English

Go to: Division of Literature and Languages

Faculty

Jay M. Dickson
The novel, British modernism, Victorian literature, queer studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies.

Michael Faletra
Medieval British literatures, Chaucer, Dante, Arthurian literature, theology and literature, Celtic studies, and children’s literatures.

Maureen Harkin
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and visual art, Romanticism, literary theory, Irish literature, film. On sabbatical 2024-25.

Sara Jaffe
See Creative Writing.

Joan Naviyuk Kane
See Creative Writing.

Nathalia King
Literary, narrative, and rhetorical theory, the novel, text-image relations, and theories of consciousness.

Laura Leibman
Early American literature and culture, Jewish studies, American poetry, poetics and ethnopoetics, Native American literature and culture, material culture, gender theory, American studies. On leave 2024-25.

Lucía Martínez Valdivia
Early modern lyric and poetics, sound studies, Reformation literature and culture, book history, music and literature, aesthetic theory, phenomenology, cognitive poetics.

Peter Miller
Poetry and poetics, critical prosody, Romanticism and its legacies, postcolonial poetry, media and sound studies, music and literature, digital humanities and textual studies.

Kritish Rajbhandari
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century postcolonial and diasporic literatures, Indian Ocean literature and culture, postcolonial theory, South Asian literature, translation.

Robert Ribera
Documentary, animation history, adaptation studies, Italian Cinema, class and labor in American cinema, sound and music in film.

Peter Rock
See Creative Writing.

Pancho Savery
African American literature, American literature and cultural history, modern and contemporary literature, creative writing, American Indian fiction. On sabbatical 2023-25.

Dustin Simpson
American modernist poetry, nineteenth-century French poetry, contemporary poetry in English, theories of lyric, history and forms of lyric, love poetry.

Sarah Wagner-McCoy
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fiction, transatlantic literature and culture, Irish drama and Irish studies, pastoral and environmental writing, the politics of classical education in postbellum America.

Simone Waller
Early modern prose, early modern drama, Shakespeare, literature of the English Reformation, early modern historiography, Tudor political literature, publics and the public sphere.

Curriculum

The English department offers courses in English and American literature; some courses also include works from other national literatures. The department offers introductory courses in drama, fiction, and poetry most semesters: nonmajors and prospective majors should begin their study of literature with these courses. Two of these introductory courses are required for the major; they are also a prerequisite for most of the department’s upper-division offerings.

In each academic year, the department offers at least 12 courses at the upper-division level. Among these are a junior seminar (intended principally for majors) and courses in American and British literature in various genres from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century. Some courses are listed under general rubrics such as “Studies in Shakespeare” or “Poetry and History.” (Students may register for more than one course under the same rubric, provided that the subject matter differs.) Courses in the catalog not offered in the current academic year will normally be offered in one of the next two academic years.

In consultation with their academic advisers, students majoring in English should plan to take courses from a range of genres, topics, and periods within the department. Students may also include in the major one 300-level course in creative writing, or, for students pursuing the major with a concentration in global literature, one 300-level course in translation given in other departments within the Division of Literature and Languages. (Students with special curricular needs may inquire with the English department to allow a second 300-level course in literature in translation to count toward the major).

200-level courses are intended primarily for first-year students and sophomores; 300-level courses usually require two 200-level courses as a prerequisite. The department recommends that all majors take at least one course in each of the principal literary genres: poetry, drama, and fiction. Most English courses are offered with variable topics and may be repeated for credit, unless otherwise noted.

Junior Qualifying Examination

Each student must pass a junior qualifying examination before beginning the thesis. The qualifying exam is generally taken at the end of March or at the beginning of April, over a weekend in the spring semester of the junior year, although it is offered also at the beginning of each semester. The exam usually consists of three parts, involving questions about a piece of fiction, two poems, and a critical or theoretical essay (which are handed out to be read before taking the exam). Students are given a weekend over which to work on the qualifying exam, although no more than six hours are to be spent writing on the examination questions.

Study Abroad

Majors or prospective majors intending to study abroad should confer with an adviser in the English department. Because of the integrated structure of its curriculum, and the importance of the junior seminar, the department strongly recommends that students taking a year abroad do so in their sophomore year.

Programs

Majors

Minors

English Minor