300-Level Courses

ENG 301: Advanced Composition

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101, ENG 201 (formerly 212), ENG 315, or Eng 395

Satisfies the following General Education Requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): 200-level literature course

Course Typically Offered: Spring

Credits: 3

This iteration of English 301: Introduction to Writing Studies is organized into three units. In Unit 1: Writing and Creativity, we will focus on expressivism, a major trend in the history of writing studies that still influences the field today. In Unit 2: Writing and Politics, we will examine activist
pedagogy. We will address writing and politics in at least to senses. First, we will examine the work of writing studies scholars who, in the late 1960’s, began formulating the writing classroom as a site of political resistance. Second, we will examine how university politics influence the assessment of student writing. In Unit 3: Writing and Technology, we will examine the complicated transformation writing studies has undergone during the information age.

This class does not assume prior knowledge of writing studies scholarship, but it provides a thorough introduction. Preparation for each class period will require reading works of composition theory and/or documents that provide historical context. Unit 1 requires a minor writing project; Units 2 and 3 both require a major writing project.


ENG 307: Writing Fiction

Prerequisite(s): ENG 205 or 206

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): May count towards the Creative Writing concentration; please check with your advisor

Course typically offered: Fall

This course introduces you to the critical problems, questions, theories, and practices of fiction writing.   A challenging class that includes considerable amounts of reading and writing, it is designed to deepen your involvement with the practice and craft of writing fiction. We will discuss the different components of fiction—character, plot, narrative, evocation, and more than anything else, the sentence as the basic “stuff” of fiction. You will be asked to think about how things happen in fiction, to analyze technique, and to discuss effects. We will discuss the responsibilities of fiction and possibilities of form. In short, you will be encouraged and expected to work outside of familiar genres (fantasy, horror, sci-fi, YA, romance, and so on) and outside your comfort zone.


ENG 308: Writing Poetry

Prerequisite(s): ENG 205 or 206

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): May count towards the Creative Writing concentration; please check with your advisor.

Course typically offered: Spring

This is a class in the craft of poetry, designed to expand your sense of the possibilities for poetic form and experiment, as well as to provide you with the opportunity to write in many different ways. Though primarily a workshop, we will also discuss what it means to be a poet, read books of poems, and have poets visit. (2018, Moxley)


ENG 309: Writing Creative Nonfiction

Prerequisite(s): ENG 201 (formerly 212) or 205 or 206

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Artistic and Creative Expression and Writing Intensive

Course typically offered: Fall

Sometimes called “The Fourth Genre,” creative non-fiction uses the strategies of fiction (plot, dialog, characters, etc.) in writing about factual subjects: autobiography, biography, travel, science/nature, cultural issues, current events. We’ll read creative non-fiction and also write it. (2018, Irvine)


ENG 315: Research Writing in the Disciplines 

Prerequisite(s): Junior standing and a declared major

Satisfies the following general education requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Course typically offered: Fall & Spring

Builds on ENG 101 by preparing students for writing-intensive coursework and for senior capstone projects. This is an in-depth exploration of the genre of the academic peer-reviewed research article that will establish a strong foundation for students’ future writing in their disciplines, especially those intending to pursue postgraduate study or applied research.  Using a range of research articles from different disciplines, as well as other texts, class discussion, and in- and out-of-class assignments, the course strengthens students’ analytical reading and synthetic writing skills during the preparation of a research article relevant to and in the style of their chosen field. Students will gain an awareness of some of the differences in audience, approach, authority, and research methods relevant to different disciplines and an understanding of how the genre conventions of the peer-reviewed academic research article contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the disciplines.

ENG 315 and ENG 201 are similar in their scope in some ways, but there are important differences.  A comparison of the two courses’ characteristics has been prepared to help you decide between one course versus the other.


ENG 317: Business & Technical Writing

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 or equivalent; juniors and seniors in declared majors only

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): May count towards the Technical/Professional Writing concentration; please check with your advisor

Course typically offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

This course helps prepare students to communicate effectively in the workplace. Students become familiar with the processes, forms, and styles of writing in professional environments as they work on memoranda, business correspondence, instructions, proposals, reports and similar materials. Special attention is paid to the fundamental skills of problem-solving and analyzing and responding to purpose and audience.


ENG 336: Canadian Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Ethics and Writing Intensive

Course description: Alternate years

An intensive study of a major Canadian writer or small group of Canadian writers, or an examination of a major theme in Canadian literature.  Specific topic varies from semester to semester.  This reading-intensive course is designed to teach students about Canadian literature while giving them the opportunity to practice their reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 341: Colonial & Early National-American Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of literature (ENG 170 and ENG 222 highly recommended) or instructor permission.

Satisfies the General Education requirement(s): Ethics and Western Cultural Tradition.

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): 300-400 level literature course

Satisfies the requirement for the Analytical Writing concentration: Capstone; please refer to ENG 499: Capstone Experience in English.

Course typically offered: Alternate years

The literature of colonial America began almost immediately after contact between Europeans and Native Americans in the fifteenth century, disseminated in multiple languages across Europe. These earliest writings were advertisements for empire: tales of adventure, catalogs of wonders, justifications and warnings. By the seventeenth century, new immigrants and American-born settlers were creating a local literature for local consumption, including the great devotional works of the New England Puritans and the first examples of that long-lived American genre, the captivity narrative. This colonial period culminated in the eighteenth century’s American Enlightenment, which gave rise to the Revolution, and was soon followed by the first stirrings of literary nationalism in the early republic. Encompassing three hundred years of history and an international range of authors, this introductory course may include works translated into English and taking such representative forms as the memoir, travel narrative, sermon, and political tract, as well as the more expected literary genres of poetry, fiction, and drama. A reading-intensive course, it is designed to teach students about a crucial epoch in world history and American literature while creating an opportunity for students to practice reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 342: Native American Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission.

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition and Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives

Course typically offered: Alternate years

This course surveys literature by Native American authors from a wide range of tribal backgrounds and culture areas.  Considers the development of written traditions over time in relation to oral genres, traditional themes and story forms, and situates writing by Native American people in the context of historical and socio-political events and trends in Turtle Island (North America).  Provides the opportunity to reconsider stories of colonization and the Anglo-American culture/nation in the light of indigenous perspectives and experience.  This reading-intensive course is designed to teach you about the history of Native American writing in English, while giving you the opportunity to practice your reading and research skills in order to prepare you for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 343: Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies the following general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Alternate years

An introduction to American literature and culture of the nineteenth century, a period of unprecedented violence, vision, and change encompassing some of the most storied names in poetry and prose. Because the historical events and social turmoil of the century is so crucial for an understanding of its greatest authors, the course may include writers and thinkers whose primary significance is not literary-men and women who witnessed or acted in the great events of the age. This reading-intensive course is designed to teach students about a rich, exciting epoch in literary history while giving them the opportunity to practice their reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 351: Medieval English Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): 300-400 level literature course; pre-1800 requirement; and British literature requirement

Course Typically Offered: Alternate Years.

An introduction to Medieval Literature which involves reading the wild, beautiful, idiosyncratic, and foreign yet strangely familiar works of Chaucer and his English contemporaries. The class will focus on understanding the nature of the medieval world and its expression in the literature of the time, and on developing reading skill in Middle English. This reading-intensive course is designed to teach students about a crucial epoch in literary and linguistic history while giving them the opportunity to practice their reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars. For more details see course descriptions on the English Department website.


ENG 353: Shakespeare & English Renaissance

Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of literature (ENG 170 and ENG 222 highly recommended) or instructor permission.

Satisfies the General Education requirement(s): Ethics and Western Cultural Tradition.

Satisfies the following English major requirement(s): 300-400 level literature course; pre-1800 requirement; and British literature requirement.

Course typically offered: Alternate years

Renaissance suggests a rebirth of classical models, but this period (late 16th and early 17th centuries) is also one of startling innovation. The literature of Shakespeare and his contemporaries can be wildly comic and tragic, lyrical and grotesque, epic and domestic, rewriting the medieval and anticipating the modern worlds. Emphasis may vary among genres (drama, lyric, narrative poetry), theme (romance, revenge, rebellion, reverence), and authors (Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne, Milton for example). This reading intensive course introduces representative texts from a crucial period in literary history, and it provides students the opportunity to practice reading and research skills in preparation for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 355: 18th-Century Fiction, Satire, and Poetry 

Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of literature (ENG 170 and ENG 222 highly recommended) or instructor permission.

Satisfies English major requirement(s): 300/400-level British literature requirement and the pre-1800 requirement.

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Ethics and Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Alternate years

From sentiment to sadism, astounding change ignited the Restoration and eighteenth century, making this period a watershed that marks the transition from Renaissance to Modern.  This reading-intensive class will consider literature against the background of this historical change, inheritance, and influence. Works by Pope, Behn, Cavendish, Finch, Congreve, Dryden, Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Johnson, and Radcliffe, among others.  The focus on reading and research skills will prepare students for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 357: 19th Century British Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition General Education Requirement

Course Typically Offered: Spring, Even Years

Credits: 3

This reading intensive course introduces Nineteenth-century British literature in the context of larger political, technological, cultural, and social changes: The expanding publishing market, the growing influence of a literate middle-class, industrialization, urbanization, global capitalism and modern warfare, Britain’s imperial power. Because of the sheer variety of works and genres, emphasis will vary from instructor to instructor, but along with well-known writers like Wordsworth, Austen, or Dickens, students will be introduced to lesser-known authors, popular and influential in their day but too often forgotten since. This course provides students with the opportunity to practice reading and research skills and prepares students for work in advanced seminars.


ENG 361:  Modernism

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies the following general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Fall, even years

An introduction to Modernism, the revolution in literature and culture that took place during the end of the Nineteenth Century and the first half of the Twentieth Century. Because Modernism was an international movement expressed in multiple genres, this introductory course may include writers and artists from around the world working in poetry, prose, drama, and film. This reading-intensive course is designed to teach students about a crucial period in literary history while giving them the opportunity to practice their reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars.

ENG 361 is part of the English Department’s 300-level sequence in literature.  It is designed to acquaint students with the concept of modernism and some of its texts.  This semester we’ll be focusing on fiction, poetry, and essays by Irish, English, Scottish, Polish, and American modernist authors.  We will be studying the evolution of modernism from symbolism, decadence, and realism at the end of the nineteenth century through the height of modernism and into the 1930’s.


ENG 363: Literature of the Postmodern Period

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Spring, odd years

An introduction to literature of the postmodern period, roughly defined as 1945-1989.  To call the historical-literary period and writing styles that emerged after WWII “postmodern” can spark a lively argument.  But, whatever your position, the fact remains that during these extraordinary times poets, playwrights, and novelists responded to a world changed by WWII in intelligent and challenging ways.  Continuing modernist-period fluidity across national borders as well as genres, this reading-intensive course may include writers from around the world working in poetry, prose, and drama.  It is designed to teach students about a crucial period in recent literary history while giving them the opportunity to practice their reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars.  For more details, see course descriptions on the English Department website


ENG 364: Contemporary Literature 

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Spring, even years

Credits: 3

An introduction to literature after 1989 and up to the present. Studying the living tradition can be incredibly exciting. From writers working in our moment we can gain a unique perspective on our world, which may help us to develop a nuanced reading of the broader culture we both consume and participate in. Because contemporary literature often defies easy genre distinctions, and sometimes even the conventional idea of the book, this course may include multiple genres and cross-genre forms, and a variety of media, from sound files to digital literature. This reading-intensive course is designed to teach students about literature emerging in our time while giving them the opportunity to practice their reading and research skills in order to better prepare them for work in advanced seminars.

This semester we will be focusing on the work of writers in a variety of genres and styles who have visited the University of Maine as part of the New Writing Series since its inception in 1999. We will focus on works that were published after 1989, but will sample from the careers of writers who made their start before and after that eventful year. We will pay special attention to the ways in which the emergence of digital culture began to transform the horizon of literary practices from the early 1990s forward. In addition to reading widely, students will actively participate in the New Writing Series events programmed for the semester, where they will be able to test out their ideas and judgments in face-to-face dialogue with living writers.


ENG 371: Readings in Literary Theory and Criticism

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Spring, odd years

Course Description: This reading-intensive course will acquaint you with a wider range of theoretical and critical texts, concepts, and perspectives than are typically covered in core requirement classes such as English 170 and English 271 (both of which are strongly recommended). Emphasis is given to theories of signification (semiotics), representation (mimesis), and interpretation (hermeneutics) that have informed the practice of literary analysis from antiquity on. The course also provides you with the opportunity to practice your reading and research skills in order to better prepare you for work in advanced seminars such as English 470.

Recent offerings:

(Spring 2017, Brinkley)

Walter Benjamin: Critic, Translator, Marxist and Mystic

The course will be experimental and will explore ways in which students in the course can find ways to be theorists. What does it mean to be (or to act as) a theorist? How would each student like to do theory? What are the possible relationships between theory and practice?

The 20th century German critic, translator, Marxist, mystic with provide a touchstone for the course. We will explore how he does theory (or theories—Benjamin had many theories) and how theory (or theories) engage texts (literary and otherwise) in his work. As we work with Benjamin we will also work with a range of theoretical, philosophical, historical and literary works (those Benjamin would have read and some he would not have read) that can help illuminate his project. The goal of the course, however, will be finding—by engaging Benjamin—students becomes theorists as well because (as the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari insist) theory is fundamentally a creative art.

Benjamin’s friends Scholem and Adorno both told him that he was trying to be both a Marxist and a mystic and that each precluded the other; he should choose. Benjamin responded that they were right—Marxism and Jewish mysticism did not together—but that, in working with the incompatibilities between the complementary approaches (if you like the gap between), all his insights arose, perhaps inasmuch as neither could tell him what to think, inasmuch as the incompatibility also left him not knowing what to think. There is no likelihood as far as I know that Benjamin knew of Keats’s aside about “negative capability,” but it may offer an insight into his theoretical practice: theory as negative capability?

(Spring 2015, Kress)

The “Politics” of/in Alterity 

During the second half of the twentieth century, the term identity politics came to signify a veritable battleground of clashing ideologies as often-ignored and disdained “identities” fought for recognition and acceptance—in short, for power.  Because of this, “the other” became the focus for all sorts of social contention and encompassed identity centered issues as “different” as gay rights, feminism, the men’s movement, racial politics, disability rights, etc.  As literary theorist Jeffery Nealon wrote in the introduction to his Alterity Politics, “These days, it seems that everybody loves ‘the other’.”

But as Nealon points out, that “etc.” at the end of my short list above points to and points out the failure of identity politics, since it remains, always, as an “embarrassing” mark of the incompleteness of any “other.”  So, taking Nealon’s claim as a starting point, this semester in English 371 we will examine, explore, and read heavily in theories identity, difference, and alterity—and perhaps determine whether or not we even understand “the other” let alone love it.  

To get us up to speed theoretically, we will spend the first three weeks of the semester on an overview of the critical and theoretical landscape of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, trying to come to terms with theoretical positions on identify, authority, difference, history, ideology, and agency.  In the second part of the semester, we will focus specifically on the question and problem of alterity.  Using Nealon’s book as our central text, we will read extensively outwards from it, tracking down the ideas, theories, and disputes that inform it.

In the end, the course will try to make the case for two related points:  (1) that far from being an abstract pursuit, literary theory matters in our current world, and (2) that alterity rather than identity may form the basis of an ethical response to our world.

Note.  ENG 371 requires a significant amount of reading—reading that is, at times, quite difficult.  But there is also a distinct pleasure, joy, and even good humor in these texts—a heady cocktail, to say the least!

Required Texts:

Two books on theory and one novel are required for the course.  I will supply pdfs for additional readings, which you will be responsible for printing out and bringing to class.

Jeffrey Nealon, The Theory Toolbox

——————, Alterity Politics

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo


ENG 381: Themes in Literature

Prerequisite(s): 6 credits beyond ENG 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies the following general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Every year

This course can be taken twice for credit provided that the theme covered is different for a maximum of six credits earned.

Recent offerings:

(Fall 2021, Cowan May)

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” When Henry David Thoreau uttered these memorial lines, he had a sense of “wildness” as being “in nature” and also “in the human spirit.” These lines have been adopted by John Muir as the motto for the Sierra Club. John Muir’s sense of “wildness” and Thoreau’s were quite different. Recent theories of “wilderness” argue that the concept is part of our post-industrial, colonial heritage and that many environmentalists have a “purist” sense of the wilderness that has not reality in history and that marginalizes our early ancestors, hunter gathering societies, and native peoples. This course will study works of literature about the wilderness.We will interrogate the concept of wilderness through looking at nonfiction, poetry, and fiction.We will look at interpretations of the “meaning of ‘wilderness” that have informed literary interpretations of the wilderness and also conservation efforts.These will include some key texts in the “environmental movement.”The intersection of all these different works should provide a vantage for students to formulate their own original analyses of wildlands and woodlands and their roles in our contemporary world.

(Spring 2018, Bicks)

Writing the Self 

In this course we will explore how life stories are curated to produce artful narratives of the self. What is the relationship between memory, truth, and imagination in this process? What is at stake in these productions of the self, and how do authors and characters negotiate competing ideas of who they are? What are the challenges of reaching one’s intended audience? We will consider how these questions inform a variety of genres and writers from different time periods: from the medieval mystic Margery Kempe to Shakespeare’s Othello, Tim O’Brien’s autobiographical “work of fiction” The Things They Carried, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, and Allie Brosh’s webcomic, Hyperbole and a Half.


ENG 382: Major Genres Historical Period

Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of English beyond 101 (ENG 170 and ENG 222 recommended) or instructor permission

Satisfies general education requirement(s): Western Cultural Tradition

Course typically offered: Every year

Course Description: Tragedy, comedy, lyric, novel, play or film: these are just a few of the divisions, called “genres” that we use to distinguish one kind of literary art from another. Continuing and deepening the work begun in 170 and/or 222, Major Genres in Historical Perspectives is a reading-intensive course on the thematic and technical developments of one specific genre within a broader cultural and historical framework. This theoretical approach to genre studies will allow students to spend more time reading in a genre they love, while giving them the opportunity to practice their research skills in preparation for work in advanced seminars.

Recent offerings:

(Spring 2021, Harlan-Haughey)

This class on medieval romance will focus not on texts in translation, but rather on learning to read medieval romances in Middle English. We will read fewer pages per class than normal in a literature class, but these pages will be in a different language, that is, in an earlier form of English. I will guide you through the basics of reading Middle English, and many of the class assignments will be focused on the history of the English language, and etymology. As the Middle English Database puts it (better and more succinctly than I could): “Middle English romance was the principal form of secular literature in later medieval England. More than eighty verse romances (metrical and alliterative), composed between c.1225 and c.1500, survive, often in multiple manuscript versions and, later, in early modern prints. The single most important literary legacy of the English Middle Ages – the ancestor of the modern novel as well as almost all contemporary popular fiction, in print and on screen – the Middle English romances provide us with a provocative insight into the medieval imaginary and they repeatedly challenge our assumptions about medieval English culture and its preoccupations.” I hope you enjoy this material as much as I do!

(Spring 2020, Norse Sagas)

In his well-known essay on the Old Norse Sagas, Jorge Luis Borges marvels at the apparent miracle that the sagas were written down at all:

“That the Icelanders discovered the novel in the 12th century suffices, in my understanding, to define the strange and futile destiny of the Scandinavian people. In universal history, the wars and books of Scandinavia are as if they had never existed; everything remains isolated and without a trace, as if it had come to pass in a dream or in the crystal balls in which clairvoyants gaze. In the twelfth century, the Icelanders discovered the novel—the art of Flaubert, the Norman—and this discovery is as secret and sterile, for the economy of the world, as their discovery of America.” (377, “The Scandinavian Destiny”). The sagas, arguably one of the richest bodies of national narrative ever created, are in many ways miraculous, produced in a time when poetry, not prose, was the artistic norm, and many narratives were not written down at all. The sagas are amazing works of literature—at times hilarious, at times brutal, at times romantic, and always deeply engaging. But these tragic, complex, marvelous stories, although unique, were not created in a vacuum. The Icelandic authors who committed the family sagas to vellum were part of many international conversations about politics, literature, culture, and religion. The Viking ‘empire’ itself stretched from the farthest corners of the British Isles (and beyond into the Americas) to Russia, and down to Constantinople, creating a surprisingly diverse and sophisticated culture, and if weren’t for a few lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective) coincidences which helped William the Conqueror gain control of England in 1066, it is likely that Northern Europeans would have colonized the New World by the close of the 12th century, and that the English (and hypothetical medieval European-Americans) would still be speaking and writing in a language which looks more like German than French. This class will introduce you to some of the most famous and influential family sagas, while contextualizing them in the history—cultural, religious, and literary—of the northern Middle Ages.

(Spring 2017, Rogers)

British Novel 

Focusing on the eighteenth century, this class will explore the development of the novel by studying a sequence of works in their historical and cultural contexts. We will consider such topics as postcolonialism, individualism, realism, gender, genre, and canonicity. Evaluation will be based on brief papers, reading quizzes, research exercises, presentations, a midterm, a final, and participation. Texts will vary but may include works by Behn, Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Burney, Sterne, Radcliffe, and Austen.


ENG 395: English Internship

Prerequisite(s): ENG 101 or equivalent and at least one other writing intensive course, a recommendation from a faculty member, submission of writing sample and permission.

Satisfies the general education requirement(s): Writing Intensive

Course typically offered: Fall

Capstone Note:  After successful completion of this course, students may tutor in the Writing Center the following semester to fulfill their capstone requirement for the Literary/Critical Writing concentration.  Please refer to ENG 499: Capstone Experience in English.

An advanced course in writing and collaborative learning. Students first experience collaborative work in essay writing, critical reading of peers’ essays, and rigorous practice in written and oral criticism. They participate in supervised tutoring in the English Department’s writing center.