Why English?

At a time when everyone writes, English students write better. At a time when everyone is bombarded by streams of information, English students excel at identifying and interpreting the most significant. At a time of competing discourses on the world's complex problems, English students analyze them historically and critically to understand their ideology, their rhetoric, and their impact on our lives.

English faculty study and teach language, literature, film, performance, and oral, print, and digital media, along with the scholarship, criticism, and theory that deepens our understanding of these modalities. The department offers an undergraduate minor and a three-year MFA in creative writing, and undergraduate majors and minors, an MA, and a PhD in literature. Undergraduates can also take clusters of courses in literature, literacy, and public engagement with internships in community organizations; and in editing-publishing which includes production of the award-winning Ivory Tower literary magazine. Graduate students can take a seminar in literary magazine production and serve as editors of the Great River Review.

English graduates are not only teachers, professors, novelists, poets, screenwriters, editors, and journalists, but also advertising executives, bankers, hedge fund managers, lawyers, doctors, health industry executives, government agency directors, and policy experts. Our 8,600 alums work across the continents.

The age of discourse—in all of its oral, printed, digital, and performative genres—is the age of English.

A degree in English can take you anywhere!