The Whitman English department has considered establishing a creative writing major, but has determined that the current creative writing opportunities are set-up to best meet students’ needs.
English professor Scott Elliot expressed the stance of the department in an e-mail.
Elliot said that the English department has hesitated to institute a creative writing major because they feel that the study of literature is integral to the development of writing skills. “Good poems, stories, and novels aren’t written in a vacuum. In order to become a viable voice in a literary tradition, a writer needs to know the best voices in that tradition,” Elliot said.
Elliot said the department is concerned with “what it means to officially declare something a major,” asking, “are courses taken outside a major program of study really less sweet, of less value than those taken to fulfill requirements for a major?”
Several other concerns arose during the English department’s discussion.
“One of the great things about creative writing courses as they now stand is that they are populated by students from a wide range of disciplines at Whitman. This makes for a wonderful diversity of voices and approaches in these classes. If we were to implement a Creative Writing major, and this major were to become popular, one of the negative results might be that only those students who were Creative Writing majors would be able to register for and take creative writing classes,” Elliot said.
Elliot believes that the current structure of classes allows students to improve their writing while also gaining expertise in other academic disciplines. “I know many students who have taken advantage of nearly all the writing courses available at Whitman during their time here and benefited enormously from these classes while also pursuing and completing established majors. I’d argue that these students are better off for having taken all the writing classes they did and also better, more well-rounded people for having completed the requirements of an established major,” Elliot said.
Elliot is emphatic about the English department’s desire to meet students’ needs. “We really do want to give our students the best possible opportunities in creative writing,” he said. He believes Whitman is currently succeeding in that aim.
“As things stand, it seems to me that those students who really want to seek out great opportunities in creative writing can find them at Whitman, even if these opportunities don’t register as official check marks on the way to completing a major,” Elliot said.
“Every year since I’ve arrived at Whitman, we’ve placed writers in good graduate programs,” added Elliot.
Drew Arnold, a senior English major who has taken intermediate and advanced creative writing classes at Whitman, agrees with Elliot that students who want to improve their writing can do so at Whitman.
. “Writing is personal work that people who are passionate will do regardless. They will seek out the classes to guide their creative work. I’m not saying that it is secondary, I am saying that people benefit from studying a wider range of things. The more you know about the world the better your writing is going to be, you don’t get that knowledge from just studying writing,” said Arnold.
Arnold does support the idea of a creative thesis option for English majors, however, and views a creative writing minor as another possible form of official acknowledgment for writing students.
“I’m a proponent of the creative thesis,” said Arnold. “A minor is a better option than a major because people have a focus besides writing,” he added.
Arnold also believes the English major serves him better in the job market than a creative writing major would: “I have the skill set, and the transcript shows I’m writing.”
Arnold values the complimentary blend of literature and writing classes: “My knowledge of English Literature has equipped me to write creatively and the workshop classes have helped me hone those skills.”
“You learn how to write by studying literature,” said Arnold.
