets

Collaborations within the library

English has strong crossover with other Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines including, but not limited to Theatre, History, Philosophy, Theology, and ACS 

 

External collaborations

NA