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Department of English

What CAN'T you do with an English major?

The English major develops essential skills—adept written and oral communication, critical and creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, understanding of diversity—that all employers highly value. Our majors have gone on to successful careers in everything from law, business, advertising, publishing, teaching, and advocacy, to medicine and public health.

Where Will Your Degree Take You?

An English degree provides you with essential skills like oral and written communication, critical thinking, creativity, and cultural knowledge that will help you stand out in today’s competitive job market. Learn more about how you can use your degree.

Career Resources

Alumni Highlights

Featured Courses

An illustration depicting bohemianism in the early 1900s
Radicals & Pretenders: Bohemianism in Modern Literature
This course immerses you in the history and philosophy of bohemianism to understand the nature of their rebellions. Are bohemians really radicals or just pretenders?
Multiple overlapping comic books on a display shelf
Comic Books as Literature, TV & Cinema
A course that exposes students to the impact of comic books, graphic novels, and manga on popular culture and teaches them how to discuss this medium academically.
an illustration of the black arts movement showing black people with fists in the air and the word unite depicted graphically in the background
The Black Arts Movement
This course discusses The Black Arts Movement; described as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power Movement,” which sowed the seeds of revolution in the sense of the word—written, spoken, and drawn.
An image of a folio containing the works of William Shakespeare including a portrait of him
Shakespeare: History and Tragedies
A course that focuses on Shakespeare’s history plays, where that world is first defined and his mature tragedies where it finds its finest expression.
A photograph of a statue of Phillis Wheatley, a black poet who was a slave
Black Lit Matters
A course that traces the art and authority of the African American literary tradition from the 18th to the 21st century.
Drawings of classic monsters from literature such as Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and bride and the wolfman
English Literature: Monsters and the Monstrous
This course examines the intersections of science, technology, and the monstrous in the 19th‐ and early 20th‐centuries and examines the fears that scientific theorizing and experimentation unleashed, revealing themselves in "monster" literature.
an illustration from a victorian era crime novel depicting a man and woman who is covering their faces with a handheld fan
Victorian Crime, Mystery, and Detection
A course exploring crime and mystery fiction, and beyond while exploring urban population growth, the evolution of the police force and crime-fighting methods, and changes in theory and practice involving punishment.
Classic and modern books stacked on a bookshelf
Writing Back: Revisiting the Classics
This course explores classic, canonical literary texts compared to their modern rewritings, in which a later author borrows the characters or narrative from a previous text and rewrites it from a different, more progressive angle.
An image of mural from the US-Mexico border depicting the struggles and revolutionary attitudes of those who has suffered colonialism at the US and Mexican border
Literature of the U.S.-Mexico Border
This course explores the literature of Chicanx authors writing about the culture of the borderland, from the violent creation of the US-Mexico border in 1848 to the present day.