If you love to read great books, love to explicate and discuss these works, and if you love to write about them, the English major is for you.

Our friendly and energetic faculty look forward to meeting and talking with you about literature, which we love to teach.

We teach courses in all the periods of literature, and as an English major, you will have the opportunity to study, among other things, such classics as Beowulf (the Old English epic), Othello (Shakespeare's play about an inter-racial romance), Robinson Crusoe, Zora (the 18th-century version of "Survivor"), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (the inspiration for many monster movies), and Herman Melville's Moby Dick (you'll never look at fish the same way again).

But you will also have the opportunity to read some exciting minority literature and contemporary fiction, from the writings of Samson Occum, a Native American preacher, and the Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison to Ruth Doan MacDougall, author of The Cheerleader, a raunchy, cult classic set in New Hampshire.

We offer many special courses or electives, among them Beginning Acting, The Brontës, Chaucer, Creative Writing, James Joyce, Journalism, Politics, Islam, and Early Modern Drama, Spenser, Virginia Woolf and Her Circle, and Whitman and Dickinson.

New Communication Major Starting Fall 2010

Beginning in fall 2010, the English Department will begin offering a new major in communication. The major will provide students with a thorough grounding in written, oral, and visual communication theory and traditions.

Students will take foundational courses in communication theory, as well as literature and writing, and the option to fulfill requirements with classes in journalism, public speaking, film and other topics. In addition, students will select elective courses in their particular areas of interest, such as economics and business, psychology, politics, photography, and art.

To read an announcement about the new major, visit the communication major page.