The General Education Literature requirement may be fulfilled with either ENGL 2030 or ENGL 2020. English 2030, The Experience of Literature, provides a broad overview of literature primarily in the Western tradition, but with selections from other cultures. Students read poems, short stories, plays, and (perhaps) a novel. ENGL 2020, Themes in Literature and Culture, provides students the opportunity to trace a specific theme or idea through a number of literary texts that reflect different historical and cultural contexts. Each ENGL 2020 course is themed with a unified topic and focus. Examples of previous ENGL 2020 courses include The Serial Killer in American Fiction, Gay & Lesbian Literature, and Southern Drama & Film, the Grotesque.

1. Students will improve their ability to read, think, and write critically and analytically about a wide variety of texts.
2. Students will be able to identify basic structural and/or technical elements and strategies and to discuss how those elements contribute to the overall effect of a literary work.
3. Students will gain a greater sense of the range and sorts of texts that are available to them as readers and, hopefully, of the sorts of texts that they most enjoy and wish to continue reading.
4. Students will gain a greater sense of the “conversations” between texts; that is they will have a sense of the ways in which texts respond to earlier texts, develop ongoing cultural conversations about key issues, develop genres and style, etc.
5. Students will gain a greater sense of the ways in which texts function within culture(s), of the ways in which texts can be used to understand and gain insight into cultures/historical movements, and of the ways in which cultural context shapes both the production and reading of texts.
6. Students will develop a sense of themselves as readers; they will gain greater independence in their interpretations and become more aware of their own approaches, assumptions, and interpretive strategies. Conversely, they will become aware of the range of possible reading strategies, encounter and test out new ways of working with texts, and increase their interpretive repertoire.