Literature provides an entrance to emotional truths about the world and the human condition.  It takes us to our multiple selves and to the multiple, many-layered, and interacting worlds in which we live.  It is a realm of expression in which the imagination and the imaginary hold sway — thus an aesthetic adventure in which individual writers experiment with form and invent a literary language that is richer and more complex than the everyday, and also in which collective cultures take shape and communicate to readers pleasures of recognition and discovery.

Major in Literature

Students in the Literature major study oral and written texts that have significant aesthetic interest and that stimulate critical thinking about how human beings represent the experience of living. The Literature major focuses on world literature, taught in English translation, and on Anglophone literature (literature from around the world originally written in English), that is part of world literature. Where possible, students with fluency in other languages may read assigned texts in the original language.

The Literature program puts into dialogue literary texts relevant to the range of students and cultures represented at NYU Abu Dhabi. The courses ask such questions as: How does literature capture the mood and direction of a culture? Can literature have an impact on society? What makes a text "literary"? What transforms a body of texts into "literature"? How do different formal strategies affect the ways in which the reader receives a text?

The goals of the major are to foster students’ skills as interpreters of literature and as analysts of cultures, increase appreciation of literary form and knowledge about literature, understand literature’s relationship to social and political contexts, and promote lucid and forceful writing. Students majoring in Literature are also strongly encouraged to take a course in Creative Writing and to pursue additional language studies in conjunction with the major.

A major in Literature prepares students for a wide variety of careers in business, politics, and education where critical thinking, excellent writing skills, the ability to do discerning research, to read deeply and creatively, to be receptive to the perspectives of others, and to present ideas coherently and convincingly are expected.