The Literature minor invites you to explore the power of stories—and the ways they shape culture, identity, and creative expression. In this program, you’ll engage with literature as a living conversation about who we are, where we come from, and how we imagine and build our world today and in the future.

You’ll encounter diverse voices, traditions, and perspectives while bringing your own experiences, insights, and creative practices into the mix. With an emphasis on culture, power, and identity, the minor helps you sharpen your critical reading and writing skills while also fostering your personal voice.

Whether you see yourself as a writer, performer, filmmaker, designer, or artist, the Literature minor deepens your interpretive skills, expands your understanding of stories across time and place, and strengthens the connections between your art and media practices and the wider world.

As a result of successfully completing program requirements, students should be able to:

1. compose evidence-based interpretions of texts and issues in literary study;
2. demonstrate through written work and discussion an understanding of terms, techniques, and contexts important to reading and interpreting literature;
3. use knowledge of literature, literary history, culture, and systems of power to develop further, meaningful questions about literature, other areas of the arts and media, and human experiences; and
4. demonstrate how common or culturally specific heritages, perspectives, histories, and/or belief systems influence writers, the forms in which they work, and the contexts in which their works are circulated and read.