College of Letters Major
Major Description
The College of Letters (COL) was founded in 1959 as a three-year interdisciplinary humanities program unique to Wesleyan University. The COL major integrates cultural competence, freedom of inquiry, critique, and rigor within a collaborative learning community, as manifest in our library where offices open into a shared space for study, discussion, research, workshops, readings, meals, and socializing. The structure of the major, smallness of classes, and openness to student concerns sustain a close rapport and lively dialogue between and among all COL professors and majors.
The COL curriculum coheres the benefits of rigorous requirements, small classes, and student-specific design. All majors take a sequence of five core co-taught colloquium seminars which integrate interdisciplinary and critical study of cultures and languages from all across the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Atlantic, and from antiquity to the present. Each student also collaborates with their academic advisor to choose electives in history, language, literature, and philosophy, to select a study abroad program, and to design a capstone project suited to their own academic and creative ambitions.
The COL pedagogy combines high expectations with creative exploration and communal support. In all courses taken for the major students receive honest written evaluations rather than letter grades. And, at the major’s midpoint, students are independently evaluated by non-Wesleyan professors in the Junior Comprehensive Examinations. Constructive feedback is contextualized by an ethos of care in which professors actively equip students as collaborators in a shared intellectual project.
The flexibility and cultural range of the COL major equips graduates for success in vocations and careers as varied as Wesleyan students in general. The rigor of the COL major explicitly sets up our students for graduate degrees across the humanities, social sciences, law, professional schools, as well as (when combined with another major) science and medicine. Recent graduates from can be found in traditional and new media, government and intelligence, advocacy and policy NGOs, tech and AI, business and marketing, education administration and teaching, library science and art curation, medicine and healthcare, psychiatry and counseling, data and software, publishing and editing, business and finance, communications and creative writing, scriptwriting and film production, and more.
Admission to the Major
The College of Letters is a three-year major that students typically declare in the spring semester of their first year at Wesleyan. Declaration forms and further information can be found on the COL website under “Declare the Major.” Submission of these forms provides the department with information needed to advise an incoming major on all aspects of their academic career, including their choice of a foreign language and study abroad planning. Students will be assigned a COL advisor within two weeks of declaring the major. Sophomore transfer students may declare the major before or during orientation.
Major Requirements
The program consists of five components and leads to eleven course credits:
- Five colloquia designed to acquaint students with works of predominantly European literature, history, and philosophy in (respectively)
| Code | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Colloquia | ||
| COL241 | Sophomore Colloquium 1: Antiquity | 1 |
| COL242 | Sophomore Colloquium 2: The Middle Ages | 1 |
| COL243 | Junior Colloquium: The Early Modern Period | 1 |
| COL245 | Senior Colloquium 1: The 18th and 19th Century | 1 |
| COL246 | Senior Colloquium 2: The 20th and 21st Century | 1 |
- Four electives. The minimum required is one in history, one in philosophy, one in literature/representation, and one in the major’s target foreign-language literature. These specialized seminars allow students to shape their COL major around a particular interest.
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Course List Code Title Hours Electives History 1 COL221 Your Revolutionary Life: Biography as Political Power from Antiquity to Modernity 1 COL228 Virtue and Vice in History, Literature, and Philosophy 1 COL247 The Fall of Rome and Other Stories 1 COL253 Journey to the Divine: Islamic Mysticism in Thought and Practice 1 COL273 The History of Science in Islam 1 COL275 Moral Complexity in Islam: Origins to the Present 1 COL282 Death and the Limits of Representation 1 COL288Z Solitude, Society and Loneliness in Romanticisim and Modern Culture 1 COL295 Rome After Rome: Culture and Empire of Constantinople 1 COL301 Researching and Writing Historical Narrative Nonfiction: A Workshop 1 COL350 History as Tragedy: Genre, Gender, and Power in the Alexiad of Anna Komnena 1 COL354Z Self and Text in Roman North Africa: Augustine's Confessions 1 COL375 Advanced Research in the Traveler's Lab 1 GRST294 Civic Responsibility and Places of Remembrance: Historical Consciousness in Germany and Beyond 1 GRST320 Places of Remembrance: Historical Consciousness in Germany 1 HIST215 European Intellectual History to the Renaissance 1 HIST216 European Intellectual History since the Renaissance 1 HIST227 Finance, the Stock Market, and the History of Economic Thought 1 HIST242 World History 1 HIST261 Enlightenment and Science 1 HIST291 Gender and History: Global Feminist Theories and Narratives of the Past (FGSS Gateway) 1 HIST338 History and Theory 1 HIST391 The Treason of the Intellectuals: Power, Ethics, and Cultural Production 1 Philosophy 1 CHUM339 Catching Glimpses: Perceiving Infinitesimals in the Scientific Revolution 1 CHUM398 Marxism and Climate Crisis 1 COL228 Virtue and Vice in History, Literature, and Philosophy 1 COL253 Journey to the Divine: Islamic Mysticism in Thought and Practice 1 COL259 The Human Condition: Arendt, Nietzsche, Marx 1 COL265 Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Then and Now 1 COL266 History and Limits of Aesthetic Theory 1 COL269 Modern Aesthetic Theory 1 COL273 The History of Science in Islam 1 COL275 Moral Complexity in Islam: Origins to the Present 1 COL282 Death and the Limits of Representation 1 COL283 The Rationalist Tradition in Early Modern European Philosophy 1 COL290 Nietzsche - Science, Psychology, Genealogy 1 COL292 Reason and Its Limits 1 COL300 Infinity and the Mathematization of Nature: Early Modern Perspectives 1 COL339 Reading Theories 1 GRST250 Cultural Criticism and Aesthetic Theory: Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno 1 GRST261 Reading Nietzsche 1 HIST338 History and Theory 1 HIST391 The Treason of the Intellectuals: Power, Ethics, and Cultural Production 1 PHIL210 Living a Good Life 1 PHIL250 Thinking By Analogy: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form 1 PHIL303 Plato's REPUBLIC 1 PHIL350 Radical Self-Care 1 Literature/Representation 1 CHUM398 Marxism and Climate Crisis 1 CLST340 Daemons, Enigmas, and the Cosmic Image: Classical and Modern Allegory 1 COL218 The Family Memoir: A Contemporary Study of the Genre 1 COL225 20th-Century Franco-Caribbean Literature and the Search for Identity 1 COL227 Life Writing: Writing About the Self and from Experience 1 COL227Z Life Writing: Writing about the Self and from Experience 1 COL230 Longform Narrative 1 COL238 Animal Theories/Human Fictions 1 COL250 The Renaissance Woman 1 COL252 Writing Love: Articulations of Passion, Genres of Intimacy 1 COL254 Folly & Enlightenment: Madness Before and After the Mind/Body Split 1 COL256 European Realist Novels 1 COL257 Remembering Selves: Forces and Forms of Autobiography 1 COL258 The Word for World is Information: Ideologies of Language in Science Fiction & Film 1 COL259 The Human Condition: Arendt, Nietzsche, Marx 1 COL265 Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Then and Now 1 COL270 Modernist City-Texts 1 COL274 Outsiders in European Literature 1 COL282 Death and the Limits of Representation 1 COL288Z Solitude, Society and Loneliness in Romanticisim and Modern Culture 1 COL301 Researching and Writing Historical Narrative Nonfiction: A Workshop 1 COL305 The Critic and Her Publics 1 COL309 Truth & the Poet: Lyric Subjectivity and Phenomenology 1 COL310 More-Than-Human-Worlds: Theories and Fictions 1 COL311 Translation Workshop in Early Modern Spain: Topographies of Love, Arcadia, and History 1 COL321 Dialogues of Love: A Close Reading 1 COL329 Madness and Its Others: The Ethics of Intelligibility 1 COL336 Theories of Translation 1 COL337 What is (a) Language? 1 COL338 Utter Nonsense: Modernist Experiments with Meaning 1 COL339 Reading Theories 1 COL373 "Real" Love: Subjects of Unreason 1 ENGL275Z "Like Herding Cats" 1 GRST250 Cultural Criticism and Aesthetic Theory: Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno 1 GRST251 Kafka: Literature, Law, and Power 1 GRST279 Good, Evil, Human: German Fairy Tales and Their Cultural Impact 1 GRST294 Civic Responsibility and Places of Remembrance: Historical Consciousness in Germany and Beyond 1 GRST386 German Romanticism: Disenchantment and Re-enchantment 1 REES265 When the Empire Strikes Back: (Post) Colonial Theory and Fiction 1 RL&L226 The Cosmos of Dante's "Comedy" 1 RL&L236 Don Quixote: How to Read the Ultimate Novel 1 WRCT210Z Contemporary Short Stories in Translation 1 WRCT288 Introduction to Journalism: Constructing the News 1 WRCT330 The Craft of Criticism 1 WRCT413 The Fact: Master Class on Fact Checking 0.25 Foreign Language Literature 1 CHUM389 The Mediterranean Archipelago: Literary and Cultural Representations 1 COL225 20th-Century Franco-Caribbean Literature and the Search for Identity 1 COL265 Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Then and Now 1 FREN217 Exoticism: Imaginary Geographies in the 19th-century French Short Story 1 FREN220 Lancelot, Guinevere, Grail: Enigma in the Romances of Chretien de Troyes 1 FREN221 French Mythologies 1 FREN222 Love and Loss in Medieval and Early Modern French Literature and Culture 1 FREN224 Cultural Mo(uve)ments from the 19th to 21st Centuries 1 FREN228 Fight like the French: Debates, Quarrels and Polemics in French Culture 1 FREN230 Knights, Fools, and Lovers: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance French Culture 1 FREN231 By Sword, By Cross, and By Pen: An Introduction to Early Modern French Literature and Culture 1 FREN232 French Society in Music From the Roaring Twenties to Today 1 FREN234 Francophone Belgian Culture 1 FREN238 Representing the Self, Representing Yourself 1 FREN239 A Virtual Semester in Paris 1 FREN240 Cinema and the French Theatrical Tradition 1 FREN241 Seeing Is Believing?: The Search for Cinematic Truth 1 FREN254 Paris to Saigon: French Representations of Asia 1 FREN273 The Business of Letters: The French Epistolary Novel 1 FREN275 Histories of Race: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment 1 FREN305 Negotiating French Identity: Migration and Identity in Contemporary France 1 FREN306 Spectacles of Violence in Early Modern French Tragedy 1 FREN307 Exoticism: Imaginary Geographies in the 19th-century French Short Story 1 FREN309 Writing Childhood in Contemporary French Literature 1 FREN310 French Crowds, Mobs, and Mobilities 1 FREN314 From the Diary to the Graphic novel, Women Writers from the 17th to the 21st Centuries 1 FREN315 The Politics of the French Language and the Birth of the French State 1 FREN316 Women Writing in the Renaissance 1 FREN317 The New World Bites Back: Cannibalism and the Colonial Encounter 1 FREN330 Lancelot, Guinevere, Grail: Enigma in the Romances of Chretien de Troyes 1 FREN333 Asia and the Making of France 1 FREN334 Days and Knights of the Round Table 1 FREN356 From the Diary to the Stage: Women Writers and Literary Genres from the 17th to the 21st Centuries 1 FREN357 Autobiography and Photography; Text and Image 1 FREN372 Exoticism: Imaginary Geographies in 18th- and 19th-Century French Literature 1 FREN379 Literature and Crisis 1 FREN391 Diderot: An Encyclopedic Mind 1 FREN397 Forbidden Love: From the Middle Ages to the French Revolution 1 FREN399 French Histories: National Identity and Narratives since the Third Republic 1 GRST320 Places of Remembrance: Historical Consciousness in Germany 1 GRST335 Writing between Cultures: German Literature and Film by Authors of Foreign Descent 1 GRST342 Empire, Memory, Translation: A Seminar on the Rings of Saturn 1 GRST386 German Romanticism: Disenchantment and Re-enchantment 1 GRST390 Romanticism-Realism-Modernism 1 ITAL223 Home Movies: Italian "Families" on Film 1 ITAL241 Antonioni and Cinema of the Environment 1 ITAL260 Castles of Cards: Italian Romance Epic Storytelling Lab 1 RL&L123Z Love, Sex, and Marriage in Renaissance Europe 1 RL&L234 Cuneiform to Kindle: Fragments of a Material History of Literature 1 RL&L236 Don Quixote: How to Read the Ultimate Novel 1 SPAN230 Heroes, Lovers, and Swindlers: Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Literature and History 1 SPAN231 Classic Spanish Plays: Love, Violence, and (Poetic) Justice on the Early Modern Stage 1 SPAN236 Cervantes 1 SPAN250 Modern Spain: Literature, Painting, and the Arts in Their Historical Context 1 SPAN254 The World of Federico García Lorca: Tradition and Modernity in the Spanish Avant-Garde 1 SPAN257 Performing Ethnicity: Gypsies and the Culture of Flamenco in Spain 1 SPAN260 Between Word and World: Major Spanish Poets of the 20th Century 1 SPAN264 Orientalism: Spain and Africa 1 - Capstone Project. A two-semester capstone project on a topic chosen in discussion with the COL major advisor, supervised by a professor with expertise appropriate to the project. This project should bring together the student’s work in the COL with their own intellectual journey. The capstone is taken on either the “Thesis Track” or “Essay Track”
- Study abroad, in the spring semester of the junior year (or in certain situations, in the summer following the sophomore or junior year), usually in Europe or in another country (if approved by the director of the COL) where the major’s selected foreign language is spoken.
- One comprehensive examination in November/December of the junior year, covering the texts read in the first three colloquia.
In all these contexts, much emphasis is put on the development of skills in writing, speaking, and analytical argument. Students are encouraged to take intellectual risks, and for this reason letter grades are not given in courses taken for COL major credit; also, COL seminars generally require papers rather than final examinations. Instead of giving grades, tutors write detailed evaluations of their students’ work at the end of each semester, and these are kept on record (and discussed with each student upon request). Our general goal is cultivation of “the educated imagination.”
Courses that students take as first-years before their declaration of the COL major cannot count for major credit or as an elective. The four electives required are designed to be taken in conjunction with the COL colloquium to foster intellectual synergy for all students in the major and their cohort.
Student Learning Goals
The College of Letters (COL) is a three-year, interdisciplinary major for the study of European literature, history, and philosophy, from antiquity to the present. During these three years, students learn how to think and write critically about texts in relation to their contexts and influences—both European and non-European—and in relation to the disciplines that shape and are shaped by them.
Through a required sequence of five colloquia in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, the 19th and then the 20th and 21st centuries, students learn about the emergence of the constitutive idea of Europe out of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, and the contested history of Europe’s diverse and changing social norms and cultural expressions. Over these three years, students also learn about the emergence and change of the disciplines as well as the forms of argumentation associated with each. Collaborative team-teaching in the first three colloquia fosters this pedagogical goal, ensuring that distinct disciplinary perspectives are both represented in conversation and in the classroom. Finally, majors become proficient in a foreign language through study abroad, where they also deepen their knowledge of another culture.
Assessment of these goals takes place continuously over the three years of the major. In lieu of grades, students receive detailed written evaluations for each of their COL courses, which address both written work and class participation. Study abroad is required in the second semester of the junior year, and in order to be accepted for the study abroad program of their choosing, students must prove that they have acquired the necessary level of language proficiency. When abroad they take courses taught in the foreign language and when they return they must continue to maintain proficiency by taking at least one upper-level seminar in that language. Toward the end of the fall semester of their junior year, majors take comprehensive examinations that are planned, administered, and graded by two external examiners, representing different disciplines and with specializations in different time periods. The written portion of the comprehensive exam tests knowledge of the material covered in the first three colloquia and evaluates the students’ ability to analyze and draw from a variety of sources in order to develop and support coherent, integrative, and interdisciplinary arguments about them. The oral portion of the exam tests the students’ ability to orally defend and/or expand their arguments in a face-to-face conversation. In keeping with the COL’s preference for evaluations over grades, the examiners’ grading scale of Credit, Honors, and High Honors accompanies a written evaluation of each student’s work on both parts of the exam. During the senior year, students must complete an honors project in their choice of disciplines and media. Senior theses (taking place over two semesters) are evaluated by two professors who are not the student’s advisor, in order to assure an objective assessment. One of the two evaluators is always a non-COL professor. Honors essays (over one semester) require one evaluating professor who is not the advisor.
By virtue of the Junior Comprehensive Examinations, the COL also undergoes its own yearly self-evaluation. The evaluations written for each student by the external examiners are also made available to the COL director, who looks to see if there is a trend in the overall strengths and weaknesses among the students. In addition, the examiners are asked to give their assessment of the entire COL program, first in a meeting with us and then in a letter that they may write together or individually. These assessments are shared with the department as a whole and any suggestions for changes to the program or the teaching are taken seriously. Indeed, it is because of these yearly assessments that we have made significant changes in our curriculum and, most notably, in the sequence of the colloquia.
Additional Information
Life in COL. The College of Letters attempts to integrate the social and intellectual lives of its members by inviting guest lecturers and by providing opportunities for students and faculty to meet such guests (and one another) informally. There are also regular informal social gatherings in the College of Letters library. The structure of the College of Letters and the smallness of its classes bring about a close rapport between tutors and students and a lively and continuing dialogue among students of different classes.
After graduation. The academic standards of the College of Letters are reflected in the fact that its graduates have consistently entered the best graduate and professional schools, including schools of law, medicine, and business administration, as well as communications and the liberal arts. They also have won national fellowships and scholarships.