The Honors Program
The Honors Program in English consists of the following:
• ENGL 497--The Honors Seminar (to be taken fall of the senior year);
• ENGL 493—Directed individual study (undertaken in the fall semester);
• ENGL 498—Directed individual study(undertaken in the spring semester);
In these directed individual studies, the student produces a substantial critical essay of approximately fifty pages in length or a creative project of commensurate scope.
• A written examination set by the English Department, to be taken in the spring of the senior year and based on a reading list that combines the Senior Exercise reading list for the current and the subsequent graduating classes (the reading list for 2013 is thus appended to this section);
• An oral exam, to be taken soon after the written exam, and conducted by Outside Examiners on both the thesis and the reading list for the written exam;
• Evaluation of the thesis, written exam, and oral exam by Outside Examiners.
In order to be eligible for the Honors program, students must have a 3.5 grade-point average in their English courses and a 3.3 grade-point average overall. In the first-semester individual study, students will compile an extensive bibliography (in the case of critical projects), submit a proposal for their individual Honors project, and, by the end of the semester, complete the draft of at least one chapter or significant section of the project. An Honors proposal of five to ten pages (plus bibliography) will be due on October 7 of their senior year. The proposal will be evaluated by the Department and will be held to rigorous standards. If the Department does not find in the proposal compelling evidence that the student will produce a sophisticated literary project, the proposal will be rejected and the student will not be allowed to proceed in Honors during the second semester. At the discretion of the Department, a student may be allowed to revise a proposal and resubmit it no later than November 1. The Department considers this proposal and its promise of an outstanding essay to be the most important step in the student's progress toward honors second semester.
By the beginning of the senior year, students should identify a faculty member willing to work with them on the honors project. The first-semester individual study will start at the beginning of classes, and the student should enroll in ENGL 493. The faculty member will direct the individual studies through both semesters. Any prospective Honors student who does not yet have a faculty mentor for his/her Honors Project in 2013-2014 should contact his or her faculty advisor and/or the Director of the Honors Program immediately. The director of the Honors Program for 2013-2014 is Ivonne García (garciai@kenyon.edu).
Students who complete Honors will earn three distinct grades, in addition to their degree of Honor--first semester for (1) the seminar (ENGL 497) and (2) the individual study (ENGL 493), and second semester for (3) the individual study (ENGL 498). Successful completion of both courses first semester is necessary for students to continue in the program second semester. Of these courses, only the Honors seminar (ENGL 497) may count towards fulfillment of distribution requirements for the English major. The grades awarded to a student in ENGL 493 and ENGL 498 are not to be taken as an evaluation of the finished thesis, but rather reflect the student's performance on the thesis tutorial. The final degree of Honors is awarded by the Outside Examiners.
A note about the degrees of "Honors" in English: The English department considers successful completion of the Honors Program to be in itself a significant achievement. We expect, therefore, that most students who successfully complete the prescribed course of study (Honors seminar, independent study, senior thesis, written examination, and oral examination) will be awarded "Honors" in English. Students whose work taken as a whole is demonstrably and unequivocally distinguished or excellent may be awarded "High Honors." Rarer instances of exceptional distinction may even receive "Highest Honors." This degree of Highest Honors is reserved for exceptional cases and in most years will not be awarded.
The Honors examination will be based on a longer reading list, which includes not only the reading list for the class of 2014 but also that for the class of 2015, which follows:
Senior Exercise Reading List-2015
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Wanderer and The Seafarer
Aphra Behn, Oronooko
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
John Donne, "The Good Morrow," "Song-'Go and catch a falling star'", "The Sun Rising," "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day," "The Relic," Holy Sonnet 7-"At the Round earth's imagined corners," Holy Sonnet 10-"Death be not proud," Holy Sonnet 14-"Batter my heart", "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," Elegy XIX-"To His Mistress Going to Bed"
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Danse Africaine," "The Weary Blues," "Cross," "I, Too," "Homesick Blues," "Po' Boy Blues," "Song for a Dark Girl," Montage of a Dream Deferred (all poems in the Sequence)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
William Shakespeare, King Lear
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
William Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, "Resolution and Independence," "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802," "Nuns Fret Not," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "The World is Too much with Us," "Surprised by Joy," "Mutability"