The English Honors Program is a thriving one.  It has included as many as twelve students in one year pursuing diverse approaches: critical writing, creative writing, non-fiction writing, and film-making.  Topics in recent years speak to the program's breadth and flexibility: a post-modern novella; a study of Marianne Moore and photography, in which the student incorporated her own poetry and photography; an analysis of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus as an anti-revenge play; a non-fiction essay about marketing in grocery stores; a study of secrecy in William Blake's The Four Zoas; an exploration of medieval and early modern Spanish and English nativity plays. 

Requirements

The Honors program requires a 3.5 GPA by the time of graduation, and both a 3.4 major GPA and a 3.2 overall GPA at the point of application, at the end of the junior year. It normally comprises twelve courses. These twelve include two in addition to the ten required of all majors: English 498, in which the student researches a thesis and presents plans to a thesis committee; and English 499, in which the student writes the thesis and, at the end, is examined by the thesis committee.

Exceptions to the requirement of twelve courses may include the following:

1. Students who feel they have already done adequate research to begin writing a thesis may request that the department waive the requirement of English 498.
2. Students who apply to the honors program may ask the department to substitute English 498 for an elective. Note: Either A or B may be chosen but not both.
3. With the department's permission, two courses required of the honors student may come from other departments related to the student's thesis. A more detailed description of the Honors Program may be found in the English Department Handbook, available in the offices of all faculty members. To be awarded honors, students must achieve at least a grade of B+ in both English 498 and English 499.

Description

After consultation with applicants and the department, the Departmental Honors Adviser will assign each honors candidate a thesis committee, consisting of a director and two readers. The thesis director and candidate will meet regularly to discuss drafts and revisions of the thesis, and the two readers will read at least one draft of the thesis before the final version. All committee members will participate in the field examination.

The thesis is a substantial piece of writing: it should involve independent research and reflect the broad spectrum of past and current scholarship in the field; it should embrace an original hypothesis or represent original creative work; and it should run 35 to 45 pages in length, exceptions to this last criterion to be considered individually by a student's thesis committee. The honors examination, administered by the thesis committee, centers on the student's thesis and either the period or the genre on which the thesis focuses.

Each student will also participate in a brief presentation on the thesis to teachers and friends during a reception given by the English department during the semester. The student's field of examination should be neither impossibly broad nor too narrow to provide a challenge. So, for example, a field of "the novel" for a thesis on Tristram Shandy would need more focus (to, say, eighteenth- /nineteenth-century British fiction). Likewise, a creative thesis of short stories on contemporary women's issues would require a field of more breadth than literature about eating disorders or contemporary short stories by women. A thesis on As You Like It and Twelfth Night could lead to such fields as early modern drama, Renaissance literature, or the English comic tradition.

The honors candidate should consult with the Departmental Honors Adviser during the application process and then, later, with the three committee members during the summer between junior and senior years to begin compiling a reading list of twenty to thirty texts for the field examination. That list will be finalized prior to the English 499 presentation, during which the committee will pose some preliminary questions on the field.

Students pursuing a creative thesis are subject to different standards.  Click here to review those standards.

Application Deadlines

Application must be initiated by mid-February and completed by May 15 of the junior year, ensuring those accepted sufficient time to begin reading for the thesis and field during the summer and to take English 498 and 499 during the senior year. The honors student must earn a grade of B+ or better in English 498 and English 499. If a student fails to earn a grade of B+ or better in either course, the course will be converted into a regular independent study. But any student who passes the course will receive course credit.

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