THE ENGLISH MAJOR’S

HANDBOOK

Adam Potkay
Department of English
P.O. Box 8795
College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
757-221-7483
http://www.wm.edu/english

© 2006 Department of English

REVISED 06/2016
College of William and Mary
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to all the faculty members,
students, and former students of the
English department who contributed
sections to this handbook, or who offered
editorial advice.

A very special “thank you” goes to Kate

Petty, English Major, ’06 for the editing and
design of this handbook.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction
II. What is English, Anyway?
III. Writing Well
IV. Older Poetry: Getting the Sense Straight
V. Interpretation: Close Reading
VI. World Wide Web Resources
VII. English and American Literary History
VIII. World Literature
IX. English Language and Linguistics
X. Creative Writing Program
XI. The Honors Program in English
XII. What Does One Do With a W&M English
Major?
XIII. William & Mary Career Services
XIV. The Ferguson-Blair Scholarship in Publishing
XV. Some Common Questions about Graduate
Study in English
XVI. Preparation for Graduate School:
Undergraduate Courses
XVII. Applying to Graduate School in English
XVIII. When Should I Apply to Graduate School?
XIX. Which Graduate Schools Should I Apply To?
 1

I. Introduction
This Handbook is primarily directed at English
majors and at students considering majoring in
English. It is also aimed at non-majors who are
interested in literature, particularly those who are
considering the possibility of doing graduate work
in English or a related field (American Studies,
Creative Writing, Comparative Literature, Drama).
The purpose of this Handbook is to begin to
address two basic questions: first, “What is
‘English,’ Anyway?” and second, the ever popular:
“What can I do after I graduate?”
The first portion of this handbook attempts to
answer the first question. It contains a few insights
into what exactly a major in English is, and how to
do your best in English courses. It also describes
the department's offerings in creative writing and
linguistics.
The second portion offers some basic advice
concerning jobs and careers, and how to go about
preparing for them.

II. "What is 'English,' Anyway?"

Imagine a time before there were English
departments. Imagine a University in which
knowledge was divided up differently from the way
that it is now—a University without the divisions
 2

that you’re familiar with between the various

humanities and social sciences and sciences.
The University is an institution with medieval
European origins, and in the medieval curriculum,
students began by studying the so-called trivium
(“three ways,” from the Latin tri, “three” + via,
“way”): the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
It is in these three arts that the modern English
department has its deepest roots.
Today, when one says one is majoring in “English,”
one means three distinct things:
1. learning to write—and to a lesser extent to
speak—effectively: that is, to frame cogent
arguments in correct and elegant English.
This aspect of what we do in “English” bears the
imprint of the classical (Greco-Roman) rhetorical
tradition.
2. learning to interpret literature: that is, frame
coherent arguments about what and how literary
texts mean.
This aspect of what we do, while also having
classical antecedents—grammar included
interpretation as well as basic rules about sentence
construction—owes a lot to medieval and early
modern habits of scriptural exegesis: that is, from
the way that people have studied and interpreted
the Bible.
 3

3. learning the history of English and American

literature. This aspect of what we do largely derives
from early nineteenth-century Romantic notions
about national literatures as records of, and
resources for, the developing “spirit” of a people
(what the Germans called volk-geist).
In the following pages, I will have some things to
say about all three aspects of the English major.

III. Writing Well

What follows is a more or less formal guide to
essay-writing. Not all English professors share the
exact same sense of what constitutes a good essay;
and some professors may have different criteria for
shorter, more informal, response papers; still, if
you attend to the following advice, you won’t end
up far afield of anyone’s expectations.
1. When to begin. One of the truly pernicious
myths of undergraduate academic life is that, with
enough coffee and adrenaline, you can churn out
more or less acceptable papers the night before
they’re due. In reality, such overnight papers are
likely to be a mess. You won’t have any real thesis
(or, consequently, thesis development) because
odds are you won’t have discovered what it is you
mean to say until the last paragraph or two of your
paper, at which point the sun’s coming up and it’s
too late to go back to the beginning and begin the
painstaking process of revision.
 4

To avoid the hasty mess, you should always begin a

5-7 pp. paper at least a week before it’s due; you
should give yourself two weeks for longer papers.
The way you manage to do this is to plot out a
writing schedule in your daily planner at the very
beginning of your semester. For instance: if you
have a paper due for Class A on March 30, you
should begin to jot down preliminary notes by
March 16. You should have a working outline by
March 21; at this point you may want to talk about
your ideas with either another student in Class A, a
tutor in the Writing Resources Center, or your
professor during his/her office hours. You should
have a full draft by March 24. At this point, hide a
hard copy of your paper in a drawer and forget
about it for a few days. Clear your mind a bit. Think
about other things. Then, by March 28, return to
your draft—at this point, scales will fall from your
eyes, and you’ll see your paper anew. You’ll now
have a fresh perspective on the strengths and
weaknesses of your essay, with ample time to
correct the latter and accentuate the former.
Clear writing is clear thinking, and our first
thoughts on any subject are rarely clear ones. The
process of writing about a work of literature is one
in which we come, gradually, to understand both
the work we’re addressing and what there is to say
about it.
 5

2. The Most Important Thing is to arrive at a

“THESIS”: that is, a strong argument. Let me first
give you an example of something that looks like a
thesis but is really not a thesis (the “facsimile
thesis,” or “F.T.”):
“There are representations of external nature in
both Homer and [the eighteenth-century poet]
Thomas Gray.”
My answer to this is: “yup, there are.” The problem
with a facsimile thesis is that it’s too obvious—it
hardly requires “proof”—and little can follow from
it but a mechanical list of external nature sightings:
“Here’s a representation of nature...
There’s a representation of nature...
Here’s another representation of nature...
So we see that both poets represent nature.”
I say to this exactly what you’d say if you were
reading it: “Yawn.” Or: “tell me something I didn’t
know.”
The facsimile thesis lacks specificity. It's empty
precisely because it can be applied to hundreds of
writers. The facsimile thesis quoted above, for
example, is easily adapted to the demands of just
about any English course: "There are
representations of external nature in both William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge," "There
are representations of external nature in Thoreau
and Emerson," etc.
 6

Here, by contrast, is an example of a good thesis—

that is, a thesis that relates only to the work or
works in question—taken from a paper written by
a William & Mary student:
“Progressive eighteenth-century Englishmen saw
the natural world in a very different manner than
had their Greek forebears. While the ancients
viewed nature as a powerful and terrifying force
out of their control, the moderns—steeped in an
ideology of progress and emergent technology—
saw nature as something to be mastered and put
to good use. This dichotomy manifests itself in the
contrasting views of nature presented in Homer’s
Iliad and Thomas Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect
of Eton College.”
This a strong thesis because it’s surprising (without
being bizarre) and because it needs to be defended
(i.e., it justifies the act of writing an essay).
Defending this thesis will require a selection of apt
quotations from Homer and from Gray, and
because neither Homer nor Gray offers an explicit
statement about their attitudes towards Nature
(that is, neither comes out and says, “I think nature
is a terrifying and uncontrollable [or a docile and
controllable] force”), any quotations our author
chooses will require fairly subtle interpretation to
yoke them to the purposes of her thesis.
 7

3. What’s needed to defend a thesis is good

PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE.
Having announced a thesis—that is, an argument
that is sufficiently surprising to require proof—your
essay can immediately begin to prove it.
Every paragraph should be built around one central
point; that point is usually expressed in the first
sentence or two of your paragraph, the “topic
sentence.”
Here’s how our model paper concerning Gray and
Homer proceeds to defend its thesis (from the first
sentence of the second paragraph): “In the Iliad we
see nature portrayed as the ultimate destructive
force.” This is a strong topic sentence.
The rest of this paragraph supports the topic
sentence by noting the prevalence, in Homer’s
similes, of images of destructive nature: fires,
storms, and “wolves who tear flesh raw.” It quotes
liberally from Homer’s text.
Our author then argues, in successive paragraphs,
that 1.) “The heroes of the Iliad try to imitate
nature directly in their choice of battle-gear,” and
2.) “Although Homer’s warriors can attempt to
imitate natural forces, they cannot control nature
itself; for it is left to the gods to sway nature as
they please in Homer’s representations of battle.”
Note how each paragraph/topic sentence logically
follows from the paragraph that came before, and
how it serves to advance the central thesis of the
 8

essay. This sense of continuity derives from having

a good working outline; and it may be accentuated
by making sure you have good TRANSITIONS
between paragraphs. Our author effectively marks
her transitions in the first sentence of each
paragraph by retaining elements from the
paragraph that precedes it. Thus, a paragraph on
images of natural ferocity is followed by a
paragraph on warriors who adopt the trappings of
nature (“helmets with horse-hair crests” and the
like), which is followed in turn by a paragraph on
how both war and nature are under the
inexplicable control of the gods.
4. Our exemplary author always INTERPRETS
quotations, showing how even those passages
which aren’t ostensibly in line with her thesis can
still be seen to advance that thesis. Her
interpretative skills can be seen most clearly in the
next turn of her argument, as she proceeds to
engage Thomas Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect
of Eton College.” Gray’s poem begins with these
lines that address the “College”:
Ye distant Spires, ye antique Towers,
That crown the watry Glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
[King] Henry’s holy Shade;
And ye that from the stately Brow
Of Windsor’s Heights th’Expanse below
Of Grove, of Lawn, of Mead survey... (ll. 1 -7)
Our author, turning now from Homer, writes:
 9

In contrast to Homer’s representation of nature as

a destructive force, Thomas Gray’s “Ode on a
Distant Prospect of Eton College” depicts a tame
and subjugated natural world. In the opening
stanza of the poem, the speaker surveys “the watry
Glade” of the College from a position of elevation
or—figuratively speaking—of superiority; indeed,
the speaker is above the setting of the College in
much the same manner that the College itself is
poised above “th’Expanse below / Of Grove, of
Lawn, of Mead.” Indeed, the speaker derives his
sense of superiority over nature from the very fact
that the College rises, both literally and figuratively,
above its grounds. Presumably, mankind’s
long -standing fear of the disorderly power of
nature has been quelled by the progress of
“grateful Science,” and thus the school, as a
bastion of knowledge, symbolizes for the speaker
man’s triumph over nature.
This paragraph involves “interpretation”: it teases
out the implications of a text, attending, in the
critic Earl Wasserman’s phrase, to the “subtler
language” of a literary work.
Effective interpretation is a literature student’s
crowning achievement (compare here section V,
“Close Reading”).
5. OK, so much for our guided tour through a good
essay on Homer and Gray. But (you’re apt to ask),
what about the NOVEL? How does one formulate
an effective thesis when writing about a novel, or—
 10

to maintain some continuity with our contrastive

analysis of Homer and Gray—about the
similarities/differences between two novelists?
The rules are the same. Consider Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
Here’s an unsatisfactory or “facsimile” thesis:
“Jane Eyre is a more active and independent
woman than Fanny Price.”
The problem with this assertion is that it’s too
obvious. Jane is ostensibly more active and
independent than Fanny—what’s there left to say?
Rather than encourage literary analysis, this type of
faux thesis simply provides an occasion for plot
summary—and PLOT SUMMARY WON’T DO.
Here, by contrast, is an intriguing thesis:
“At first glance, Fanny Price seems a far more
passive heroine than her nineteenth -century
counterpart, Jane Eyre. Upon closer inspection,
however, the differences between Fanny and Jane
diminish. For at the heart of Fanny’s passivity there
lies a deep core of aggression, while amidst all the
flurry of Jane’s self-assertion the close reader may
detect an underlying submissiveness. How far in
spirit is the Victorian Bronte from the late Georgian
Austen? This essay will examine the continuities, as
well as the differences in emphasis, between the
representations of feminine behavior in Mansfield
Park and Jane Eyre.”
 11

Or—another effective paper thesis might derive

from comparing/contrasting the role of private
theatricals in both Mansfield Park (the production
of the play Lover’s Vows) and Jane Eyre (the
charades performed by Rochester and Blanche
Ingram). Do Fanny and Jane possess similar or
opposed attitudes towards the lure of play-acting?
Finally, here’s a student thesis that concerns one
novel only:
“Throughout Leo Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace,
Pierre Bezuhov struggles to find a “theory of the
universe” to answer his existential questions.
“What is wrong? What is right?... What is life for
and what am I?... What force controls it all?” (389).
In the end, Pierre finds faith in God, which brings
with it answers to his questions and also a sense of
freedom from the external circumstances of his
life. But despite Pierre’s ultimate success, War and
Peace is not a prescription for any particular belief
system to clarify life’s ambiguities. Rather, the
novel examines belief itself: the process of
acquiring and maintaining belief systems and ideas
of truth. Tolstoy suggests, through his novel’s
diverse characters, that each person’s perception
of truth is influenced by his or her own personality,
experience, and circumstances.”

6. Stylistic Details. You can avoid the most common

problems of grammar and usage by following these
 12

simple tips (some of which I’ve picked up from my

colleague Professor Monica Potkay).
a.) The phrase “the eighteenth-century” is
hyphenated only when it is used adjectivally: e.g.,
one writes “the eighteenth-century novel,” but one
writes “novels written in the eighteenth century.”
b.) Paginate your papers. Papers should be printed
in 12 point type, in Times New Roman or a similar
font that has serifs, double-spaced with 1" margins.
Do not add extra spacing between paragraphs. The
goal is to make your essay look like a published
work, except for the double spacing. Learn how to
get your word processing program to delete extra
spacing between paragraphs.
c.) Without going thesaurus crazy, do avoid the
indiscriminate repetition of the same word in a
given paragraph. If you find yourself repeating the
same word over and over again, it’s typically a sign
that your essay, like a scratched phonograph
record, has got caught in a single groove—that is,
it’s not going anywhere. Here’s an example of a
writer in a rut:
“Jane Eyre and [Samuel Richardson’s] Pamela are
both accounts of women’s development. As the
events and experiences in the two women’s lives
unfold, their womanly development is illustrated
(quite literally) throughout the novels. It is through
the changes and developments that occur in their
artwork—both within their novels and
comparatively—that we are able to observe both
 13

their artistic and womanly development. As we

observe each character struggling to reach the
ultimate goal of womanhood, their development
serves to mark significant changes in the concept of
women and womanly development.”
Questions: how many times does “development”
appear in this paragraph? How many times does
“woman”?
As an exercise in writing, try condensing this
terribly pleonastic prose into two or three clear,
concise sentences.
d.) Avoid “begging the question”: that is, assuming
as proved the very thing you should be trying to
prove. Example: “Robinson Crusoe is more
believable than earlier autobiographies.” This
assertion will hardly do, because it’s your job to tell
me precisely what about Crusoe’s account of
himself is more believable; you also need to
address the question of whether or not earlier
autobiographers wrote according to a criterion of
(empirical) believability.
Some other phrases that generally “beg the
question”: “more enjoyable than,” “more readable
than,” “more pitiful than,” and “relatable.”
e.) Avoid passive constructions, as they tend to
result in vague, murky, and otherwise confusing
prose. E.g.: “Both Fanny Price and Jane Eyre are
born poor and are sent to live with their wealthy
relatives. As a result, upper-class norms are
 14

imposed on them.” Questions: who sends them?

who imposes these “norms” on them? (Not to
mention the question: what are these “norms”?)
f.) Avoid the indiscriminate use of vague articles
(“a,” “an”) and demonstrative adjectives (“this,
that”). Here’s a double-whammy of a perplexing
sentence: “Defoe...gives the impression that he is
writing for an audience. This audience is absent in
neoclassical writers of the period.” My question:
what “audience” are you talking about? Explain
your references, being as clear and specific as
possible.
A related and still more vexing grammatical-logical
problem occurs when you use the demonstrative
adjective “this” without a subsequent noun.
Consider this sequence: ““Defoe...gives the
impression that he is writing for an audience. This
is absent in neoclassical writers of the period.”
Here “this” has an unclear referent: does it refer
back, in the first sentence, to “audience” or
“impression” or “giving the impression”?
Remember: always follow the word “this” with a
noun.
g.) Study proper use of the colon and semicolon.
Use a colon after a main clause when the
succeeding clause or clauses explain the first
clause. For example:
“Only once, for a moment, did Byron turn against
his hero Napoleon: in 1814, when (so he thought)
 15

suicide would have been more seemly than

abdication.” (Bertrand Russell on Lord Byron)
Use a semicolon between two independent clauses
when they are not joined by a conjunction: e.g.,
“The great man, to Nietzsche, is godlike; to Byron,
the great man is a Titan at war with himself.”
(Russell again)
Note: a semicolon indicates a closer connection
between these two clauses than a period would
suggest.

h.) Use the present tense for analysis; save the past
tense for statements of fact set in the past. The
literary work still exists in the present; its author,
however, does not. So, “Swift was a clergyman;
therefore, his tract takes a theistic point of view.”
Other examples:
Awkward: “Defoe had novelized the earlier genre
of the spiritual autobiography…”
Good: “Defoe takes the eighteenth -century genre
of spiritual autobiography and transforms it into
what we have come to recognize as the novel.”

i.) Avoid the “nominalized” style. "Nominalization"

means that you use lots of abstract nouns instead
of using good, strong verbs in your sentences. A
general principle of English discourse is that nouns
are hard to grasp, verbs less hard. So instead of
 16

writing (in nominalized style) on your paper, “Your

style is nominalized rather than verbalized,” I’d
write: “You use too many nouns, and not enough
verbs.” You, too, should make verbs work for you.

j.) If you’ve learned in high school “the AP (or

sometime IB) style,” you’ll need to unlearn it. The
AP (Advanced Placement) style essay strolls
through a poem making random and fragmented
comments about it: "The poet uses rhyme . . . the
poet uses diction . . . . the poet uses alliteration . . .
." Also, in AP style writing the words "however,"
"moreover," and "continues" are often thrown in
without regard to whether they make any sense or
not. AP training is good in that it teaches you to
recognize literary tropes and figures. AP training is
bad when it teaches you to write an AP style essay,
which is only a list of observations and not an
argument that advances a thesis.

k.) How to Quote Literary Texts.

---Give page references when you quote prose, line
references when you quote poetry.
—Offset quotations of more than three typed lines
(prose or poetry) and delete quotation marks: see
my quotation from Gray’s “Eton Ode,” above.
—For shorter verse quotations in the body of your
essay, use a virgule (/) to show line divisions:
 17

According to Alexander Pope, mankind occupies a

middle state on the great chain of being: man
“hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest / In doubt
to deem himself a God, or Beast” (Essay on Man II,
7 -8).
--- The syntax of your sentence controls the
punctuation of the quotation it contains. Even
though line 8 of Pope’s poem (quoted above) ends
in a period, you don't reproduce the period (or any
other terminal punctuation) because it makes no
sense in your sentence. The citation is part of your
sentence--it can't float around in space by itself--
and so the period of your sentence should come
after and not before the citation.

—Indicate deletions from quoted materials with

ellipsis marks (three spaced periods).
For Crusoe, the cannibalism of the natives remains
a “hellish Degeneracy” (p. 133), and his only
consideration is whether punishment ought rather
to be administered by God, since “the Crimes they
were guilty of towards one another . . . were
National” and should be left “to the Justice of God,
who is the Governour of Nations, and knows how
by National Punishments to make a just Retribution
for National Offences” (p. 135).
—Indicate your own additions to a quotation with
square brackets ([ ]):
 18

The effect of seeing a footprint on his island is to

leave Crusoe “perfectly confus’d and out of [him]
self,” just as his earlier attempt to circumnavigate
the island had left him “hurry’d out of [his]
Knowledge by the Currents” (p. 121).
—Note: “quote” is a verb; “quotation” is a noun.
(On a similar note- “refer” is a verb, “reference” a
noun.)
7. Resources and Models
If you find yourself in need of further writing
assistance, consult Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten
Lessons in Grace and Clarity.
And avail yourself of the WRITING RESOURCES
CENTER as often as possible (First Floor, Swem
Library).
If you’re ever looking for a model of good
contemporary non-fiction prose, flip through a few
copies of the journals The New Republic or The
Economist, or even the editorial or cultural pages
of The New York Times or The Washington Post.
When looking up definitions of words used in older
English literature, use the multi-volume Oxford
English Dictionary, on-line through Swem Library
Databases. Dictionary checking will reveal the
subtle nuances in words from all periods, and will
also prevent awkward misunderstandings of words
that have changed over time—for example,
“condescension” was once a good thing, and
“bowels” once referred to pity or compassion.
 19

IV. Older Poetry: Getting the Sense Straight

English (or other European) poetry written from
the Renaissance to Romanticism—roughly, 1500 to
1830—may take some getting used to. The very
first challenge in many a poem lies in getting its
sense straight: that is, comprehending the poet’s
grammar (or syntax) and diction (the words he or
she uses). The meanings of words may change
over time, so even words that you think you know
often merit looking up in the Oxford English
Dictionary (see above). And the verse sentence is
often much more complicated than the syntax of
our everyday English.

Syntactically, everyday English tends to be

structured in subject + verb, or subject + verb +
object sequences:

Sally eats.

Sally (subject) feeds (verb) the dog (object).

Or we could re-write this sentence using pronouns:

She feeds it.

In more complicated everyday sentences, we tend

to pile up clauses sequentially. For example, here’s
a sentence built upon subject + verb +
prepositional phrase + prepositional phrase:

I went to the store to buy dog-food.

 20

Note that in this sentence, we arrive three times at

potential syntactic closure: “I went”; “I went to the
store”; and “I went to the store to buy dog-food”
are all grammatically complete sentences.

But what if we deliberately suspend syntactic

closure so that every word of this sentence
becomes grammatically necessary? Then we’d get:

To buy dog-food, to the store I went.

This sounds artificial in English, as well as awkward,

but it’s grammatical. It’s also (in its humble way)
dramatic, as it suspends closure or completion until
the very last word, the sentence’s necessary main
verb: “I went.” We’re moving in this sentence
towards poetic language.

Behold the opening verse sentence of Milton’s

Paradise Lost, which suspends for dramatic effect
any type of grammatical closure till line 6:

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heavenly Muse….

It’s only with the appearance of the main verb,

“sing,” and the subject, “Muse,” that Milton’s
sentence could end. (As it happens, it continues on
for another ten and a half lines.) When confronted
with this type of syntactic complexity, it’s
 21

important that you be able to offer an explicative

paraphrase of what you’re reading—that is, a
rendering of Milton’s syntax into plain English. An
explicative paraphrase of the first six lines of
Paradise Lost would start with something like this:

You should tell the story, Muse, of man’s first

disobedience… etc.

An explicative paraphrase shows that you

understand what the poet is saying. If you can’t
provide one, it’s a good sign that at a literal level
you really aren’t yet understanding the poem
you’re reading.

Here’s an example of a different kind of syntactic

and lexical (word-choice) complexity—this one
involving pronouns and their antecedents—taken
from John Donne’s lyric “A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning”:

Dull sublunary lovers’ love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things that elemented it.

While some anthologies explain “sublunary” (the

Norton Anthology, 9th edition, notes: “beneath the
moon, therefore earthly, sensual, and subject to
change”), the passage raises more questions than
any editor could or should address. First, ask
yourself: what’s the antecedent of “it” in the
stanza’s third line and in its fourth line? (An
antecedent is the noun that the pronoun—here,
 22

“it”—stands for.) Read carefully, and you’ll see

that the antecedents are, respectively, “absence”
(line 3) and “love” (line 4). Then ask: what’s the
antecedent of “whose” in line 2? The answer here
is less clear: it could be “lovers” (who, as persons,
are recalled by a “whose”) or it could be their
“love,” personified. Finally, we come across some
lexical questions: what does “sense” mean in the
second line, and what does “elemented” mean in
the fourth line? A quick search of the OED online
(via Swem Library) reveals that “element,” as a
verb, meant (the meaning is now obsolete) “to
compound of elements,” so we could paraphrase
the last lines here: “for most lovers, absence
removes that which constitutes love—that is,
physical presence.” These lovers, or their
personified love, is essentially “sense,” that is,
grounded in the physical senses (seeing, hearing,
touching)—according to OED definition number 3,
“The senses viewed as forming a single faculty in
contradistinction to intellect, will, etc.,” or number
4a, “the faculties of corporeal sensation considered
as channels for gratifying the desire for pleasure
and the lusts of the flesh.”

Reading Donne or Milton may at first glance seem

a daunting task. But time and practice will make it
not only easier, but ever more pleasurable.
Indeed, we may say that one of the differences
between earlier poetry and (most) prose is that
prose pleases most upon first reading, while poetry
pleases more upon re-reading.
 23

V. Interpretation: Close Reading

Close reading is the art of understanding the literal
sense of words on the page (see section iv), but
also appreciating what it is about an author’s
words that may defy your initial understanding. It
is coming to love (& not simply work through) the
difficulties and challenges that literary language
throws at us.

For an example of close reading, let’s take a look at

a few more lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost. Here
is Milton’s first description of Eve:

She as a veil down to the slender waist

Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevell’d, but in wanton ringlets wav’d
As the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli’d
Subjection, but require’d with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay. (Bk. 4, lines
304-311)

Close reading of these lines reveals nuances and

subtleties that may not be immediately apparent.
Why, for example, are Eve’s “golden tresses”
described as veil-like? Might this detail suggest that
she lacks clear vision or foresight? And to what
degree is this blindness balanced by Adam’s
superior insight? The poet describes Eve’s hair—
and, by extension, her being—in terms of “the
 24

Vine,” dependent on objects that are more rooted

and sturdy; metaphorically, the poet thus suggests
Eve’s dependence on Adam. However, isn’t a good
deal of independence suggested by the phrase “coy
submission”? The word “coy” here—both for us
and, as a perusal of the Oxford English Dictionary
will show you, for readers of Milton’s time—has an
ambiguous ring to it: it can refer to a shy reserve
that’s either genuine or affected. Given the
possibility of a calculated reserve, can a person
really be “coy” and “submissive” at the same time?
A similar question is raised by the phrase “modest
pride,” an oxymoron that may make us wonder
about the precise relation in Eve’s character
between a mode of self-effacement and subtle
means of mastering others. Of course, these are all
questions that Milton intends us to ponder as he
further unfolds the story “Of Man’s First
Disobedience, and the Fruit / Of that Forbidden
Tree” (Bk. 1, 1-2).

Let’s say you come across Milton’s description of

Eve in class. If nobody in the class can "close read"
the passage—that is, if nobody can simultaneously
paraphrase it into plain English, and remark on
those elements of Milton’s verse that resist
paraphrase—then an hour of class discussion
devoted to talk about Good and Evil or Milton’s
Attitude Towards Women or the Sexual Politics of
the Interregnum is, in a fundamental way, empty.
Close reading is the indispensable basis of all higher
forms of literary analysis.
 25

If you’d like to see more close reading in action, let

me recommend to you a number of my favorite
critical books:

Thomas R. Edwards, Imagination and Power: A

Study of Poetry on Public Themes;

Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in

Paradise Lost;

Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form—my

favorite short work on how meter contributes to
meaning;

Christopher Ricks, The Force of Poetry;

& anything by Helen Vendler (The Odes of John

Keats; Invisible Listeners; The Art of Shakespeare’s
Sonnets; The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar, etc.).

Or ask a professor what readings he or she would

recommend in a literary period that interests you.

VI. World Wide Web Resources

You all know how to do a Google search, but you

may not be aware of more specialized research
tools. I’ve already mentioned the Oxford English
Dictionary, but if you study Swem Library’s
Homepage (http://swem.wm.edu), you’ll find
 26

databases containing all of British and American

Poetry to 1900, professional journals, the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, dictionaries of
quotations and dictionaries of foreign languages.
Visit the site often to see what is available.

Swem Library databases have dozens of very useful

resources, from “A” (African-American Poetry,
1760-1900) and “E” (“Eighteenth-Century
Collections Online”) to “J” (JSTOR, the Scholarly
Journal Archive) and “L” (Literature Resource
Center).

VII. English and American Literary History

Every English major should have some sense of the

distinguishing characteristics of each period of
English and American literary history. (Knowledge
of this history is also demanded by the GRE subject
exam in English still required by most graduate
programs in literary study.)

Some broad or general knowledge of the particular

period in which an author writes is requisite for
interpreting that author’s work; conversely, any
interpretation of a particular work will influence
one's general sense of the period in which it was
written.

In studying literary history we observe both

continuities and transformations in each of the
 27

various literary genres – epic, tragedy, comedy,

satire, lyric, biography, the essay, romance, and a
relative newcomer, the novel.

Prospective majors might include in their course of

literary study either English 203 (British Literature
I) or English 204 (British Literature II). Previously
required for the major, these courses are very
useful for getting broad period overviews; for most
students, English 203, focusing on earlier and thus
less familiar literatures (as this Handbook does),
will be the most useful of the two.

Here, in outline, are the major periods and the

major authors of English and of American Literary
History, through the early twentieth century.
Datings for each period are conventional.

1. ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY

The Middle Ages (to 1485):

The Beowulf poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Gawain-
Poet, Sir Thomas Malory.

The Renaissance (1485-1660):

Often broken down between “The Sixteenth
Century”(1485-1603) and “The Seventeenth
Century” (1603-1660).

“The Sixteenth Century”:

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, Sir Philip Sidney,
Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William
 28

Shakespeare.

“The Seventeenth Century”:

John Donne, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, John
Milton.

The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (1660-

1798):
John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn, Jonathan
Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Samuel
Richardson, Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne,
William Blake.

The Romantic Period (1798-1832):

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley,
John Keats, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott.

The Victorian Age (1832-1901):

Thomas Carlyle, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning,
Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë,
George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy,
Oscar Wilde.

Modernism (1901-1945):
William Butler Yeats, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce,
D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot.

2. AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY

Colonial (1620-1776):
Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather,
 29

Mary Rowlandson, Jonathan Edwards.

Early National Period (1776-1830):

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Olaudah
Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Philip Freneau, Charles
Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, James
Fenimore Cooper.

American Renaissance (1830-1865):

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman
Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily
Dickinson.

Realism (1865-1920):
Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Charles
Chestnutt, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Theodore
Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Robert Frost, W.E.B.
DuBois, Paul Laurence Dunbar

Modernism (1913-45):
Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Ernest
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos
Williams, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Willa Cather,
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard
Wright, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner.

Of course, literature doesn't stop in 1945. Many

new "classics" have entered the canon in the past
seventy years, and you will doubtlessly become
acquainted with some of them during your four
years here. Your appreciation of contemporary
 30

literature will be greatly enhanced, however, by a

broad knowledge of earlier literary tradition.

VIII: World Literature

While the English Department focuses on British
and American literatures, it’s important to
remember two things: first, that “literatures in
English” is a broad and rapidly expanding field that
includes important English-language works by
writers across Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific
Islands, and the West Indies (see, for example,
Chinua Achebe, Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie, J.
M. Coetzee, Jamaica Kincaid); and second, that,
globally-and historically-speaking, most great
literature has been written in languages other than
English. Scholars and teachers of literature are
still, for the most part, trained in national literary
traditions, but you should always remember, as a
counterpart to this classificatory system, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe’s observation from 1827
(written in German): “National literature is now a
rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world
literature (German, weltliteratur) is at hand, and
everyone must strive to hasten its approach.”
Goethe had in mind Chinese novels, Arabic poetry,
ancient Mesopotamian and Sanskrit epics—the
whole range of literary experiences from across
history and around the world.
A problem with world literature, however, is this:
are you really getting or understanding the
 31

literatures of other languages if you’re reading

them in translation? The question is a sticky one,
but for the sake of this Handbook, let me offer the
following opinion: as a rule, prose (and thus the
novel) translates better than poetry does.
“Poetry,” as Robert Frost defined it, “is what gets
lost in translation” (though in context he included
under poetry the poetic aspects of prose). Still,
there are certain works of world poetry that are so
important that they must be read even in
translation: the Hebrew Psalms and Wisdom
Books; Dante’s Divina Comedia; Baudelaire’s Les
Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil).
In their original languages or in translation, here’s a
short and very partial list of world authors that you
should investigate: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Sappho, Catullus, Ovid (in English, try Arthur
Golding’s Renaissance translation), Virgil, Li Bai
(also known as Li Po), Rumi, Chretien de Troy,
Dante, Petrarch, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes,
Racine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller,
Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Zola, Tolstoy,
Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, Chekhov, Kafka, Proust, Musil,
Mann, Camus, Borges, Marquez, Szymborska,
Kundera, Pamuk, Murakami.
A good place to begin might be The Norton
Anthology of World Literature, 3 vols.
For critical milestones of World (Western) literary
study, see Eric Auerbach, Mimesis, and E. R.
 32

Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle

Ages. Also see Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading.
There are a few English courses that address
aspects of world literature, including ENG 311 (Epic
and Romance), ENG 344 (The World Novel after
1832), and ENG 358 and 359 (Modern Drama
before and after 1940). Modern Languages also
offers literature in translation courses: check the
offerings in Italian, German, Russian, Chinese and
Japanese. Finally, you can study ancient Greek and
Roman authors in translation in Classical
Civilization courses.
With regard to foreign language acquisition,
American and English students are at a
disadvantage relative to, say, a student from
Romania or the Czech Republic: whereas the
Central European student must learn other
languages (including English) in order to operate in
the world marketplace, as well as in the world of
ideas, the native English speaker, knowing the
current imperial language of the world, may feel no
need whatsoever to learn another language;
worse, those English speakers who live in or around
New York, Washington, LA, or London, may feel
that they can see “the world” outside their
windows.
But foreign language acquisition, even in the USA,
is an important part of culturally-competent global
citizenship. And it’s a still more important part of
literary study, as one comes more fully to
 33

understand one’s own language precisely by

learning different languages.
For the student of English or British literature, the
most important foreign languages have,
historically, been these:
Ancient Greek
Latin
French
Italian
German
And vitally important these languages remain. In
coming years, Hindi and Mandarin will, I expect,
play an increasing role in how world literature is
understood.
I encourage you, then, to learn more languages;
you won’t regret it.

IX. English Language and Linguistics

In addition to offering courses in writing and
literature, the English department regularly offers
courses in English language and in linguistics.
Linguists are interested in the structural properties
of languages, and in how they are similar or
dissimilar. Linguists also study how languages
change through time, how language is associated
 34

with social and cultural patterns, and how language

is processed, produced, and learned.
Most linguistics courses in the department have
ENGL 220, Study of Language, as a prerequisite.
This course provides an introduction to phonetics,
phonology, syntax, morphology, sociolinguistics,
and other subfields of linguistics.
English majors may be especially drawn to ENGL
303, History of the English Language; ENGL 304,
Syntax; ENGL 400, Meaning & Understanding; and
courses that deal with variation in English based on
gender, ethnicity, or identity.

X. Creative Writing Program

(The following section is by Professor Nancy
Schoenberger)

1. What, you might ask, does the English

department offer students who desire to write
creative works? All writing, to varying degrees, is
of course "creative" in that each writer is
generating a text that (we hope) does not already
exist in the world. Most good writing—whether
analytical, argumentative, or discursive–displays
insight and imagination and fresh language
appropriate to its subject. But for those students
who want to try their hand at writing imaginative
prose, fiction, or poetry, the department offers a
 35

number of courses in creative writing -- poetry,

fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting -- at
beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, all
numbered with a CRWR prefix. We also offer a
Master Class every two years with a visiting writer
and a “Special Topics” courses in poetry and prose,
such as writing children’s literature, ekphrastic
poetry, verse drama, and long-form fiction.

Instructor's consent is required for all creative

writing courses—this allows the instructor to let
you know what you're getting into, and to put
together a class of serious writers who are roughly
at the same level of achievement. Creative writing
courses are organized as workshops in which group
critiques and discussions of student work form the
basis of each class.

2. The Creative Writing Minor is open to students

who have taken at least two creative writing
classes; 20 credit hours are required to complete
the minor. Three credit hours can be fulfilled by an
English Department literature course, and, at the
discretion of the Director of Creative Writing, credit
can be given towards the minor for courses in
Theater and/or language courses that include a
poetry translation component.
 36

English majors who choose to do a Creative Writing

minor can count only two creative writing courses
toward the major.

3. The Writer-in-Residence and Artist-in-Residence

Programs. Every two years we host a visiting writer
for one semester as the Scott and Vivian Donaldson
Writer-in-Residence, and every three years we host
the Class of 1939 Artist-in-Residence. Each writer
offers one Master Class, typically in poetry, fiction,
or creative nonfiction, though in 2016, Writer-in-
Residence Nicole Georges led a workshop in writing
graphic memoirs. Past visiting writers include
poets Quincy Troupe, Joshua Poteet, and Henri
Cole; fiction writers include Tom De Haven, David L.
Robbins, and Rosalind Brackenbury. In 2017,
novelist and nonfiction writer Eddy L. Harris
(Mississippi Solo, South of Haunted Dreams) will be
our next Artist- in-Residence, and the following
year, poet Shonda Buchanan (Who’s Afraid of Black
Indians?) will be our Writer-in-Residence.

3. The Hayes Writers Series. The Creative Writing

Program hosts a monthly writers series, bringing a
diverse mix of new and established poets and
writers to campus throughout the year to give
readings and occasionally conduct workshops. Past
programs have featured such well-known writers
as Allen Ginsberg, Mark Strand, Seamus Heaney,
Rita Dove, Tim O’Brien, Ann Beatty, George
 37

Saunders, John Wideman, Richard Price, Ntozake

Shange, and Yusef Komunyakaa. These monthly
readings give students a chance to meet
established writers and find out how one can live
as a writer in the world.

Which leads us to the next question: what can you

do after taking these courses if what you want is
that most precarious and rewarding of
occupations, a writing career?

4. The MFA. A number of universities offer two-

year advanced degrees in creative writing, known
as the Master of Fine Arts (or MFA). Armed with
the recommendation letters of your creative
writing instructors ‒ and, we hope, a publication or
two in a literary magazine or journal ‒ you can
apply to a range of programs, including low-
residency MFA programs, which can be pursued
while working full time. Most MFA programs
consist of intensive workshops in poetry, fiction, or
creative nonfiction, supplemented by required
graduate level literature courses. Students
interested in writing screenplays have the option of
applying to graduate film studies programs. The
AWP Official Guide to Writing Programs is available
online at http://www.awpwriter.org and your
creative writing instructors can advise you.

Now, what on earth can you do with an MFA?

 38

There are university teaching positions available for

candidates with MFAs and strong publication
records, but they are scarce and difficult to
procure. Writers with MFAs often do what MAs
and Ph.Ds do (there aren't many university jobs for
them, either): they teach in secondary schools,
they go into publishing or become literary agents;
they write for magazines and newsletters, for
corporations and non-profit organizations; they go
into arts management and/or grant writing
positions. In short, they find jobs where writing
skills and a knowledge of the contemporary literary
milieu are valued.

XI. Honors in English

(The following section is by Professor Brett Wilson)

Honors in English gives outstanding students the
opportunity to undertake an intensive year-long
project in the study and/or practice of literature
under the close direction of a faculty advisor.
Students who complete the thesis receive 3 credits
in ENGL 495 (Honors, Fall) and 3 in ENGL 496
(Honors, Spring).
Admission is competitive. Students apply to begin
the honors thesis process in December of their
junior year. They must have a 3.0 minimum GPA to
be considered, but most admitted students have
 39

GPAs well above that threshold. No particular

course or sequence of courses is required. Creative
writers must have completed multiple upper-level
courses in creative writing. Between 10 and 20
students are admitted each year.
Admitted students then select a faculty thesis
advisor and write a 5-7 page honors thesis proposal
during their junior spring, due in April to the
English Department’s faculty Honors Committee.
The thesis advisor is someone who knows the area,
field, or creative genre in which the student plans
to specialize (e.g., the Victorian novel;
contemporary Latino literature; confessional
poetry). Thesis proposals are reviewed by the
faculty Honors Committee. Students whose
proposals are accepted then proceed to write a 40-
70 page original thesis over their senior year, due
in April of their senior Spring, and sit for an oral
examination by three faculty members other than
the thesis advisor, typically in May.
Many Honors theses revise and extend research
conducted in an independent study or for a
summer research scholarship.
Students pursuing an Honors Thesis in Literary
Criticism develop their own reading lists and
choose their own critical frameworks. A successful
honors thesis in criticism demonstrates good
knowledge of the chosen field and/or topic,
substantial research, and a capacity to construct a
clear, well-structured, independent scholarly
 40

argument and comes to a conclusion that builds on

relevant criticism without simply reproducing it.
The best honors theses in criticism display original
thinking, make use of sophisticated or complex
concepts and/or methodologies, and make an
innovative contribution to criticism in their fields.
Recent theses in criticism include a study of rage in
Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, and one on pro-
slavery responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Students pursuing an Honors Thesis in Creative
Writing develop their own plots, characters,
genres, media, and themes. A successful honors
thesis in creative writing is an original, arresting
text or set of texts that demonstrates good
knowledge of the chosen field and genre. The best
honors theses in creative writing make use of
sophisticated or complex concepts and/or
methodologies, fully create an imagined world
using fresh and vivid language, and are innovative
additions to writing in their field. Recent theses in
creative writing include an intergenerational story
about Catholicism and trans people, and a
screenplay about a Vietnam veteran’s summer job
at an amusement park.

XII. What Does One Do With A W & M English

Major?

Our English majors have become involved in an

 41

astonishing range of activities. They are obviously

able to do just about anything they put their minds
to. While the English major provides a non-
vocational liberal arts education, majors develop
skills—logical analysis, clarity of expression, and
sheer doggedness—that our society values and
rewards.

Roughly half of our graduates pursue careers in

three major areas:

1) teaching;
2) writing, publishing, editing, film, or other media;
3) law.

1. TEACHING

Many of our graduates enter elementary, middle,

or high school teaching. Not a few teach at the
college level, some at prestigious universities, after
obtaining advanced degrees. Brian Henry (‘93), for
example, received his Ph.D. at University of
Massachusetts and now teaches at the University
of Richmond; Andrew Zawacki (‘93) completed a
Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and now teaches
at the University of Georgia. Jennifer French (‘94),
Channette Romero (‘98), and Sean Barry (2002) all
received their Ph.D.s from Rutgers; Jennifer
teaches at Williams College, Channette at the
University of Georgia, and Sean at Longwood
College. Of the Class of 1997, Erika Weitzman
received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from
 42

NYU, and now teaches at Northwestern University:

from 1999, Holly Barbaccia received her Ph.D. from
University of Pennsylvania and now teaches at
Georgetown University. Max Uphaus (W&M 2007)
and Lindsay Gibson (W&M 2009) both got their
Ph.Ds at Columbia University; Max is now teaching
at Montana State, and Lindsay is starting a job at
Saint Joseph’s College outside of Portland, Maine.

A number of our graduates teach English abroad

for one or more years. They have taught in China,
Japan, Hungary, Bosnia, as well as other parts of
the globe.

2. WRITING, PUBLISHING, EDITING, FILM, OR

OTHER MEDIA

Our graduates have gone on to all sort of

journalistic careers, most in the print media, but
also in radio and TV (e.g., the Voice of America, and
the Christian Broadcasting Network). Graduates
over the past 20 years have worked for Simon and
Schuster, The University of California Press, The
University of Virginia Press, the Boston Phoenix,
the New York Times, Scribners, HarperCollins,
McGraw-Hill Education, and Harvard Business
Review.

Several grads are pursuing careers in the arts. More

than a few have made their way to Hollywood,
where they are writing and acting. My former
student Patton Oswalt (‘92) co-starred on the TV
 43

series The King of Queens, was the voice of the Rat

in Ratatouille, and is now one of the coolest and
most respected comedians in the US, a star of
stand-up and film, and also a best-selling writer.

3. LAW—Finally, many, many grads have gone on

to law school and many are currently practicing
lawyers—and doing well!

But although roughly half of our graduates have

gone into the teaching, writing, and legal fields,
about half have worked or are now working in
fields not traditionally associated with “English.” A
great many choose business careers—as CPAs,
bankers, management consultants, marketing
analysts, and urban planners; some have worked
for mega-corporations such as IBM, while others
run their own small businesses. Some are
librarians, some are involved in religious ministries.
A surprising number choose the health & mental
health professions. A great many are involved in
technological areas, especially computer
technologies, and some of these folks worked for
major computer companies such as Microsoft.
Our ‘90s graduate Yancy Strickler has found fame
and fortune as CEO and co-founder of Kickstarter!
And he remains a wonderful person and loyal alum.

A large number of our former students are also

engaged in government work of one kind or
another, at local, state, and federal levels. Capitol
 44

Hill is apparently teeming with William & Mary

grads. Several senatorial and legislative staffs
include former W&M English majors. Our majors
are working for various agencies of the government
such as the Department of Commerce, the
Department of Education, and the CIA. Quite a few
serve in the military.

There are even those who have chosen to care for

children. Those folks may be working hardest of all.

One of the best ways to keep track of our English

alumni is through the “Outcomes Information”
webpage of the--
XIII. William and Mary Cohen Career Center
To see what others have done with W&M English
majors, so to the Cohen Center’s web-page & find
the “database of post-graduation,” and within it
the “long-term outcomes from alumni data” (drop
down English major). You’ll see quite a list of
former English majors and their current jobs.

The Cohen Career Center, located in physical space

between the Sadler Center and Zable Stadium, is a
god-send for W&M students. The Center offers a
wide variety of services for current students and
graduates, ranging from interviewing and job
search strategies workshops, to career fairs, to how
to write resumes (or curriculum vitae) and cover
letters.
 45

The Career Center also has a job listing service

where you can search through hundreds of listings
in a wide variety of fields, such as, “Jobs in
Education,” “Jobs in Government,” “Jobs in Arts
and Entertainment,” and it also contains listings for
summer, part-time and internship opportunities.
There are even listings by cities.

The Center’s services also include mock-interviews,

eRecruiting, Credential Files and possibly one of
the best services is Alumni Mentoring.

XIV. The Ferguson-Blair Scholarships in Publishing

(The following section is by Geoffrey Paul Eaton,
'94, recipient of a Ferguson-Blair scholarship,
former editorial assistant at the World Bank,
Washington, D.C., a J.D. from University of Virginia
[‘98], former employee of the US Court of Appeals
Federal Court, and currently of the Washington
Law Firm Winston & Strawn).

The F-B scholarships are awarded each spring to

the two or three seniors who show the most
promise for success in a publishing career.

Applications may be obtained from those delightful

and highly skilled folks at the Career Center, and
they’re pretty simple (the applications, that is):
some biographical information, a transcript, and a
Why I Want to Work in Publishing-type essay.
 46

Submit all this; you’ll be called later for an

interview. The interview is (or was, in my
experience) very casual. Be sincere, stand up
straight, and don’t fidget. Let them know you’re
serious about wanting to work in publishing (or
fake it just as hard as you can). It helps a lot to
know something about the industry. Do you admire
Maxwell Perkins? What did Giroux do? What the
hell is Viacom, anyway, and didn’t Faber and Faber
make pencils, or something? A little background
information will mark you as an unusually qualified
applicant.

Winners of the scholarship receive money to

attend one of the publishing institutes. I believe
they make you choose from Columbia, NYU, and
Denver. Speak with the Career Center for more
information.

XV. Some Common Questions about Graduate

Study in English

Let’s begin with some Q & A about the basics.

—Q.: What good is an MA in English?

—A.: An MA, which typically requires 1-2 years of
study, is often viewed as a professional credential
in the fields of publishing, editorial work, and
secondary education. It also allows one to teach in
community colleges (such as, locally, Thomas
 47

Nelson College). An MA is also a way of ‘testing the

water’ to see if you’d like to pursue further
graduate study, that is, a Ph.D.

Finally, if your undergraduate record is less than

perfect, a successfully completed MA (and strong
letters of recommendation from those who have
taught you in MA seminars) will make you more
competitive for a top Ph.D. program.

Information about what colleges and universities

offer MA degrees may be found in Peterson’s
Guide, in the reference room at Swem Library.

There are two types of MA programs:

1.) the Master’s degree that is offered by an English

department that does not have a Ph.D. program;

2.) the MA granted by an English department that

does offer a Ph.D.

There are pros and cons to either type of MA

program.

If you go to a college that has a terminal MA

program, the pros are that the program will be
smaller and that your professors will pay
considerable attention to you. The cons are that
your professors may not be very well known in the
academic world, and hence their recommendations
may or may not carry much weight if and when you
 48

apply for a Ph.D. elsewhere.

The pros of going to an MA program at a place that

also grants the Ph.D—let’s use Columbia University
for our example—are (a) that your professors will
be top-notch scholars/critics; (b) hence, if they
come to smile upon you, you can ask them for
letters of recommendation; and at that point, c)
you’ll be a strong candidate for Ph.D. programs
elsewhere. However, the cons of going to an MA
program at a place like Columbia are that, with so
many brilliant Ph.D. candidates around, as a
master’s student you’re apt to be treated like a
second-class citizen.

For tons of information on graduate schools,

programs, etc., use the Cohen Career Center’s
website.

The rest of this section primarily addresses those

who are considering pursuing a Ph.D. and teaching
at the college level.

—Q.: What type of commitment is required to

obtain a Ph.D. in English?
—A.: Generally speaking, it will require a more or
less full time commitment for a period of 5 to 8
years. During this time most of your income will
come from your graduate institution through
fellowships, teaching assistantships,
instructorships, library work, odd jobs, etc.
 49

Graduate students lead a distinctly low rent sort of

life, but they tend not to mind too much.
Nota bene: while students typically pay for MAs in
English, Ph.D. programs will typically pay you.
Funding for Ph.D. students in English can range (c.
2016) from roughly $16,000- $24,000, with tuition
waived.

—Q.: How’s the college teaching job market for

recent Ph.D.s in English?
—A.: Statistics show that it has been very
challenging for recent Ph.D.s to find employment in
college teaching ever since the 1970s. Recent
hiring committees in the William & Mary English
department have been able to draw on pools of
about 200 applicants for any available position,
however narrowly defined.

But keep this in mind: it’s still easier for a qualified

candidate to get a job in an English department
than it is for a qualified actor to get steady work in
film or television. Like aspiring actors, aspiring
teacher/scholars simply need to pursue their goals
with ardor and perseverance and, sometimes,
without disregard for alternative career goals.

Well, if you’re still with me, you may ask next:

—Q.: What can I do to prepare myself for a good

Ph.D. program?
—A.: This question leads to my next section,
 50

XVI. Preparation for Graduate School:

Undergraduate Courses

1.) At the level of academic preparation, there are

two keys to doing well in graduate school and then,
afterwards, through a lifetime as a teacher and
scholar: the first is an ability to do “close reading”
(see sections IV-V, below); the second is more
general intellectual background.

You’ll need a basic mastery of the intellectual

context within which literature is studied, which
means you have to know some history and
philosophy as well as a great deal of literature.
Beyond this, the areas of literary study you choose
as an undergraduate will do a great deal to
determine how comfortably you adjust to a
program of graduate study. Here’s my general rule:
the soundest basis for advanced study, even for
students who eventually intend to specialize in
modern or American literature, is a good deal of
work in the earlier periods of English literature.
Outside of the English department, it’s also useful
to take classes in History (especially British and
American history) and Philosophy (especially the
History of Philosophy).
Also, please remember: the GRE subject test in
English, required by most Ph.D. programs, requires
you to know the basics of English literary history,
and the ability to read and comprehend literature
 51

from different historical periods (see section VII,

below).

2.) Language Study

The three most important languages for graduate

study in English tend to be French, Latin and
German.

As a general rule, you’ll need reading knowledge of

at least one and perhaps two of these (or other
non-English) languages.

As for which of these languages are right for you,

here are a few guidelines:

—it’s always good to know French;

—it’s just about necessary to know Latin if you

want to pursue pre-1800 British literature;

—it’s awfully helpful to know German if you plan to

pursue any post-1789 British literature, because
Goethe, Kant, the Schlegels, Hegel, et al. become
very important to Romantic and Victorian British
culture. Even Jane Eyre learns German.

In addition, Italian is quite useful for students of

the Renaissance, and Spanish is increasingly
important for Americanists.
 52

And ancient Greek is sublime.

XVII. Applying to Graduate School

Graduate school applications typically consist of:

1. Your undergraduate college transcript.

2. Two or three faculty recommendations.

3. A sample of your own critical writing.

4. A short (2 pp.) narrative statement of why you’d

like to go to graduate school.

5. GRE (Graduate Record Exam) scores for both—

the General Test (an advanced version of the SAT);
and the English Subject Test (approximately 230
questions on the literature of Britain, the U.S., and
other English-speaking countries).

Allow me to comment on each of these five

components. (I’ve been ably assisted here by a
number of students who have gone through this
rigmarole: thanks to Jennifer French [‘95]; Michael
Blum [MA, ‘95] and Adam Morris [MA, ‘95].)

1. Your transcript. Well, let’s assume that you’ll be

applying to graduate school either in your senior
year or a year or two after you graduate. In either
 53

event, there’s nothing you can do about your GPA

at this point, so don’t sweat it. When looking at
schools you want to apply to, remember that when
they list a median undergrad GPA among accepted
applicants, fully half of the people they accept fall
below that median. If you want very much to go to
a specific school, don’t not apply just because your
GPA might be (way) too low.

2. Faculty recommendations. You’ll need letters of

recommendation from two or three of your
professors. Always save the graded and marked up
versions of your essays (especially “A” essays)—
thus, when you ask for a letter you can quickly
refresh your professor’s memory as to who you are
and why you deserve a detailed and laudatory
recommendation.

3. Writing sample. You’ll need an essay, preferably

12 pp. or longer, that demonstrates original
thought, an elegant prose style, and some
familiarity with secondary materials.

4. A Short Narrative, that typically addresses the

question, “Why do you want to go to graduate
school?,” and sometimes the even better question,
“Why do you want to attend OUR graduate
school?”

Be honest. Whoever reads these things will read

through any smokescreens of bull. They also read
hundreds of applications in any given year, and so
 54

will be bored by generalities such as, “I’ve always

liked to read,” and “Literature adds meaning to our
lives.” Try to indicate your awareness that graduate
school is professional training. Without being high-
falutin’, state which period/s or author/s you’re
most interested in, and why; comment on sorts of
approaches to literature you favor.

Also, be responsible. Check the graduate program

catalogues for wherever it is you’re applying
(they’re all on line), and see what the program’s
course selection is like; see also who’s teaching in
your field of interest. Seek out any book or books
that person has written; skim through it/them. If it
seems interesting to you, you might say so (and
why it’s so) in your narrative. (Alternatively, if
everything you read by the faculty at a given place
strikes you as impenetrable, impossible, and/or
ridiculous, you might want to reconsider applying
there.)

After you’ve drafted your essay, take the essay to

someone you trust to read it over for content,
grammar, and tone.

5. GRE exams—General Test and English Subject

Test. Each of these tests can be taken repeatedly.
As with the SAT, opinions differ about if and how
much one should study for the GRE; there are, of
course, many review guides and prep courses
available (Barrons, Kaplan, the Princeton Review,
etc.).
 55

XVIII. When Should I Apply to Graduate Schools?

Earliest graduate school applications are due

around December for admittance the following
August/September. I recommend that students—
even the most driven students—take a year off
between graduating from William & Mary and
applying to Ph.D. programs in English. There are
many reasons for this:

1. You have enough to do in your senior year

without the added stress and busywork of applying
to graduate programs.

2. Your GRE English Subject Tests will doubtless be

better if you take them in the June or October after
you graduate. If (as is likely) you haven’t managed
to get a handle on all the periods of literary history
during your four years here, the summer and fall
after your senior year are great times to catch up
on your Norton anthologies, read Ulysses, and
brush up your Shakespeare.

3. If you wait to apply until after all your

coursework is through, you’ll have the time to take
your best William & Mary paper (be it your Honors
Essay if you’ve written one, or an essay for a 475
seminar or a favorite course), polish it up.
Otherwise, you’ll end up sending as a writing
sample something from your junior year, which
 56

probably won’t represent your own best self.

4. After four years of this place, you need to break

up your routines. By waiting to apply to graduate
programs, you’ll get a better sense of your own
calling: it will become clearer to you whether you
really want to pursue the professorial life, or
whether you’re really only seeking to avoid the
slings and arrows of life outside the olive groves of
academe.

5. You're only young once. Go a little crazy before

"custom lie upon thee with a weight, / Heavy as
frost, and deep almost as life!"

Michael Blum (MA ‘95) writes: “Grad school will be

there in a year or two, and you will certainly be
more mature, as well as more sure that grad school
is truly what you want.”

XIX. Which Graduate Schools Should I Apply To?

Here’s a list of good Ph.D. programs that you might

find helpful. Needless to say, it’s not exhaustive.
I’ve listed graduate programs according to region,
which is largely an arbitrary principle of
organization—though you’ll want to give some
thought to what part of the country you want to
live in for five to ten years.

1. Northeast: Boston University, Brandeis, Brown,

 57

Columbia, Cornell, CUNY, Harvard, Johns Hopkins,

University of Maryland, New York University,
University of Pennsylvania, Penn State (College
Park), University of Pittsburgh, Princeton,
Rochester, Rutgers, U Mass (Amherst), State
University of New York at Buffalo, SUNY at Stony
Brook, University of Toronto, Yale.

2. Southeast: Duke, Emory, Tulane, University of

North Carolina (Chapel Hill), University of Virginia,
Vanderbilt.

3. Midwest: Indiana University, Iowa (Iowa City),

Northwestern University, Notre Dame, University
of Chicago, University of Illinois (Urbana),
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), University of
Minnesota, University of Wisconsin (Madison),
Washington University (St. Louis).

4. Southwest: Colorado (Boulder), Rice, Texas

(Austin).

5. Northwest: University of Washington, University

of Oregon.

6. California: Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC

Los Angeles (UCLA), UC San Diego, UC Santa
Barbara, University of Southern California.

In general, to get into one of these programs you

need to have very good grades in English courses; a
good range of courses (e.g., don’t just take
 58

American lit. courses); and respectably high scores

on your GREs. For most of them, you also need a
good writing sample.
As a senior you should consult with the William &
Mary professor(s) who specialize in whatever
literary periods or fields you can imagine wanting
to study further—their advice will be most helpful
to you as you consider what programs to apply to.
Also note that the “Officers of Instruction” section
of your course catalogue tells you where your
professors’ graduate degrees are from—if you have
questions about a particular program, it’s
sometimes good to direct them to a faculty
member who’s been through that program
(especially those who have been through it in the
past ten years).

My correspondent Michael Blum advises: “Decide

where you want to apply. If you can, visit campuses
and talk to students already in the programs you
are thinking about. Then pick four schools you have
about a 30% chance of being accepted to, two
schools you shouldn’t be turned away from
(barring leprosy), and one school you’d only get
into if you had the foresight to make a pact with
Satan.”

Seems to me like good advice.

Good luck!