EN Core Courses
All students at Loyola, regardless of their major, take English course (EN 101) as part of the core curriculum. For the second core they have a choice between an EN 200-level course and a History core. Both EN core courses cultivate the habits of critical inquiry, serious reflection, aesthetic appreciation, and considered response.
All students, except those in Loyola's honors program, begin their study with EN 101
The Art of Reading. Ideally, this course should be taken in the freshman year or in
the first semester of the sophomore year.
EN 101 is an introduction to the serious, college-level study of literature. It seeks
to give students an understanding of imaginative writing, means for reading this writing
perceptively, and basic principles for making interpretive judgments. While there
is no common text for EN 101, all instructors share the goal of bringing students
to an enriched awareness of the power and beauty of our language and of its potential
as an expressive and persuasive tool. The course is, therefore, writing intensive,
and seeks to teach students to develop their writing skills with particular attention
to the crafting of analytical argument.
Instructors are free to organize the class as they wish, but the department insists
on three general guidelines. Students produce 13-15 pages of considered writing during
the semester. (This excludes tests, quizzes, first drafts, etc.) Students write several
essays in which they analyze select works of poetry, fiction, and/or drama. Instructors
guide students in constructing effective arguments that develop clear theses through
a series of assertions supported by carefully selected evidence from the text. Some
class time is devoted to discussion of rhetorical approaches, organizational principles
and methods, and grammar. Third, students learn important literary terms and master
such critical concepts as speaker, voice, and point of view; characterization; conflict
and plot; tone and irony; figurative language; symbol; diction; sound; form; and theme
and meaning.
Upon completing EN 101, students may choose from several 200-level classes on a variety of topics: African American literature, Film and Literature, Bad Boys in British Literature, Greek and Latin literature in translation, to name a few. The focus of these classes is on reading longer texts and placing them in their historical or cultural contexts. The second core further trains students to read accurately, responsively, and imaginatively; to think logically and critically; and to write clearly and forcefully.
See course descriptions for recent and forthcoming offerings of 200-level courses.