“To read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment.” –Virginia Woolf

Our lives are shaped by the stories we tell. This makes the study of literature an urgent undertaking, as well as a richly rewarding one. Students who complete a degree in literature at the Millis Institute get to explore the big questions about what life means and why human beings are so powerfully drawn to the arts of storytelling.

Our Great Books program in the degree in literature includes small-group discussion of some of the world’s most exciting literary texts; you can find a list of the books under the Key Texts tab.

Liberal Arts degree in literature students complete a 4 unit minor in Literature and may complete a major by taking 8 or more units in literature.

Students undertaking the Oxford Summer Program degree in literature will complete 2 units as intensives and can chose from the following literature seminars:

• C.S. Lewis and the Classics
• Intellect and Imagination: the rational religion and theological stories of C.S. Lewis
• Jane Austen in Context
• Prohibition and Transgression: the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Gothic Novel
• Creative Writing
• Psychology and Literature: from Margery Kemp to Sylvia Plath

LITERATURE UNITS: