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