A variety of options are available to undergraduates wishing to devote their major electives
to further work in literary studies. Usually organized by some combination of genre, theme,
historical period, or national, cultural, and ethnic focus, the English Department’s
upper-division literature courses are numerous and are offered regularly.
Many students take upper-division literature courses because of an interest aroused in one
of their ILP courses. Creative writing and rhetoric and composition students often take
advanced literature courses to get a sense of the history of their own practice or to see
what contemporary writers are doing, or perhaps both. Students with an interest in literary
theory or cultural studies take courses which foreground these concerns in the selection
and discussion of texts. And virtually all students take at least one course dealing in some
way with contemporary literature, whether written in England, Hawai‘i, the continental U.S.,
New Zealand, Ghana, Canada, India, Samoa, or any other place where English serves as one of
the languages of literature.
For more information on opportunities for literary studies, contact your advisor or the
Director of Undergraduate Studies; watch the bulletin boards near the fourth floor elevator,
as well, and remember that the Department publishes descriptions of all its upper-division
courses, available before the Schedule of Classes comes out, in KUY 402, outside KUY 429, and
on its web site http://www.english.hawaii.edu/.
