Literary Arts

Description

Brown’s Program in Literary Arts provides a home for innovative writers of fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, literary translation, electronic writing and mixed media.  The concentration allows student writers to develop their skills in one or more genres while deepening their understanding of the craft of writing. Many courses in this concentration require a writing sample; students should consult a concentration advisor or the concentration website for strategies on getting into the appropriate course(s).

Student Goals

Students in this concentration will:

• Develop an understanding of literary theory and literary genres
• Learn to critique their own and others
• Expand their aesthetic sensibility by working in more than one medium
• Cultivate critical acumen and fluency
• Produce a substantial body of creative work

Requirements

Click here for a list of the Literary Arts concentration requirements. For more information about this concentration, please visit the department's website.

Honors and Capstones

Literary Arts offers a capstone through its Honors Program. Students enrolled in or who have completed at least one 1000-level workshop or independent study may submit Honors applications to the Literary Arts Program (due by early September each year). Course requirements are the same as those for the regular concentration but Honors candidates must also include two 1000-level workshops or independent studies and complete a thesis. Please consult the department’s website for admission procedures and requirements.

Liberal Learning

This concentration allows you to address the following Liberal Learning goals:

• Enhance your aesthetic sensibility
• Expand your reading skills
• Collaborate fully
• Understand differences among cultures
• Embrace Diversity
• Engage with your community
• Develop a facility with symbolic languages
• Learn what it means to study the past
• Evaluate human behavior
• Work on your speaking and writing

Download the full statement on Liberal Learning at Brown

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Affiliated Departments

• Comparative Literature
• English
• Modern Culture and Media
• Theate Arts and Performance Studies
• Visual Art

Advisors

• Peter Nelson

Graduating Class

Alumni Pathways

Alumni of Brown's program in Literary Arts are now fiction writers, poets, playwrights, artists of literary hypermedia, and university teachers of creative writing and literature. Alumni have won the MacArthur Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, an Obie, O. Henry Awards, a National Book Award, and many others. Books by Literary Arts alumni have been published by dozens of publishers, such as Routledge, Doubleday, Penguin, Random House, McMillan, Knopf, New York University Press, and Oxford University Press. Plays and musicals by alumni have been produced at the Trinity Repertory Company, the Kennedy Center, on National Public Radio, in the New York Shakespeare Festival and by the Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet.

Dept. Undergraduate Group

Student Leaders:

• Matthew Weiss