Mission Statement

Embodying the core values of a Christian liberal arts education in the Wesleyan theological tradition, and focusing on the power of language and story to shape us and our world, the LJWL department and programs will provide students with knowledge, skills, and experiences to equip them to understand, interpret, analyze, evaluate, and create texts as artistic and/or linguistic expressions of diverse human experiences.  We value reading, writing, researching, speaking, and discussing as profound means of participating in the redemptive story God is telling through all of creation.

Purposes

To enable students to

• critically read and interpret texts through close reading and literary analysis.
• thoughtfully engage with diverse cultures through reading and discussing texts.
• understand the nature, structure, and history of language.
• conduct effective research and produce effective written and oral communication in various genres and media.
• deepen their redemptive social and spiritual engagement with the world through studying languages, texts, and media.

Tradition of Excellence

The Department of Literature, Journalism, Writing, and Languages invites students to enter into the “republic of letters” to become students of the basic component of human interaction: language and story. The department is committed to helping students learn how to communicate their ideas effectively through the analysis and study of the written word as used in a breadth of literature – classical and modern, British and American, European, and a wide variety of other western and non-western literatures. The faculty offer different approaches to the subject matter due to their different educational backgrounds. Professors of the department have distinguished themselves by having work published in The New York Times, The San Diego Union Tribune, Christianity Today, Relevant Magazine, Sojourners, The Rumpus, Boulevard, The Normal School, Gulf Coast Review, Great Lives, Great Events – The Seventeenth Century, Great Lives – The Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism, Brontë Studies, The Ben Jonson Journal, The Literary Encyclopedia, English Today: The International Review of the English Language, Religion and Literature, Literature and Belief, Christianity and Literature, Profession, Journal on African Literature: Tydskrif vir leterkunde, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Nineteenth Century French Studies, La Corónica, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, The Journal of Mass Media Ethics, and Christian Feminism Today. Faculty members have also published books and poetry collections. They have given lectures and submitted papers at such places as the University of London, the University of Hull, the University of Leeds, Charles University, Prague, UCLA, Princeton University, The International Shakespeare Conference, Stratford, The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, The Popular Culture Association National Conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Rhetoric Society of America, the international Society for the History of Rhetoric, the Wesleyan Theological Society, and the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in Madrid, Spain. Department faculty have also received major national grants including several from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Fellowship Grant, the Templeton Foundation, and the Del Amo Foundation.

Career Opportunities

Graduate students in the Department of Literature, Journalism, Writing, and Languages receive training in the teaching and tutoring of writing and gain experience with editing and publishing alongside their coursework. In addition to careers in education, publishing, journalism, law, and public relations, graduates from our department are active in a variety of business fields, in theological study and church ministry, in work with NGOs and the National Park Service, and in overseas teaching. 

Faculty

Co-Chairs - Paula Cronovich, Ph.D. and Jacqueline Mitchell, M.A.

Scott Bennett, Ph.D.
University of California, Santa Barbara

Paula Cronovich, Ph.D.
University of California, Los Angeles

Breeann Kyte Kirby, Ph.D.
Bath Spa University

Alain Lescart, Ph.D.
University of Connecticut

Robbie Maakestad, M.F.A.
George Mason University

Katie Manning, Ph.D.
University of Louisiana, Lafayette

Karl Martin, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota

Jacqueline Mitchell, M.A.
University of California, Los Angeles

Dean Nelson, Ph.D.
Ohio University

Bettina Tate Pedersen, Ph.D.
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Margarita Pintado, Ph.D.
Emory University

Holland Prior, Ph.D.
University of Tennessee, Knoxville