As a student in Literary Arts, you are in a unique position among graduate students. You have the opportunity to choose a number of your eight semester-long courses from any university department or program. Though the Graduate School requires that you take classes appropriate to your graduate status, you have the freedom to design much of your curriculum. When a new class of undergraduates arrives at Brown, each of them, too, must choose courses without the constricting guidelines of distribution requirements. The first-year undergraduates, however, have eight semesters with which to experiment. Since you have just four courses to work with, and nothing like the undergraduate’s safety net of faculty and peer advising, you will want to make good choices the first and every time. As long as you feel your courses will help you in your writing, the department will support your choice.

Our statements parallel and incorporate official statements, when appropriate. Through we have tried not to omit any crucial information, we have undoubtedly missed things that you will want to know. The important thing is to ask questions. Your workshop leader, your professors, the chair, the academic program director, the director of graduate studies, your colleagues, students in other programs, are all invaluable sources of information. Your official advisor each semester is your workshop leader; your secondary advisors are the chair and the director of graduate studies; you should feel free, however, to seek advice from any member of the department faculty.