Independent Study
» English Department I.S. Handbook
» English
Department I.S. Titles
All College of Wooster students participate in three semesters of Independent
Study (I.S.) by completing a research or writing project of their own
choosing under the direction of a faculty adviser. In the English department,
the first I.S. course focuses on the tools and skills needed to work with
language and literary texts. This course assists students in choosing,
developing, and
defending their own critical stances.
Senior projects reflect the range, diversity and creative imagination
of the department’s students and faculty. Recent I.S. projects have
included a study of the impact of modernist art on poetry, an investigation
of Asian- American women writers, analyses of film adaptations of novels,
and collections of students’ own short stories or poems. Katherine
Rybak ’99 wrote about some novelists’ use of time and memory
in The Survival of Past Images;
Greta Dishong ’02 composed short stories for her I.S., entitled Birthright;
and Daniel Bartha ’03 analyzed travel narratives of John Steinbeck and
William Least Heat-
Moon for his I.S., Little Ol’ Excursion Trips. Whatever the topic,
the I.S.
experience hones skills in research,
argument, analysis, writing, and self-expression — skills valuable in graduate
school and the workplace. |
