Facts

Key Allegheny Benefits

• Exposure to many interpretive methods and perspectives.
• Knowledge of how to harness creative expression.
• Critical thinking and writing skills needed for professional success in many fields, including law, education,
• ommunications and media, advertising, and public relations.
• An understanding and appreciation of language.
• A firm grounding in classic, contemporary and non-traditional literature.
• An understanding of modern approaches and fields, including feminist theory and criticism, women's literature, post
• olonial literature, news writing, film and literary theory.

Allegheny Distinctions

• Four distinct writing tracks: technical/professional writing, journalism, creative writing, and environmental writing.
• Extraordinary range of courses in literature and creative and expository writing.
• Inclusion of critical writing in every English course.
• Accessible, approachable faculty.
• English courses that encourage students to explore connections between literature and other disciplines.
• Two levels of fiction: non-fiction and poetry-writing.
• Single Voice Reading Series-an opportunity to hear and meet nationally known writers. Past readers have included John Updike, Carolyn Forché, Tobias Wolff, W.D. Snodgrass, Robert Olen Butler, Lynn Emanuel and Daniel Stern.
• Senior Projects that prove to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major, original assignment.
• Film Criticism, a department-based international journal of film scholarship.
• Allegheny Review, the only national journal comprising undergraduate literature (edited by Allegheny students).

Endorsements

• "The small class size at Allegheny and the corresponding individual attention from professors is a real benefit; my academic advisor and my Senior Project advisor didn't just help me academically, they helped me plan my future." - Susan Lipsitz '88, Boston attorney
• " This professor teaches her classes in a way that excites students not only to understand the material, but to challenge themselves to truly learn." - Recent student
• Twice recently, Allegheny was one of 20 institutions nationwide chosen to receive a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fellow.
• A grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences funded a special issue of Film Criticism.
• Allegheny's Expository Writing Program received a $40,000 grant from the George I. Alden Trust.
• Allegheny Review won so many Columbia Scholastic Press Association awards that the editors stopped entering the journal in the contests.
• Allegheny English majors applying to graduate and professional school have a 90% acceptance rate.
• Department ranks in the top 5% among private, undergraduate institutions in production of eventual Ph.D.s since 1920.
• "I am very impressed [with Allegheny] particularly with the creative writing teachers here, and also with the English department. I find the faculty uncommonly dedicated and serious and rigorous." - Carolyn Forche, author of Angel of History

Student Research and Special Projects

Every Alleghenian completes a Senior Project in his or her major field-a significant piece of original research, designed by each student under the guidance of a faculty advisor, that demonstrates to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major assignment, to work independently, to analyze and synthesize information, and to write and to speak persuasively.

Recent Senior Projects

• "Literature of the Assembly Line: Taking on the American Dream"
• "Reconstructing the Southwest : The New Mexico Novels of Willa Cather and Mary Austin"
• "The Complications Regarding Free Will in John Milton's Paradise Lost "
• "Play-boys, Maids and Monsters: Cross Dressing in the English Renaissance "
• "James Joyce's Ulysses: Teaching the Reader How To Read"
• "The Romantic Tradition in Contemporary American Fiction: An Examination of Selected Novels by Anne Tyler"
• "Antigone: Performance, Persuasion, and Politics"
• "A Raid on the Inarticulate: The Linguistic Legacies of World War I and Vietnam"
• "A Legacy Wrought in Blood: Paule Marshall and Toni Morrison, Preservers of Black Culture"
• "Virginia Woolf in an age of Anti-heroes: An Archetypal Analysis of The Waves"
• "Experimental Journalism, 1950-2000: From Tom Wolfe to Matt Drudge and Beyond"
• "West of DuBois", a collection of poems
• "When I Should Be Dancing," collection of poems
• "In the Presence of Non-Being," collection of poems and short stories
• "Falling - In Summer," novel
• "What Do You Win?" novel
• "Theologizing Shakespeare: Late 19th and 20th Century Definitions of Bardolatry"

Selected Student Achievements

• Presentation at National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing
• Poem published in Montage, international magazine published simultaneously by Stanford University and in Russia
• Poetry readings
• Book review published in Studies in the Humanities
• Article published in Wittenberg Review, literary magazine
• Article published in Aethlon, sports journal
• One of 10 students nationwide chosen to participate in the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets