Welcome to the new English Department web pages.

In the English Department, we read widely across different genres and periods of English, American, and Anglophone literature and explore numerous approaches to literary study with a distinguished, internationally renowned faculty.  Our strength is our range and the excitement we bring to our reading:  we have among us historicists and formalists, theorists and poets,  postcolonialists and feminists; our teaching and writing concern not just poetry, drama and prose, but film, music, art, architecture, and technology.  What we share is a passion for talking about the works that inspire and fascinate us and for thinking about what and how they mean.  

Our courses cover more than two thousand years of literature and culture, and our teaching formats range from large lectures, to small seminars, to one-on-one advising.  A typical program of study embraces the most hallowed texts of the western literary tradition as well as new or newly- rediscovered works.  Students acquire a common critical vocabulary and join faculty in debating enduring questions regarding the interactions of art, society, and language.

All majors enroll in one of a diverse array of junior seminars coupling the study of a specific subject with methodological training in critical reading and writing.  Majors also pursue independent work on subjects of their own choosing in collaboration with the faculty during their junior and senior years, and they may choose concentrations that involve the study of English-language literature in conjunction with creative writing, theater, American studies, or a second national literature.  We encourage majors to pursue interdisciplinary work, particularly through the certificate programs, such as American Studies, Center for African American Studies, Creative Writing, Judaic Studies, Theater and Dance, Women and Gender, Medieval Studies, Visual Arts, and European Cultural Studies.

Our students graduate as incisive readers, cogent thinkers, and powerful writers, well prepared for any profession requiring a rigorous understanding and mastery of language. They also carry with them a lasting ability to take informed pleasure in all forms of literature, in the process of writing, and in the meanings and powers of culture. While some graduates pursue careers in teaching, many go on to become leaders in such fields as law, medicine, business, and the creative arts.

To learn more about our program, contact our Departmental Representative < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it > or our Undergraduate Administrator < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >.