"The category of 'writer' is not limited to those who write books. You are a writer if you write an office memo, a research report, a term paper, or a love letter. And when it comes to writing, you don't need a long list of dos and don'ts. If you follow only one rule, it would be: Don't write what you wouldn't want to read yourself." —Anu Garg, on Wordsmith.org, December 6, 2010
Welcome to the English Department at the Newark campus of The Ohio State University. Perhaps you are visiting this site because you are considering majoring in English; perhaps you are here because you are looking for information on a required course. In either case, you probably wonder what precisely it is that those who “study English” do in their classes. The short answer is that in “English” classes, we investigate the history and conventions of literature (fiction, poetry, drama and film), study rhetoric (how language works to persuade or influence), and practice the art of composition (whether academic or creative writing). We learn what have come to be called skill sets: to think critically and to write clearly and persuasively.
Yet in mastering these skills, we gain more than was ever dreamed of in a practical, pragmatic philosophy. We get the insider’s view of language, humanity’s most powerful tool. Studying English teaches us to recognize the ways in which language shapes, and is shaped by, our culture, and how the choices speakers and writers make reveal their mental horizons and (if we’re not paying attention) determine our own. We learn to recognize the traps advertisers set for us with their artful imagery, the anxieties politicians manipulate with their metaphors, and the political leanings film directors reveal with their camera angles. While gathering quotes from long-dead authors about “mind-forged manacles” (William Blake), we also glean new insights into the changes in society that created the need for a genre we now call the novel or for a poem in the form of a sonnet – or for a site called Facebook.
And we become enriched with the blunt wisdom of writers such as Toni Morrison. “We die. That may be the meaning of life,” she once wrote, with characteristic straightforwardness, “But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Come do language with us.
-Dr. Virginia Cope
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The Seaton Essay Competition has been announced! (read more)
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The Promising Writer has been announced! (read more)
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There is now an Ohio State Newark chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honors society. Sigma Tau Delta membership offers a number of advantages and opportunities that would appeal to any scholar. (read more)
This site is maintained by Jonathan Holmes.