Featured Content Slideshow

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Between the ‘American Century’ and the ‘Asian Century’: Toward a New Paradigm for Understanding Racial Inequality

The "Challenging Racial Knowledge in the University" speaker series fosters expansive cross-disciplinary conversations around race.

Jackson Holbert

Jackson Holbert '17 - Poetry Reading

Tuesday, March 19, 5:30 pm, Rapaporte Treasure Hall. Author of Winter Stranger, winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Join us!

screenshot from Nai Kim's online dissertation - the words "On Powerful Vignettes in Vignettes" overlaid over photos of people walking in the street

English PhD Students Think Outside the Dissertation Box

Responding to changes in the world and in academic job markets, Brandeis’s English faculty decided to change the structure and requirements of their PhD program -- such as allowing dissertations beyond the traditional book-length manuscript.

wood panel background with text in center that says "Climate Change Theater Action at Brandeis University: The Plays and Podcasts" and has a flower photo beside it

Climate Change Theater Action

In fall semester 2023, participants in ENG 113b, Performing Climate Justice, created radio play adaptations of short dramatic scripts commissioned by Climate Change Theatre Action.

Immerse Yourself in Literature and Culture

Studying English can help you perfect your understanding of a language you already use and enhance your appreciation for cultures you inhabit and/or encounter. The Brandeis Department of English trains students not only in skills for the present but also in deep knowledge of the past. 

We teach and study poetry and prose, as well as journalism, film, television and new media, and place these texts in historical and geographic context.

We study the past because literary works shape themselves as a tradition in which dialogue, disruption, revision and influence occur over time; and because, for many of us, context is integral to comprehending the particular novel, poem or essay under study. Extension over the globe complements immersion in the past. Wherever people rely on English — wherever some version of the tongue is spoken and written — we consider it our mission to study the literature and culture in which and to which it is put to use. 

Literary Genres

We teach a wide variety of genres within literature in English. The main rubrics might be poetry, prose, drama and media, under which a vast array of overlapping and heterogeneous subcategories will fall. These will put the kinds of qualities that we study to different use, depending on whether they are fictional or not, political or not, persuasive or expressive, public or private, philosophical or historical, religious or secular. The discrimination and analysis of these qualities and categories, their similarities and differences, belong to literary (and media) criticism, and we therefore teach the practice of criticism, but we do so by also teaching its theory, its history, and its philosophy. None of these categories is hard and fast in practice, and in different contexts any of them might merge with any other.

Degree Programs

The Department of English offers the following degree programs:

English Dept. Podcast Series

OpenBook: An English Dept. Podcast

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!