Since its founding almost 200 years ago, the English Department has prepared students to meet the challenges of a constantly changing and increasingly complex world. We are home to two majors (English Literature and Film and Television Studies) and four minors (English Literature, Creative Writing, Reporting and Documentary Storytelling, and Film and Television). Both of these majors and all of our minors focus on the power of texts --- whether in print, film, audio, video, or game form --- to shape our world and ourselves.
To major in English Literature is to learn from, and about, the best that writers in English have shared. UVM English Majors graduate with a sophisticated sense of the way literature enhances and helps us to understand our worlds. We offer courses that cover topics from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass and Charles Dickens to Toni Morrison, and Amitav Ghosh. These courses introduce students to the study of literary form as well as to the history and theory that opens these texts to advanced study, including feminism, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, environmental humanities, post-colonial and cultural studies. Our creative courses include introductory and advanced courses on print genres such as poetry, fiction, and memoir and new media genres such as video, film, audio and games. With our emphasis on written expression and creative writing, UVM English majors graduate with the skills needed to use language to make a difference for themselves and for their communities.
