Language and Literature Department

In an increasingly complex world where cultural symbols and knowledge are continuously constructed and revised in variable contexts and locations, the students who will have the competitive edge are those who possess the ability to decode signs and communicate transnationally, those who develop literacy within and across multiple cultural contexts, and those who benefit from the self-reflexive potentialities of an international perspective

In essence, our graduates are exceptionally adaptable, even within a rapidly changing, demanding global economy. As the recent report on the Humanities and Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences concluded, "the most successful Americans have typically benefited from such broad-based training... and that the ability to adapt and thrive in a world certain to keep on changing is based not on instruction in the specific jobs of today but in the developing of long-term qualities of mind: inquisitiveness, perceptiveness, the ability to put a received idea to a new purpose, and the ability to share and build ideas with a diverse world of others."[1] Majors in the various English and Spanish tracks acquire the critical reading, research, analytic, and communication skills needed to negotiate the highly diverse professional and interpersonal contexts of the world today.

[1] American Academy of Arts & Sciences.The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a vibrant, competitive, and secure nation. Cambridge, MA: AAA&S, 2013. 32