Read critically and interpret literary works in English
We require one course aimed explicitly to develop this competency. To meet it, students may take English 101 or Humanities. The numerous sections of English 101 all emphasize several plays of Shakespeare and lyric poetry, and all are writing intensive. The literary works with which students engage over four semesters in the interdisciplinary Humanities program reflect a broader historical range, including works in translation from the classical era (the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid), and later Dante’s Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Tempest, and in the modern era, works by Blake, Wordsworth, Dickens, and T.S. Eliot.
In the English 101 sections students will sit for the two-hour final exam. One component of that exam will be the assessment instrument, which will count for roughly 10 percent of the grade. Faculty in different sections will exchange these essays, read them blindly, and judge the literary analysis based on a common rubric. (One faculty member, who requires students actually to perform some of the plays, will use a slightly different method of assessment.)
The faculty in English will develop a rubric during the coming year that specifies the standards for literary analysis. (See also above the standards for letter grades currently posted on the web site of the Sewanee Writing Center.)
In Humanities, a short response paper focusing on literary analysis will be assessed using the same rubric as the faculty in English use, and again will be read blindly by a faculty member in Humanities who is not the student’s instructor. This essay may be assigned in any one of the four semesters of the Humanities program. The results of the essay will neither be recorded as a grade nor used as a ‘high stakes” requirement for graduation, but students judged not yet competent will be required to meet with the faculty member who read the essay and go over the scoring rubric and the essay so that the student understands where improvement is needed.
The Chair of English and the Director of Humanities will aggregate the results of these summative readings, conveying to the General Education Committee the percentages that exhibited competency in literary analysis.
