The English Department encourages students to engage in individualized study. With the approval of the department chair and permission of a professor who will help direct the study, the student designs an in-depth look at a topic in literature, language, or critical theory, leading to a substantial paper, series of essays, or creative project. Below is a list of a few recent independent studies:

• "The Misogynistic Tradition: A Female Voice Responds: A Comparison of Women's Lives as Represented by Boccaccio, Chaucer and Christine de Pizan."
• "Communications and Manuel De Landa's 1000 Years of Nonlinear History."
• "Studies in Twentieth Century Latin American Fiction: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Juan Rulfo, Clarice Lispector, Isabel Allende & Luisa Valenzuela."
• "Sampling Soseki."
• "Tim O'Brian and Truth."
• "Man and the Machine: Images of Artificial Intelligence in Stanley Kubrick Films."
• "The Bible as Literature."
• "Understanding O'Neill's Guilt."
• "Celtic Myth and Christian Beliefs in Contemporary Irish Literature"
• "19^th Century Russian Literature"
• "Modern Russia: Peter the Great to Pushkin"
• "Comparisons between the Southern Grotesque and Contemporary Dystopian Literature"
• "American 1920s Expatriate Literature"
• "Contemporary Japanese Literature"
• "Health and Fitness Journalism"
• "Effect of Social Media on Social Movements"
• "Sexual Transitions in the Long 18^th Century"
• "Fictional Bodies, Textual Selves: A Crisis of Control in the 19^th Century Novel"
• "Write Drunk, Edit Sober: Creating a Book of Poetry"