Honors Program

The department’s honors program gives our seniors the opportunity to conduct intense and independent work in English literature and language. The program begins in the fall semester with an Honors Seminar, in which all honors students are required to enroll.

In the spring semester, each student completes an honors thesis, an extended paper on a topic of their own choosing. students work on the thesis in consultation with a faculty advisor. This is an excellent opportunity to pursue in-depth, independent research on a topic that has always interested you. Students who are in the creative writing track of the English major can choose to do either an extended scholarly or critical thesis or a thesis that consists of a collection of poems or short stories, or a more extended piece of fiction, creative non-fiction, or dramatic writing.

While the fall seminar is intended to prepare and focus students for the in-depth work of writing an honors thesis, the possible topics for theses need in no way be bound to the seminar topic.

All junior English majors are invited to apply by March 16th, 2026

Fall 2026 Honors Course

ENGL 396: Honors Seminar:  Author, Editor, Translator, Critic

Wednesdays 2:00-4:40PM

Professor Jen Grotz

This honors seminar will concentrate on a wide range of readings in fiction, poetry, theory, and criticism, as well as the practice of writing itself. In the process, we will examine the distinctions and the overlaps of what it means to author, edit, translate, or critique a text as well as how the identity of being a reader or a writer requires skills from each of these roles or activities. By the end of semester, students are expected to have a strong sense of the topic and form of their honors thesis, which they will complete in Spring 2027 under the supervision of a faculty member in the English Department. Creative as well as critical honors theses students are welcome!
Readings have not yet been finalized but are likely to include The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, James, by Percival Everett, Practice by Rosalind Brown, Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey, Repetition 19 by Mónica de la Torre, A Giacometti Portrait by James Lord, and Unattainable Earth by Czesław Miłosz.