If you're thinking of majoring in English, you've asked yourself, "What can I do with an English major?" The simple answer: whatever you want. Marietta's English Department produces authors and English teachers, but our graduates also include attorneys, software engineers, hospital administrators, technical writers, public relations specialists, and CEOs. Majoring in English is about learning to interpret and analyze information, crucial and marketable skills in today's information-driven economy. So whether it's Shakespeare or an annual report, Marietta will give you the education to become a perceptive reader, logical thinker, and persuasive writer.
All of the English faculty at Marietta are writers, so you're taught writing skills by men and women who understand it from experience. In the senior capstone course, students work as a community of scholars to put all of their accumulated knowledge, skill, and intuition to use. Whether its focus is cultural studies, textual criticism, post-colonialism, or cognitive psychology, the capstone gives English majors a strong facility with cutting-edge theoretical approaches to literature. Seniors' projects demand the kinds of critical analysis and communication necessary both in graduate school and the world of work.
Pulse is an in-house magazine featuring student writing. It is edited and published by Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society.
The Marietta College English Department sponsors Pizza, Poetry, and Prose, a series of public readings where faculty members and students present original poetry or fiction. The Department also uses its restricted funds to bring in professional writers to conduct workshops with students and present public readings to the community. This includes Andrew Grace, Amy Irvine McHarg, Dan Chaon, Anthony Doerr (Pulitzer Prize Winner), Joni Tevis, Sharon Hatfield, Andrew Hudgins, James Harms and David Citino.
Places a Degree Can Take You
Internships
You'll get real-world experience as an English major at Marietta both on and off-campus. Our majors have interned with publishers in London. They have developed publications and promotions for Marietta Memorial Hospital. They have edited and written for national publications and local magazines.
Clubs & Organizations
Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, selects high-achieving English students for membership and promotes interest in literature and the study of English, including creative writing, on campus.
Scholarship Opportunities
The DeLancey Memorial Fund provides scholarship assistance to an outstanding junior majoring in English literature.
The Lawrence M. Howard Memorial Scholarship Fund is awarded to juniors and seniors on writing merit. Recipients may major in any subject but must submit a portfolio of writing samples to a faculty committee.
The Beatrice A. Kremer Memorial Scholarship benefits a junior English major who, in the judgment of the Department of English faculty, has compiled a distinguished record in English courses at Marietta College. Preference is given to students planning to teach in the field of English.
The Margaret Ward Martin Prize may be awarded annually to the junior or senior submitting the best original piece of creative writing.
The Emerson Prize may be awarded annually for the best poem or group of poems.
The Burton E. Stevenson Prizes may be awarded annually for essays devoted to some phase of American literature.
The Joseph Green McMurry Scholarship is awarded annually with preference given to a junior preparing to teach in the field of English.
The English Department at Marietta awards scholarships of $2,500 to three admitted students who are prospective English majors. The scholarships are renewable each year the student remains an English major (for a possible total of $10,000).