 We live in a world made out of stories new experiences are interpreted in terms of old stories All of our knowledge is contained in stories and the mental mechanisms that construct them and retrieve them That's not the musing of a literature professor It's a direct quote from computer scientist Roger shank a pioneer of artificial intelligence And that insight has been echoed by psychologists economists and communications professionals When we study literature, we're not just reading for fun We're developing the mental tools that we need to understand the world around us Reading a novel creates new connections between brain networks that persist long after we close the book Poetry describes familiar things in unfamiliar ways it makes us stop and wonder about the things we thought we already knew and Literature builds social intelligence After reading a difficult novel people are able to recognize subtle emotions in other people and understand complex social Situations better than if they had read nonfiction With all these strategic mental benefits, it's a little wonder this kind of expertise is highly sought after in our information economy That's why we at the English department here at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi have designed the core literature program for people of all backgrounds all majors and all career paths The next semester you can train your critical awareness your verbal ability and your social intelligence by reading and discussing some of the most challenging and rewarding works of literature The core literature program is really committed to developing skills It will be useful to students as they move through the university and into their perspective careers Some of the skills you might develop in core literature classes include critical and analytical thinking skills According to a study by the Association of Colleges and Universities in 2013 93% of employers claim that quote a demonstrated capacity to think critically communicate clearly and solve complex problems Is more important than a job candidates undergraduate major Reading literature is relevant to any field Because when you learn to read literature well, what you're really learning how to do is think critically about stories that are being told to you So whether it's a medical case study or a business pitch or a psychological study You're really being told a story about the world And if you can learn to think critically about who's telling you that story How they're telling you that story and why they're telling you that story in a particular way You gain a new kind of power to think more critically about the motivations behind the story and to start to evaluate Whether or not you accept the stories about the world that you're being told Why do we need literature? Outside of the major why are we interested in English if we're not English majors? Why should we study and read books? We're not going to do that for a living. I think the answer is simple books teach us how to empathize They teach us how to interact with other people to see their perspective To understand where they're coming from these are all important aspects of being a human being in the world But it's also analytical You'll have you'll have come in knowing what text you've read and then you'll discuss it You'll break it down your learning skills that you're going to apply later on it and that was a totally different perspective It was a bunch of text that I never would have read on my own that were outside my wheelhouse so to speak And so I learned to view things through a different lens As part of the core requirement for language philosophy and culture students must complete three credit hours in one of the following courses English 2316 literature and culture English 2332 literature of the Western world to the Renaissance or English 2333 Literature of the Western world from the Enlightenment to the present Each class is going to be different There's a lot of variety in these classes and students have lots of pick from and it's always a great experience Learning from professors who are passionate about the research interests that they have