6 Literary Studies Preparatory Programs

Literary studies’ comprehensive core includes textual analysis, literary theory, and American, British, and international fiction. We also encourage students to tailor the program to their own interests and incorporate classes from other disciplines. With the benefit of small class sizes, faculty provide individualized instruction and mentoring, with one-on-one advising to help you choose the courses best suited to your ambitions. Additionally, our faculty are active scholars and researchers, with substantial work in their respective disciplines.

A word after a word after a word is power, according to the contemporary Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. Appreciation of the power of language as an artistic medium is the goal of the literary studies concentration. The requirements of the concentration are designed to foster students’ skills as interpreters of literature and as writers, while also instilling appreciation of form and knowledge about literature and its relationship to social and political contexts. The Simon's Rock literature program is decidedly comparative, allowing students to study British and American literature as well as French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Czech, and other literatures, in the original language or in translation.

While the program does not offer a major, its courses serve the literary interests of all students and provide greater breadth for majors in foreign languages and in English. The General Literary Studies program reflects the assumption that, as an educated person, you will wish to extend your experience of literature beyond what has been written in your native tongue and beyond what you can read in the foreign languages you have mastered. You’ll enrich your education by exploring literature in translation and discovering a variety of illuminating relationships among works in different languages.

The Book Arts Book Studies Certificate is designed for those interested in exploring the creative and historical aspects of book arts. It offers a flexible curriculum that covers techniques like bindi...

What inspired the emergence and flowering of the fantasy genre in the 20th and 21st centuries? Oxford and the Rise of Fantasy offers a unique opportunity to examine the fantasy genre from its earliest origins to the present day, exploring at each stage the influence of Oxford and its writers.

This challenging graduate diploma highlights the comparative, multilingual, cross-cultural nature of a student’s graduate training. In the case of MA students, it provides promising opportunities for further study in related disciplines; in the case of PhD students, it can lead to prospective careers in a range of areas requiring a high level of cross-cultural competency and literacy from government to the global creative industries.