Courses and Academic Information

English majors are required to enroll in six courses (three courses per semester)--five in Anglophone literature and one in another subject. This other subject area could be a course in film (we encourage students to look seriously at the film courses offered in the School of Arts, Languages, and Literatures at Exeter, as "film studies" is one of the School's particular strengths) and counted either as a Drama course or an English course at Kenyon. Students have also taken courses in History, Classics, Theology, Biology, Psychology, Spanish, French, and Italian. Non-English majors are required to take four English courses and two courses outside the field of English. Each University of Exeter course is taken for 30 Exeter credits (1 Kenyon unit) and the two-semester Kenyon seminar is equivalent to 1 unit of Kenyon credit, making a total of five units towards the Kenyon degree. For each class taken (typically three per semester), students should expect to be in class about three hours a week--two hours one day, and one the other. Students of the Kenyon/Exeter Program will not have class on Fridays in order to allow for ample travel time on weekends.

The grades that English majors receive in their English courses are included in their Kenyon grade point averages. Courses in other department must be taken for a grade and that grade will appear on the Kenyon transcript, but that grade will not be calculated into the cumulative average. Grades are based on a scale of 34-70. See grade conversion chart (PDF) for more information.

Students have a choice of "level 2 modules" (lecture courses, with weekly seminars, covering different periods of literary history, which are assessed by means of a final exam in the first semester and by a portfolio of written work in the second semester) and "level 3 modules" (seminars on particular topics, assessed through a portfolio of essays).

Only if students take courses outside the English department will they be likely to write exams, which could be scheduled at any time from the beginning of June until around June 20). There are no exams in second-semester courses in the English department. Students may return to the United States following the early June deadline for submission of written work.

Many of the distinctions that were apparent even ten years ago between the British and American systems of education are no longer so obvious. But it is still the case in British universities that students are required to do more independent research. British students spend less time in class than Kenyon students and more time in the library. And this difference constitutes a wonderful opportunity for our students to learn to work more independently.

Please check the Exeter School of english website to find updated material on available courses.

• Kenyon Seminar
• Shape of the Academic Year

Kenyon Seminar

In addition to the three English courses that Kenyon students take in the School of English at Exeter(or potentially four, if the student elects to take a film course in the School of English to count as his or her course outside English), students spend the full year (both semesters) taking a seminar with the Kenyon-Exeter program resident director. This course is usually organized to allow students to take advantage of the opportunity to see exceptionally good English theater productions and to link their study of literature with an appreciation of the landscapes (both urban and rural) that many British authors have written about. Because the students are able to meet frequently as a group and to work closely with the Kenyon resident director, they have an opportunity to experience what they enjoy most about their Kenyon classes while at the same time working toward becoming independent scholars in their other courses.

Plays in Production
Literature and Landscape

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Shape of the Academic Year

Students should plan to arrive in Exeter a few days before the beginning of the Michaelmas term for orientation or "Freshers' Week." Exeter University will notify accepted students of the exact date during the preceding summer.

There are 3 terms at the University of Exeter, but superimposed upon these terms is the semester system. Below is the schedule for the 2002-2003 academic year. The schedule for subsequent years will follow this structure and have approximately the same dates.

Michaelmas Term: 7 October 2010 - 13 December 2010
Lent Term: 13 January 2011 - 21 March 2011
Trinity Term: 28 April 2011 - 4 July 2011

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