Languages & Literature

 
Dear Students, 

Welcome to the Division of Languages and Literature. You have cast your canoe into a vast and beautiful river, and our faculty will serve as your guides. Your guides know this river very well, and we will help you explore all of its twists and turns, those that run through wild rapids, deep channels, and enchanting valleys.  We can teach you to write more fluently, read more analytically, think more critically, and speak more articulately. And we can teach you to do all of this in English and three modern foreign
languages.

When you graduate from one or more of our programs, you will have been praised, persuaded and even pushed to your limits, and you will finish your journey with a smile on your face knowing that you are stronger and wiser because you traveled this way. Like Huck Finn who navigated another river that led to personal and intellectual growth, you will do the same. Indeed, you will be better educated.

After you finish your chosen course of study, several opportunities await you.  Many of you will teach in different settings and at different levels.  Others of you will become lawyers, editors, translators, journalists,  actors and politicians.  Some of you will join the ranks of the clergy, and others will become  missionaries. All of you will do writing of some sort: novels, poems, news stories, scholarly  work, advertising, feature stories, sermons, and film scripts, to mention a few.  Some of  you will be trained for specific jobs, teaching in public schools for example.  All of you will  learn skills that will help you succeed in whatever profession you choose to enter.  Jobs become obsolete, but thinking, reading and writing skills never do.  When honed with dedication and passion, these skills will only get better.

We hope this is the beginning of a lifelong relationship with our Division: its faculty, staff, alumni, and students.  We encourage you to work closely with your advisor and instructors.  We are all very approachable, and we are available to help you, to serve as your mentors along this river from its headwaters, around its dangerous whirlpools and down to its wide mouth.

Sincerely,

 
           William S. Hays, Chair 
           Division of Languages and Literature

 
          DSU Box 3215

          Ward Hall # 15
          Cleveland, MS  38733