COURSE DESCRIPTION

ENG 202 (Entering a Professional Dialogue) is one course in a two-course unit that forms the foundation of the undergraduate major in English.  This course and its companion, ENG 201 (Interpreting Texts), introduce students to the wide range of areas that comprise English Studies in the early 21^st century.  A student majoring or minoring in English at Creighton has the opportunity to do upper-level course work in British and American Literature, Irish Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, Creative Writing, Documentary Editing, New Media, global Anglophone literature and Cultural Studies among other areas.  All of these areas are vital in the definition of what it means to join the creative and scholarly community within English.

However, also vital in what it means to be an English major is having a shared (if also often-contested) body of knowledge, skills, and values that are at the core of the diverse areas of more specialized emphasis.  In the main, English 201 stresses the ways in which literary and critical theories inform the understanding (reading and thinking) and creation (writing and thinking) of texts.  Eng 202 stresses an introduction to the range of specialization areas in English studies and their specific practices, allowing students to better define their individual interests and enter a professional dialogue with their chosen specialization through formal research and writing in that area.

ENG 202 considers students to be beginning professionals who will work toward discerning a field of interest and expertise, and who will familiarize themselves with the resources that are most useful to them in their chosen fields.  Students will be expected to apply those resources toward the definition and creation of their own project within the major (or minor) – a piece of scholarly or creative work composed with the goal of entering the dialogue within which it situates itself.  Students’ learning by doing focuses the course’s organization.

COURSE GOALS

• To introduce students to the multiple critical approaches and different scholarly and creative areas within the discipline of English Studies
• To learn the craft, techniques, and habits of mind associated with various writing modes (i.e., professional, creative, scholarly)
• To develop research and writing skills consonant with upper level courses in the discipline
• To allow students to discern their own place as a beginning professional in the field, and to encourage them to make conscious, informed decisions about the courses that they take in the major, and the relationships among those courses
• To allow students to begin to develop their own project in the field