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About The Program

College of Arts and Sciences

English

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NSU's English program is structured to help students tailor their major to suit their needs. Each student chooses from several program emphases, each of which prioritizes different skill sets and content to suit students’ own career goals.

NSU's English degree pairs well with other specializations, and students are encouraged to take minors, or even to double major in areas such as history, business, political science, and art design.

Many English majors go on to earn master's degrees in education or business. Explore NSU's graduate programs to learn more.

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Literature (BA) - Students interested in an English B.A. with literature emphasis prepare themselves for post-graduate ambitions that include law school and graduate study in English (in pursuit of the M.A. or Ph.D. in English). At Northern, this emphasis includes extra surveys in British and American literature as well as training in literary theory and an elective literature course.

English Literature Emphasis (BA) Course Requirements

English Literature Emphasis (BA) Plan of Study

English Minor Course Requirements

Creative Writing (BA) - Students interested in an English B.A. with a creative writing emphasis may focus on at least two of three creative genres: non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. This emphasis also includes instruction in literary criticism and an additional survey of British literature.

English Creative Writing Emphasis (BA) Course Requirements

English Creative Writing Emphasis (BA) Plan of Study

Teaching (BA) - Students interested in the Teaching Emphasis within the BA degree in English prepare themselves either for the teaching they are likely to be called upon to do as graduate students in English (in pursuit of the BA or PhD) or for tutoring or teaching that does not require state certification. This emphasis includes coursework in linguistics (modern grammar), rhetorical theory, and additional surveys of British and American literature. Students wishing to earn a state-certified teaching degree should consider the English B.S.Ed. degree instead of the B.A.

English with Teaching Emphasis (BA) Course Requirements

English with Teaching Emphasis (BA) Plan of Study

Teaching English as a Second Language (BA) - Students interested in the Teaching English as a Second Language Emphasis within the BA degree in English prepare themselves for teaching English either in the U.S. or abroad to students coming to English as their second language. This emphasis includes linguistics coursework (modern grammar, second-language development, and methods of teaching English as a second language) and cultural anthropology. Students preparing for careers in this area may also wish to pursue NSU’s twelve-credit Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Teaching English as a Second Language Emphasis (BA) Course Requirements

Teaching English as a Second Language Emphasis (BA) Plan of Study

Professional Writing (BA) - Students interested in an English B.A. with professional writing emphasis prepare themselves for business-oriented careers that include advertising, publicity, and grant writing. This emphasis includes coursework in graphic design, HTML, grant writing, and rhetorical theory. Students wishing to pursue a career in professional writing may wish to consider NSU’s minor in Professional Writing and Rhetoric, which may be taken along with the B.A. in English or any other four-year program.

English Professional Writing Emphasis (BA) Course Requirements

English Professional Writing Emphasis (BA) Plan of Study

Professional Writing and Rhetoric Minor Course Requirements

Media Studies (BA) - Students interested in an English B.A. with media studies emphasis receive interdisciplinary instruction in writing, design, programming, and marketing - skills that are in demand in the evolving world of media and media production. Courses offer theory and hands-on practice, teaching students to create content and reflect upon media while acquiring skills in communication, problem solving, planning, designing, writing, editing, producing, and collaborating. Career options include journalist, web content manager, advertising or public relations representative, art designer, news analyst/producer, production assistant, broadcast programmer, editor, publisher, and teacher.

English Media Studies Emphasis (BA) Course Requirements

English Media Studies Emphasis (BA) Plan of Study

Careers

Literature - News reporter, writer, editor, lawyer, marketing and public relations specialist, business owner, human resource specialist, web designer, university admissions consultant, sales representative, academic adviser, librarian, teacher, and college instructor

Creative Writing - News reporter, writer, editor, lawyer, marketing and public relations specialist, business owner, human resource specialist, web designer, university admissions consultant, sales representative, academic adviser, librarian, teacher, college instructor, artist, broadcaster, entertainer, administration and sales

Teaching BA – Educator, teaching English as a second language in the U.S. or abroad, employee development or training specialist, interviewer, education administrator, personnel specialist, public relations specialist, sales representative, media relations representative, non-profit administrator or educational consultant

TESOL - School educator, adult educator, employee development or training specialist, interviewer, education administrator, personnel specialist, public relations specialist, sales representative, media relations representative, non-profit administrator or educational consultant

Professional Writing - Technical writer and/or editor, medical writer, science writer, publications specialist, media and marketing associate, editorial assistant, copywriter, research assistant, reporter

Media Studies - News reporter, writer, editor, lawyer, marketing and public relations specialist, creative writer/copywriter and editor, fiction and nonfiction writer/editor

For more information on careers in your major or help choosing a major, contact the NSU Career Center.

Internships

NSU's English program supports career readiness through internships that require students to apply their skills in the workplace. A three-credit internship is required of all English majors.

Internship requirements vary based on the chosen emphasis.

Potential internships include tutoring in the NSU Writing Center; co-editing the English Department’s student-run literary publication, Northern Lights, or The Exponent; the NSU student newspaper; assisting in communications and publicity at an area business or volunteer agency; working with regional marketing firms; tutoring in the NSU Writing Center; assisting an English faculty member in the delivery of a literature or writing course; writer/copy editor at the hometown newspaper; grants assistance at the university; public relations for the community theater; or web design and archival work in a museum.

Scholarships

Arts and Sciences Scholarships

NSU Scholarships

Program Success/Outcomes

View this post on Instagram

“I knew after graduating high school that I wanted to pursue degrees in both English ed and musical theatre. Once I started looking at colleges, however, I saw a lot of schools that had a great program in one or the other, but not both. Northern, on the other hand, had a fantastic education program as well as a fantastic theatre program. I originally thought that I wanted to attend a larger university, but by attending a smaller school like Northern, I have had opportunities that I never would have gotten at a larger university such as bigger and more challenging roles in theatre productions, and most recently the experience of directing my first show. These types of hands-on experiences throughout my curriculum have challenged me, but also pushed me way more than I would have been pushed at a university with a more lecture-based curriculum. In my year and a half here, I have already noticed an exponential change in everything from my writing to my acting. Northern has been a perfect fit for me and I can’t imagine attending anywhere else.” – Judah McKinley, Pierre #beNORTHERN #unleashYOURpotential #NorthernStateU

A post shared by Northern State University (@northernstateu) on Dec 13, 2019 at 10:35am PST

Contact Information

For more information about this degree, contact Jessica Ness, or call 605-626-2272 or 605-626-7900.

Our Faculty

Megan Baule

Department

Center for Statewide E-learning

Programs

English

Lysbeth Em Benkert

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

Resume/CV

Dr. Lysbeth Em Benkert arrived at Northern State University in the fall of 1995, one year after receiving her Ph.D from Washington State University.

Her specializations include rhetorical theory and early modern literature, including Shakespeare. She also teaches creative writing. In addition to her academic scholarship, she has published original poems in a variety of literary magazines and a chapbook titled #girl stuff (Dancing Girl Press, 2018).

Andrzej Duszenko

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

M.A., Wroclaw University, Poland

Ph.D, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

CV/Resume

Dr. Andrzej Duszenko has been a faculty member at Northern since 1989. In addition to teaching, he has served on Northern's Information Technology Planning Committee, the South Dakota Board of Regents' Web Advisory Council and the NSU Taskforce for Mobile Computing. He is website advisor for the NSU English Club and Northern Lights, and an editor of the NSU College of Arts and Sciences newsletter.

Publications

"Abnihilization of the Etym: Joyce, Rutherford and Particle Physics." Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies 46.2 (2016).

"Contemporary Science and the Image of the World." Stopping the Process? Contemporary Views on Art and Exhibitions. Helsinki: The Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, 1998.

"The Relativity Theory in Finnegans Wake." James Joyce Quarterly 32.1 (1994).

"The Joyce of Science: Quantum Physics in Finnegans Wake." Irish University Review 24.2 (1994).

...

Elizabeth Haller

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

Pre-Journalism

B.A. University of Northern Colorado

M.A. Central Michigan University

Ph.D. Kent State University

Dr. Haller is an associate professor of English at Northern, having joined the faculty in 2009. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Northern Colorado (1999), an M.A. in English literature from Central Michigan University (2003), and a Ph.D. in English literature from Kent State University (2009). Dr. Haller has taught university-level English literature and composition since 2003. Before teaching, she was a legal assistant for an environmental law firm in Denver. Dr. Haller was editor in chief of the international pedagogical e-journal Academic Exchange Extra, and worked as a staff writer and freelance journalist for The Muskegon Chronicle, with several of her articles picked up by the Associated Press.

Dr. Haller serves on campus committees and is advisor for NSU's student newspaper, The Exponent. She also has organized and led a two-week summer literary tour of Europe for students and community members, traveling to England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Her areas of specialization include the writings of the Brontë sisters, 19th-century British literature, psychoanalytic criticism, trauma theory, Tolkien scholarship, and Harry Potter scholarship.

Research Interests

Social influences and implications of the Victorian novel

19th-century gender studies

The labor reform movement

Awards/Recognition

Dr. Haller's article "Guise and the Act of Concealment in Jane Eyre" was recognized by literary critic Harold Bloom as recommended reading in his critical study Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations), New York: Chelsea House Publications, 2007.

Dr. Haller received the 2007 Mid-Atlantic Women's Studies Association's Award for Scholarly Excellence in Women's Studies for her conference paper "Red Flood of Reform: Lola Ridge's The Ghetto and the Role of Women in the Labor...

Benjamin Harley

Department

Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

B.A., Benedictine University

M.A., University of Northern Colorado

Ph.D, University of South Carolina

Resume/CV

Dr. Ben Harley joined the Northern faculty as an assistant professor of English in 2018. His work focuses on rhetoric and composition - ways in which humans create and circulate texts in order to persuade and be persuaded. Many of his courses focus not only on creating persuasive texts but also on critically and ethically engaging with traditional and new media. His research largely focuses on public rhetorics, both digital and traditional, with his most recent work focusing on how the material nature of sound intimately affects bodies and can be used to create diverse communities. He has published in an array of scholarly journals, including Present Tense, The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, and Hybrid Pedagogy.

Students in all of his classes can expect to write traditional essays as well as multimodal texts that utilize a variety of communication channels (textual, visual, aural, gestural, etc.) to engage actual audiences. Students are asked to take a rhetorical approach to composition, considering their rhetorical situation in terms of audience, purpose, contexts, design, and the moment of encounter.

Learn more about his scholarship and teaching at bharleyrhetorics.com.

Brooke C. Nelson

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

Communication Studies

English

M.A. University of South Florida

B.A. Northern State University

Brooke C. Nelson began as an instructor of English, reading, and communication studies at Northern's Huron Community Campus in August 2020. The previous spring, she received an M.A. in applied linguistics - TESL from University of South Florida in Tampa. In 2017, she graduated with a B.A. in English and TESOL certificate from Northern.

Before pursuing her M.A., she taught at a private boarding school in south central China. As an instructor of EFL speaking classes, she worked with students in tenth grade and select sections of seventh and eighth grades. As one of the few foreign teachers in the area, she focused lessons on the development of communicative competence. She also volunteered with the primary school's English Club, hosting game nights with the primary school English instructor.

Research Interests

Her research interests lie in sociolinguistics - specifically, discourse analysis and pragmatics. She has conducted and presented work on creativity, multimodality, and impoliteness in the context of online sexual harassment. She is currently exploring the mitigation strategies used in online contexts.

Pen Pearson

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

Resume/CV

Dr. Pen Pearson is a professor of English at Northern. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Dakota (2001), an M.A. in English from South Dakota State University (1995), and a B.A. in English from Briar Cliff University (1988).

She teaches poetry writing, fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, American literature, and composition.

Dr. Pearson also advises Northern Lights, Northern’s student literary magazine, and mentors high school English teachers in Northern’s Rising Scholar program.

Her novel about Edwardian poet Charlotte Mew, Bloomsbury’s Late Rose, was published in 2019 (Chickadee Prince Books). Dr. Pearson has also published two books of poetry: Trespass to Chattel (Atomic Press) and Poetry as Liturgy (Mellen Poetry Press). Her current project is a memoir about her late father.

Her academic interests include American Renaissance poetry and prose, the history of Western poetics, stylistic linguistics, lexicography, literary theory, comparative mythology, and classic Hollywood film.

Peter Ramey

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

M.A., Ph.D., University of Missouri, Columbia

Dr. Peter Ramey came to NSU in August 2012. His research interests include Old English language and literature, aesthetics, and liturgy and hymnody. He is NSU's English Club advisor.

Publications

“Crafting Strangeness: Wonder Terminology in the Exeter Book Riddles and the Anglo-Latin Enigmata.” Review of English Studies 69.289 (2017): 201-15.

“The Riddle of Beauty: The Aesthetics of Wrætlic in Old English Verse.” Modern Philology 114.3 (2017): 457-81.

“The Poetics of Caxton’s ‘Publique’: The Construction of Audience in the Prologues of William Caxton.” English Studies 96.7 (2015): 731-46.

“Writing Speaks: Oral Poetics and Writing Technology in the Exeter Book Riddles.” Philological Quarterly 92.3 (2013): 335-56.

“The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama.” Comparative Drama 47.1 (2013): 55-83.

“Variation and the Poetics of Oral Performance in Cædmon’s Hymn.” Neophilologus 96.3 (2012): 441-56.

“Beowulf’s Singers of Tales as Hyperlinks.” Oral Tradition 26.2 (2011): 619-24.

“Oral Theory and Medieval Literature.” Co-authored with John Miles Foley. Medieval Oral Literature. Ed. Karl Reichl. 71-102. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2011.

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