We read the writing of others; we write in response to that writing; and we reflect on what it means to do so. Each of us shares a concern for the written word that defines what we do at every level of the English curriculum. In the classroom, students attend carefully to the language of literary works and articulate in writing their responses and ideas. This is true both for workshops in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction and for classes in literary criticism. As students and as teachers, we work with language; therefore, writing determines both the content of our academic discipline and our particular approach to that discipline. The two are fundamentally interwoven: attention to written language embodies both the methodology and the matter of a major in English. Given the centrality of writing to every aspect of the English major, we consider the writing requirement in the major fulfilled not through any individual piece of the major, but through the whole.?
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