Mission Statement    

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Mission Statement

The department is dedicated to promoting the study of literature, language, and writing at both the graduate and undergraduate levels; to creating new knowledge in literary studies, rhetoric, and writing; and to improving methods by which this knowledge is communicated to students.

The primary goal of the department's programs is to educate students to respond to the needs of a contemporary information age from the perspective of a broad-based literary and cultural heritage rooted in the values shared with other humanities disciplines.

Training in critical thinking, reading, and writing prepares students to conduct research and engage in creative problem-solving; to analyze, interpret, and synthesize information; to conduct critical evaluations; and to plan and execute tasks with accuracy, concision, and clarity. The research and creative activities of the faculty support this teaching function, and also advance and reinterpret the fields in which they work.

In addition to its undergraduate and graduate major and certificate programs, the department teaches writing to all first-year students admitted to the baccalaureate colleges, and trains beginning teachers in the composition program; provides courses to fulfill many of the humanities, literature, and general education requirements of the baccalaureate colleges; provides courses that meet the needs of the university's service learning and learning communities initiatives and the college's freshman seminar initiative; and provides advanced writing instruction to students in education, engineering, and business.

The department serves its students and faculty, as well as students and faculty from around the university and people from the greater Cincinnati community, through programs and events sponsored by the George Elliston Poetry Foundation, the Ropes Endowment, and the Helen Weinberger Center for the Study of Drama and Playwriting. Individual faculty serve the university and broader community in diverse ways. On campus, they may be active in committee and other collaborative work -- searches, curricular issues, department head and program reviews, college and university governance matters and union activities. The department serves the local and regional communities through its public programs, through cooperation with Cincinnati Public Schools and such other organizations as the Mercantile Library, and through the professionally-related activities of numerous individual faculty members.

Reading, writing, and thinking are virtually the only activities that are common to all the liberal arts. The first two of these are the special (though not exclusive) province of the department, and the third, especially through the application of literary analysis to texts, is also a fundamental aspect of our activity. We are, therefore, part of the core of a liberal arts program wherever and however it is taught.