Study Abroad
The English Department strongly encourages well-prepared students to apply to study abroad at one of our four affiliate programs in England. The affiliated programs are at University College, London; The University of Sussex; the Oxford Program for Undergraduate Studies (OPUS); and Keble College, Oxford. Students can enroll at UCL, Sussex, or OPUS for either a year (three terms) or for the spring semester (two terms); the Keble College program is for the full year only. Students who enroll in other programs will not be granted credit towards the major.
The program at UCL is organized around a combination of lectures, seminars, and tutorial sessions; the department is a traditional one like our own and is ranked as one of the finest in Britain. Sussex is more experimental: students enroll both in the English Department and in one of the interdisciplinary schools. Teaching goes on in seminars and lectures and is a bit more oriented to critical theory and cultural studies than at UCL. Instruction at OPUS and at Keble is organized around weekly tutorial meetings supplemented by lectures; students at Oxford must be prepared to work independently and to write an enormous number of papers. The non-academic attractions of each setting vary considerably. London's appeal is obvious and hardly needs description; it will be useful to know that students at UCL usually live in university housing, but are occasionally obliged to live in independent flats. There's very little of what you might call a "campus" in London. The University of Sussex, on the other hand, is a campus university located in Falmer, a suburb of Brighton, the old seaside resort, which has become a major center for the arts and, particularly, one of the centers of British youth culture. Since London is an easy 75 minutes away by train, Sussex students often go into London for the evening when something especially attractive is going on there. As for Oxford, it is a university town, at once quaint and impressive, beautiful and austere. Little more than a century old, Keble is one of the few Oxford colleges built of brick. Students in the Washington University program at Keble live in the college, in rooms that are unusually comfortable by British university standards. Students in the OPUS program live in flats in the city of Oxford.
There are only two places a year in the Keble program and admission will be quite competitive, but it offers an extremely challenging educational opportunity and an unparalleled opportunity for full integration into university life at Oxford. The OPUS program offers more flexibility in the choice of courses and provides good opportunities for independent research. OPUS students have Associate student status at Oxford, which means that their access to university facilities is slightly limited: access to the main library, the Bodleian, is limited to a few hours; students are loosely associated with one of the residential colleges, but do not live "in college," etc. Most students on the program have been satisfied with this arrangement, but we don't recommend it as enthusiastically as the other programs.
The assignment of credit and the determination of equivalent courses will be
worked out finally when students return from their time abroad, but anticipatory
planning needs to begin well before a student departs. Students should retain
copies of all papers they have written while in England as well as all syllabi,
and they should make every effort to persuade their instructors to return marked
copies of their final exams so that work done abroad can receive supplementary
evaluation here at home.
Preparation Required for Study Abroad
It is very important that students hoping to study abroad begin their planning early. Students seeking credit towards the major for course work done abroad must have declared their major before they leave. They must also complete their prerequisite courses for the major at the 200-level and have taken at least one and preferably two 300-level courses before their departure. Students going abroad in the second semester of their junior year should have no difficulty in completing these requirements. Students pursuing a full year abroad will have to plan carefully to do so, in order to prepare themselves for a system of university education that is more committed to early specialization than ours. (The particular challenges of the Oxford Scholars program at Keble will demand especially serious preparation.) Students should discuss their program with the Study Abroad advisor to get a sense of how the specific course work anticipated in Britain will fit into their English major. For example, what courses will fit best into their major and how equivalent course credit and course levels will be determined.
This consultation is especially important for students who plan to apply to the honors program. Since study abroad will often absent students from the Junior Honors seminar, enrollment in which normally is required of honors candidates, some sort of equivalent experience has to be worked out for those who will be out of the country. In general, students who wish to study in England and to pursue an honors program should expect to satisfy at least half of their requirements for 400-level course work here at Washington University. Finally, students abroad must hold to the same timetable for application to the program as other students. Applications initiated at the beginning of senior year cannot be considered.
At least four of the upper-division courses required for the major, including at least one 400-level course, must be completed her at Washington University. (For students seeking honors by coursework, at least three 400-level courses must be completed at Washington University.) This places a limit on the number of courses taken abroad or at the other American universities that can be counted in satisfaction of the major requirements. Exceptions may be permitted to this rule, but only in rare instances, as when students enroll in a full year of study abroad in English literature.
Award of Credit
Students going to study English in the UK should keep all syllabi and all
written work for their courses abroad. This material will make up the bulk
of the
portfolio that they must submit, upon return, before course equivalents and
course credit can be assigned. The portfolio should include an essay, four
to six pages long, describing your intellectual growth — and specifically
your growth as a literary scholar — during the time abroad. We would
like reflections on how the approaches taken in your courses abroad affected
your development and how the educational structure of the host university
influenced the way you learned. Most courses taken at our approved programs
will transfer here as 300-level courses. If you did extremely well in particular
courses, and if the level at which the courses were pitched warrants it,
you will be assigned 400-level course equivalents. The assessment will be
based on an examination of the written work you did abroad, as well as on
your grades and on any written reports we receive from the host faculty.