In keeping with Occidental?s mission values of equity and excellence, students in English courses read the work of both long-studied writers and of those previously excluded from traditional literary history. Majors will:

• become proficient in close reading and focused discussion of individual literary works
• learn to situate those works in their generative historical, geographic and social contexts
• become skilled in interpreting them through a range of theories and methods that characterize the evolving discipline of literary studies.