Why English?

English majors talking at a table with a flower bouquet and slim stemware

Welcome to the Department of English. On this site, you’ll find a description of the major and minor, a list of our faculty and courses, and a calendar of our events. Pathways is a series of portraits of majors talking about their careers inside McCosh Hall, how they shape the department’s wide offerings into a program of their own. Futures gives a view of what comes next, the many possibilities for work and life that open out from the study of literature, language, and culture. Our graduates are doctors, lawyers, activists, professors — all of them equipped with critical tools for analysis and interpretation, all of them carrying a mental library of great books, books to think with all their lives.