ENGLISH
Choose to study English. Equip yourself with curiosity, charisma and an insatiable appetite for questioning. Work alongside English teachers who are guides, curators and creators. Learn complementary and contradictory ways of navigating literature and the world. Challenge yourself. Sound educated. Live with grit and serendipity. Navigate archives. Step into imaginative worlds. Realize that you are hurling through the universe at 67,000 miles an hour on a heaping mass of magma. Your humanity isn’t something to be squandered.
As an English major, you will immerse yourself in ambiguity, subjectivity, poetry, industry, the Greeks and the geeks, truth, pain, loss, criticism (and all the other –isms embedded therein), imagination, memory, art, rhetoric, love, pity, joy, despair, philosophy, war, identity, race, colonialism, food, politics, technology, high and low culture, gender, senses, myth, cycles of the moon, grief, wanderings, getting lost, death and the general feeling of being cast aside like a quick-stop Styrofoam coffee cup on the interstate. Or if lists aren’t your thing, you will pause, pay attention and let the world intrude.
Let others chase the glitterings of the here-and-now like a herd of cats chasing mirrored lights on the ground. Your interests reside elsewhere. Feast at the banquet of Homer and, just as eagerly, devour the works of Alice Munro, Ralph Ellison, Cormac McCarthy and Leslie Marmon Silko! Declare English now.
POTENTIAL JOB ASSIGNMENTS
When you major in English at the Air Force Academy, you prepare yourself to join a long line of leaders throughout history. Our majors serve as pilots, navigators, missile officers, intelligence officers, maintenance officers, personnel officers, communication officers, and in many other fields. Some receive advanced degrees in English and return to the Academy as faculty members.
Majoring in English also prepares you for life beyond the Air Force. English was the course of study of Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Disney Corporation; General Martin Dempsey, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Eric Shinseki, former Secretary of Veteran Affairs; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; and many other leaders in every sector of industry and public life.
SAMPLE COURSES
- Creating Meaning: Introduction to Digital Literatures/Digital Arts
- Contemporary Literature: The Short-Story Cycle
- Race, Difference, and Monstrosity from Frankenstein to Native Son
- William Faulkner and W.E.B. DuBois: Civil Rights Between Literary History and Historiography
- American and Anglophone Literary Modernism
- Women’s Combat Literature: Real and Fictitious Women Who Push Boundaries in War
SUGGESTED COURSE SEQUENCE
| 4th CLASS YEAR (FRESHMAN) | 3RD CLASS YEAR (SOPHOMORE) | 2ND CLASS YEAR (JUNIOR) | 1ST CLASS YEAR (SENIOR) |
| Beh Sci 110
Chem 100 Com Sci 110 English 111 Engr 101 For Lang 1 For Lang 2 History 100 Math 141 Math 142 Physics 110 |
Chem 200
Econ 201 English 241 English 342 Engr Mech 220 For Lang For Lang Law 220 MSS 200 Physics 215 Pol Sci 211 Sys Opt Geo 310 |
Aero Engr 315
Beh Sci 310 ECE 315 English 343 English 344 English 390 English Opt English Opt English Opt English Opt Math 300 Philos 310 |
Academy Opt
Astro Engr 310 Biology 315 English 353 English 465 English 490 English 465/474/484 English Opt English Opt History 300 Mgt 400 MSS 415/416 Soc Sci 412 |
For full program requirements and course descriptions, download the current Curriculum Handbook.
VALIDATION AND TRANSFER CREDITS
We offer validation and transfer credit for English 111 (Introductory Composition and Research) for the following:
- AP score of 5 (on Language/Composition or Literature/Composition)
- IB score of 5+ (at HL level)
- A- or higher in a comparable English composition course at an accredited four-year college or university
- A- or higher in an English composition course at an accredited two-year college AND also scored exceptionally well on the verbal component of the SAT or ACT exam (700+ SAT or 30+ ACT)
The Academy registrar receives text scores directly from the College Board. If your scores don’t make it, contact the English 111 course director.
College courses that are taught in a high school and given concurrent credit do not qualify for transfer credit. We only award transfer credit for courses that include a variety of written genres, instruction in argumentation and a significant research paper. We will check transcripts submitted to Academy to determine whether cadets meet these requirements. Once the academic year begins, if a cadet feels that he or she was eligible for transfer credit but has not received it, he or she should bring relevant documents (college transcript, course description, and in some cases standardized test scores) to the English 111 Course Director.
CONTACT US
Capt Megan Kahn
Instructor and Advisor-in-Charge
megan.kahn@usafa.edu
(719) 333-8511