Department Head

Avishek Ganguly

LAS Concentration Coordinator

Mairead Byrne

• Learn more about Literary Arts and Studies at RISD

• Department Location and Contacts

Concentration

The Department of Literary Arts and Studies offers courses open to undergraduate and graduate students and an undergraduate concentration (like a minor). The requirements for the concentration can be found here.

Lecture/Discussion

Most electives, which have an enrollment cap of twenty-five students, are a combination of lecture and discussion. Students write essays in response to the assigned readings and participate in class discussion. In all literature courses, professors help students improve the quality and depth of their critical thinking and writing. Some courses may require exams.

Seminars

A seminar is a small class of no more than fifteen students conducted at an advanced level which requires each student’s independent research, a presentation of this work to the class, and a lengthy end-of-term research paper. Seminars are open to students at the sophomore level and above, unless instructor permission is granted.

Writing Workshops

A writing workshop is a small class devoted to creating, critiquing, and revising student work. The Department offers workshops in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. All these courses require reading, writing exercises, and a revised portfolio, and all work is both workshopped in class and critiqued by the instructor. Advanced Workshops assume that students have completed a Beginning Workshop or its equivalent.