Department of LLL/Undergraduate Programs and Courses

Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature

B.A. in World Languages, Literature, and Culture

What gets left of a man amounts to a part.

To his spoken part. To a part of speech.

Joseph Brodsky

Bachelor degree program offers a flexible and applied degree that is designed to train the next generation of language and literature specialists, as well as provide a solid generalist degree to prepare students in a variety of professions including translators, language teaching, museum work, library, non-government organization, and government positions. It also provides excellent training for future graduate study.

The B.A. in World Languages, Literature, and Culture offers an expansive and applied degree, which is designed to train the next generation of scholarly specialists, as well as to provide a solid generalist program to prepare students for a variety of professions.

Students completing a degree in Languages, Linguistics and Literatures are recommended to focus their study on one of these three areas of concentration. Doing so will leave students better prepared for their capstone research and better prepared for graduate school. The tracks below are not mandatory. Rather, they are intended to help students select the ideal series of classes for their chosen focus.
The first of these, intensive language learning and acquisition study – we currently offer multi-level course tracks in Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Chinese – offers excellent preparation for future study and or employment in the spheres of translation and communication in government and business. The second track in literature provides exposure to classics from mythology to Dante to Dostoevsky to Kafka to Coetzee, alongside cultural study and literary analysis, and is complemented by our School’s strong Writing Program. Students from this track often pursue high level graduate study or analytic careers, having become critical and creative writers and effective communicators. The third track in linguistics provides students with hands-on training in the empirical description and research of human languages, with a focus on Eurasian fieldwork. Students learn technical and methodological skills applicable in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and applied environments. The areas of focus within our program are complementary and overlapping, sharing an underlying emphasis on structures of language and meaning across countries and cultures.

Students focusing on literature would typically enroll in WLL 110 Introduction to Literary Studies, HST/WLL 274 Texts and Contexts, together with a variety of advanced and intermediate classes in literature. A student focusing on linguistics should enroll in LING 131 Introduction to Linguistics, LING 273 Research Methods in Linguistics, together with a variety of advanced and intermediate classes in linguistics. Both linguistics and literature students are strongly encouraged to enrol in foreign language classes, and to continue their study of the language through the intermediate and advanced levels where possible.