English (B.A.)

The Literature Track offers in-depth study of literary periods, styles, and genres, as well as linguistics and writing courses. It's perfect for students with interests in digital and print publishing, law school, marketing and public relations, and English graduate study. With its strong emphasis on developing students' strengths as creative critical thinkers and effective writers and on providing a strong foundation in the humanities, this concentration prepares students for careers in the wide range of fields.

Learning Objectives

• Communicate effectively in multiple modes
• Read in multiple contexts
• Recognizing and apply modes of inquiry
• Read analytically
• Recognize of the power of language

Literature faculty teach a range of courses in their specialties, including lower-division survey courses and upper-division close study courses. Literature faculty also create dynamic special topics courses that encourage students to examine literature outside of traditional chronologies and geographies.

Literature track students take courses that represent five main goals:

• develop skills in writing and rhetoric
• experience a range of literature from different periods and regions
• gain knowledge of literary and textual forms, as well as traditions of inquiry
• acquire analytical reading skills
• learn to appreciate the power of language and literature

The Literature track offers significant flexibility for students to pick courses which most interest them. Rather than a prescribed list of required courses, the literature track offers multiple options within categories of study.

Have you ever dreamed of creating a strong character like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, whose multi-book adventures are complex and exciting? Have you ever wanted to build a world as creative and detailed as the one in your favorite video game? Have you always written poems, but never showed them to anyone?

Then creative writing is the concentration for you.

Students in our creative writing program study contemporary literature and participate in writing workshops in several genres of their choice. This concentration of the English major also gives you necessary skills for numerous jobs with a writing emphasis like social media manager, ad copy writer, and corporate storyteller. Creative writing students work to achieve four primary learning objectives:

• Demonstrate familiarity with a range of literary/critical traditions and cultural viewpoints
• Explain how form, genre, and the history and structure of language relate to the craft of creative writing through critical analysis of varied genres
• Write original and inventive creative works, and
• Compose in a range of artistic and professional genres, including new media, showing how creative writing skills can be deployed in a variety of professional opportunities

Creative Writing Checklists

• Course Rotation Sheet
• Creative Writing Checklist

Practical Learning

• Students in the creative writing track benefit from a scaffolded program which requires them to take a literature genre course before they take the corresponding creative writing course in the same genre. This methodology allows them to fully understand the genre before attempting their own creative projects and underscores the importance of writing as a craft.
• Students in the creative writing track have the opportunity to work with the Warren Literary Journal. As editors, they work on content selection, layout, and design of each issue. This opportunity offers invaluable practical experience in the world of publishing.
• The creative writing program at Bloomsburg University has been hosting the Big Dog Reading Series for over 15 years. This reading series brings published writers to campus for workshops and readings. Students have the opportunity to engage one-on-one with these creative professionals, as well as also experience the power of their work as presented in their own voices. Students are encouraged to engage in Q&A’s to deepen their own understanding of being a creative writer.
• Other professional development experiences include The Voice (BU newspaper), Writing Center (WALES) consulting, and in-house social media content development internships.

Creative writing faculty are all published writers, with active scholarly agendas that repeatedly see acknowledgement through literary prizes and ongoing publication.

Creative Writing Careers

“The creative writing workshops taught me to read critically, hit a deadline, finish a story, give and receive constructive criticism, and revise. Happy to say all that work paid off: I've worked in book publishing for eight years and I signed with a literary agent in 2019!" — Hannah Karena Jones '11, Author and Senior Managing Editor at Running Press Publishers

Creative Writing Opportunities

Take advantage of many opportunities to attend conferences, give readings, edit and publish your own work in the Warren literary magazine.

Writing is something you can do for a lifetime; professional writing is an area of study that integrates language, design, and technology, preparing you for our changing world.

The Professional Writing and Digital Rhetoric Track offers in-depth study of technical and professional writing in print and online. It's perfect for students with interests in writing for business and industry.

With insight and expertise, our English faculty will support and develop your critical thinking and analytical skills as you learn to write and design documentation in our quickly evolving world. As an interdisciplinary track, you will have an opportunity work with other world-recognized faculty in areas like instructional technology and art studio. The experiential learning emphasis of the concentration prepares you for real work situations, developing and honing skills that are in demand in our rapidly shifting online/remote workplace.

The concentration is taught and supported by faculty across the department, through courses in literature, rhetoric, and documentation design, as well as discipline specific writing courses across the university. This track maintains strong connections with programs like digital forensics and a 4+1 master’s instructional design program at BU. All work provides students with a robust foundation that prepares them to work in positions as non-profit managers to national defense contractors.

This track focuses on these specific goals or objectives:

• develop skills in writing, rhetoric, and disciplinary conventions
• demonstrate proficiency in a range of software related to document composition
• acquire an awareness of the power of language through textual analysis; and
• design feasible/usable long-term projects based on the needs of actual clients or commissioning identities.

This track promotes internships that move student beyond the classroom, taking them on a journey from backpack to briefcase.

The Secondary Education English Track is offered in conjunction with the Department of Teaching and Learning to prepare students to teach English in grades 7 through 12.

Minors complement a student’s major to increase their areas of knowledge and improve their competitiveness on the job market or for graduate study. With planning, students can easily add one or more minors to their major without delaying their graduation date. Students may also major in one of the English department tracks and pursue one of our other minors, such as majoring in creative writing and minoring in technical and professional writing. Typically, minors require 18 credit hours to be counted towards graduation. 

• Minor in Literature | Checklist
• Minor in Creative Writing | Checklist
• Minor in Linguistics
• Minor in Professional and Technical Writing | Checklist
• Minor in Ethnic Studies in the United States
• Minor in Gender Studies

Other minors chosen by English majors in the past include foreign language, women's studies, theater, business, communication studies, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and political science. Choosing a minor may be a beneficial credential when looking for a career after graduation.

We offer a wide array of more than 30 courses that teach students to think critically, read analytically, and communicate effectively. Students interested in literature can choose between American, Non-Western, European, and British texts; while student writers express themselves in the form of fiction, nonfiction, scriptwriting, and poetry. We also offers courses in linguistics that allow students to study the history and structure of language.

• Course Brochure (PDF Download)
• Course Catalog
• Scheduling Courses

We ask that majors in our concentrations — literature, secondary education, creative writing, and professional writing and digital rhetoric — begin an ePortfolio early in their course of study, update it at least yearly, and complete and refine it in the senior year. For the literature, creative writing, and professional writing majors, the ePortfolio is a graduation requirement; for the secondary education concentration, the ePortfolio will be a part of some required courses and will be a graduation requirement for those who graduate in Fall 2020 and later.

The ePortfolio is intended

• to bring additional coherence and continuity to your English study experience; we want to encourage you to understand your own development as readers and writers; by including artifacts produced outside the English department as well as inside it, we ask you to consider how your major field of study interacts with your learning in other areas.
• to encourage you to begin thinking early and often about career options and further education, and to assist you in preparing for these goals; the finished ePortfolio should be a diverse repository of your best college achievements, drawn both from coursework and from extra- and co-curricular activities; for career preparation and applying for positions, the ePortfolio will demonstrate what you've done and can do.
• to extend and enrich the environment for advisement; academic advisors will help you update and diversify your portfolios, and can suggest helpful additions.
• and to provide the department an opportunity to see how well we are meeting our objectives.

ePortfolio Guidelines for your concentration:

Creative Writing
Literature
Professional Writing and Digital Rhetoric
Secondary Education English (for those graduating Fall 2020 and later)