Professor Kim was awarded a prestigious fellowship at the Folger, in Washington, D.C., for her project "Chaucer's Black London." She will be a Fellow at the Folger in 2025-26.
Professor Anjaria and co-editor Professor Anjali Nerlekar, Rutgers, were awarded the 2025 René Wellek Prize for Best Edited Essay Collection by the American Comparative Literature Association.
Professor Targoff is co-leading a Nomis Foundation project, “Petrarch in Global Translation: A Genealogy of Western Love.”
Professor Burt's novel "A Moment's Surrender" will be published by Press Americana.
Our courses explore the shapeshifting force of the literary imagination. A rigorous literary education prepares you for projects and professions that involve creativity, cultural research, interpretive sophistication, original writing, historical inquiry, dynamic public speaking, and aesthetic judgment. No algorithm can replace these embodied human skills.
The imaginative texts we confront challenge us to think beyond the present and the self. In their aesthetic force, they create charged situations for us to articulate and revise our ethical commitments, analyze our relations to others, and reckon with the narratives that shape our world. The Department of English is home for students who seek deep understanding of the cultural sphere and its intricate, precarious world-building projects.
Collectively, faculty in English hold expertise in dozens of research fields, across genres and media. We create new courses nearly every year to engage the urgent questions that literature continues to pose to us. These are issues that cross disciplines, into psychology, philosophy, social and political theory, environmental studies, film studies, law, history, religious studies, and more. Many of our courses are cross-listed and many of our students also study and work in these other areas. The English major is especially close to the creative writing major, and we cultivate a dynamic exchange between creative writing workshops and academic courses in literary theory and history.
Students in the Department of English have several opportunities to design advanced research projects for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. This intensive research, with careful mentorship and advising, is excellent preparation for making compelling contributions to many professional and intellectual communities.
The Department of English offers the following degree programs:
In this series of podcasts, Undergraduate Department Representatives from English and Creative Writing interview professors to help students get to know the faculty better both as scholars and as people. Listen to these podcasts to hear a little bit more about your professors than you may learn in the classroom!