About the English Department

Words are things;
and a small drop of ink,
falling like dew, upon
a thought, produces
that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Byron

Words are powerful and beautiful. Whether scrawled on a scrap of paper or shot over the Internet, words embody thought, convey feeling, instigate action, record life, articulate ideas and ideals, shape societies, and produce the complex pleasures of art.

At Trinity, the English department is devoted to exploring the manifold ways that words work in poetry, plays, essays, novels, and films. A remarkable group of dedicated teachers who are also highly published scholars and writers, the English department faculty help students to understand, interpret, and enjoy literature and its relationship to culture.

The English department at Trinity is dedicated to enhancing the development of thoughtful, self-reliant individuals prepared to follow any path they choose. Recent Trinity English majors have become award-winning novelists, poets, and playwrights as well as lawyers, doctors, professors, editors, and marketing specialists.

A Choice of Concentrations
While students interested in majoring in English may choose between two concentrations —Literary Studies or Creative Writing—all English majors study a broad survey of literature. This curriculum provides an informed understanding of the major traditions of English and American literature and shows how literature is charged with meaning by such cultural forces as politics, history, gender, and ethnicity.

Students also develop skills that lie at the heart of a liberal education, enabling them to:

read a literary work closely and critically in order to recognize and analyze significant literary details and relationships;

recognize the cultural contexts of literature and understand how societies help shape art;

develop and refine interpretive theories to explore and explain works of literature; and

develop an extended thesis that demonstrates vividly and persuasively their interpretive power and ability to express complex ideas.

Students in the Creative Writing Concentration also develop skills that help them to become proficient writers of fiction, poetry, or drama. The Creative Writing Concentration includes at least three graduated, intensive, seminar-based writing workshops taught by the department’s creative writing faculty and prominent visiting writers.

A Faculty of Dedicated Teacher-Scholars
Trinity’s English Department faculty are noted for their extraordinary dedication to teaching. According to department chair, Professor Barbara Benedict, "We are teachers and scholars. We think about teaching, we talk about it, we refine our techniques, and we bring new discoveries from our scholarship into the classroom. Teaching is a serious, constant commitment." As well as giving students close personal attention, the faculty conduct leading-edge research that earns national recognition, nurtures creativity and innovation in the classroom, and enables them to create exciting new courses.

Each year, distinguished visiting scholars and writers join the department to teach small seminars on special topics and offer public readings to the Trinity community.

Curriculum
The department offers a wide range of fascinating courses. In addition to its traditional survey courses in British and American literatures and courses focused on individual writers (like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Faulkner, and Morrison), the curriculum is constantly reinvigorated by new courses. Recent offerings have included "Curiosity and Literature," "The Literature of Colonialism," "Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in American Fiction," "Reel Fiction: Reading Literature on Film," "The Enchanted Eye: Seeing Reality through Poetry and Science," "The Subversion of Literary Whiteness," and "Toil and Trouble: Staging the Renaissance Witch Craze." Students may also satisfy requirements for the major by taking interdisciplinary courses, such as "Hostage! From Captivity to Slave Narratives and Beyond," which also serves students in American studies.

Rich Resources
Trinity is home to one of the finest, most comprehensive small-college libraries in the nation, with 1,000,000 volumes, more than 2,300 periodicals, and extensive holdings in microform and other nonprint materials. Trinity students and faculty also share an on-line library catalogue and have reciprocal borrowing privileges with Wesleyan University and Connecticut College through the CTW Library Consortium.

The Trinity Library is home to the Watkinson Library, a research library consisting of rare books, manuscripts, and a number of special collections. Particular strengths of the Watkinson include 19th-century American and British history and literature. The Watkinson also is custodian of the archival and rare book collections of Hartford’s Mark Twain Museum, including much of Twain’s correspondence.

The Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric
Providing an important academic resource for all on campus, the Writing Center administers the College’s comprehensive writing program and offers a variety of services and courses in composition and rhetoric. The Center features the Writing Associates Program: an innovative program designed to assist students in becoming teachers and better writers by helping other students with their writing assignments. The Center also offers an interdisciplinary minor in writing and rhetoric.

Visiting Writers
The College’s poet-in-residence program extends the dimensions of the department’s offerings, while public readings by such prominent poets as Gary Snyder, Tess Gallagher, Mark Doty, Adrienne Rich, Robert Pinsky, and Linda Hogan bring words to life. The department also features a visiting writer series in which important fiction writers read their works. Recent visitors include Michelle Cliff, Wally Lamb, Amy Bloom, and Kate Wheeler.

In the Right Location
The beautiful Victorian mansion that is home to the English department is located not far from another impressive Victorian mansion in Hartford -- the one where Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and where the Mark Twain Museum is now located. Trinity students conduct research and hold internships there as well as at the Mark Twain library in Trinity’s Watkinson Library.

Hartford offers many other opportunities for cultural exploration and academic internships and for practicing the writer’s craft. Trinity students have interned at the nearby Hartford Stage, The Hartford Courant, and at a host of other legal, cultural, nonprofit, and corporate organizations. Hartford’s rich cultural assets, along with easy access to New York and Boston, diversify learning at Trinity, both inside and outside the classroom.

On-campus Opportunities
Trinity students have ample opportunities to "see their work in print": The Trinity Review, a literary magazine written and produced entirely by Trinity students; The Trinity Tripod, the student newspaper; The TrinColl Journal, Trinity’s Internet -zine; and the recently introduced SCRAWL— all showcase student writing and editing. We’re proud to note that Trinity students are frequently among the winners of The Connecticut Poetry Circuit, a statewide competition for student poets. The English department itself sponsors a variety of writing contests with cash awards.

Trinity also offers exceptional programs for developing playwriting skills: the annual Shakespearean drama workshop and the Trinity/LaMaMa Performing Arts Program, which explores theater in New York City and in sites throughout the world.

Modern Technology
Trinity’s campuswide computer network enables professors and students to exchange key information as well as drafts of assignments, to bring the Web and other information technologies into the classroom, and to put a world of information at students’ fingertips.

Life after Trinity
After graduation, Trinity’s English majors enjoy a wealth of opportunities. Some go on to excel at graduate school or to work in professions in a broad range of fields—law, publishing, marketing, journalism, and others—where the ability to read and write critically, proficiently, and inventively serves them well. Here are only a few of the department’s distinguished graduates:

Elizabeth Egloff, award-winning playwright;

Joanna Scott, novelist and professor of English at the University of Rochester; awarded the MacArthur "genius" Fellowship and numerous other prestigious literary prizes;

William K. Marimow, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and managing editor of The Baltimore Sun;

John Levy, president and CEO of Waban, Inc.;

Robert B. Stepto, professor and director of Afro-American Studies at Yale University;

Peter T. Kilborn, national correspondent, The New York Times;

William H. Lewis, professor and award-winning short story writer;

Linda A. Wells, editor of Allure magazine;

Sara R. Throne, Esq., partner, Sonnenschein, Sherman, and Deutsch, New York.