<p>I’m planning to major in either History/English/Art History in college… I honestly don’t know yet. Does Dartmouth have strong departments and programs in these subjects?</p>
<p>history and art history, definitely strong
english, not too strong… not nearly as diverse offering of courses as i would have liked… and apparently there’s an ongoing shift to profs that are more interested in lit theory and criticism than lit itself.</p>
<p>i thought english was a popular major at Dartmouth, if not one of their strongest field</p>
<p>History is a very strong department. Especially good are Profs. Calloway, Estabrook, Koop, Kremer, Lagomarsino, and Simons.</p>
<p>English is generally good, but depends on what you want to specialize in. Creative writing is particularly strong: I’ve heard good things about Mathis, Huntington and Gocsik. Cook is an institution. The rest of the department is still strong, but did take a huge hit with the retirement of Saccio, who was undoubtedly one of the best teachers of Shakespeare in the country.</p>
<p>Hey wg, hope you are having a good winter break as you are starting to finish things up.</p>
<p>D took classes with Cook and Favors and found both of them to be really amazing and said she would take a class with them in a heart beat. She considered being an english minor, but wasn’t particulary crazy about the concentration.</p>
<p>the english dept is great, has awesome profs. at the same time, there is little diversity of courses… stuff outside the “canon”–pope, shakespeare, etc, stuff you’d find everywhere–is mainly “issues” oriented (ethnic and gender studies, post colonial, etc) and litcrit courses. along with that, too many regulations and requirements to pursue a major.</p>
<p>it’s just a personal preference maybe. but especially compared to my experiences with the government dept (double major), i preferred the gov dept so much more.</p>
<p>and as wg said, creative writing is pretty sweet. awesome profs…</p>