Department of English

Undergraduate degrees: B.A.
Undergraduate minor

Much More Than Shakespeare and Iambic Pentameter

At the University of Oregon, the Department of English is committed to offering students a broad foundation in traditional British, American, and Anglophone literary studies, but the program also reaches far beyond those more traditional aspects of English subject matter.  Writing and literary criticism, ethnic and world literatures, film studies, folklore, and gender—all of these aspects are included in the English curriculum at the UO.

English remains a subject steeped in tradition. At the University of Oregon, the English department strives to maintain that tradition while modernizing its scope. You can study eighteenth-century literature, or Native American representation in film, modern literature, and pop culture. You can hone your writing skills as you steep yourself in literature. The composition program offers electives in many specific types of writing such as technical, science, and business writing. The department strives to offer a curriculum that is interesting, elegant, and practical.

The English department houses the film studies and folklore studies programs. You can take courses that explore the literature of a variety of ethnic groups, or focus your area of study on the feminist experience. The department incorporates American and British literary traditions, while reflecting the growing interest in world views and cross-cultural studies. Course offerings and faculty research interests illustrate these changing perspectives.

If you have strong writing skills, you could work in the department as a writing associate, providing help to other students on writing assignments, projects, and theses. The English department encourages and supports the associates by partnering them with a faculty sponsor.

If you want to explore a wide range of literature, love to read, want to deepen your sensitivity to language, and hope to sharpen your writing, thinking, and speaking skills, the English major is the perfect place for you.

• Curriculum focuses include women’s literature, film, folklore, ecocriticism, ethnic literatures, medieval studies, rhetoric and composition, and literary theory
• The department publishes the award-winning literary journal Northwest Review, among the nation's oldest and most esteemed literary reviews, now in its fourth decade of publication
• The composition program offers courses in research techniques, as well as scientific, technical, and business writing
• Internships are available in community literacy, literary editing, writing, tutoring, and peer tutoring
• The UO's Center for Teaching Writing, based in the English department, provides a resource for all students on campus who need help with writing
• The Moore Speaker Series invites distinguished speakers from across the globe to speak about their literary work

Sample Courses

Hands-on Learning

Majors in the department can participate in the writing associates program. Writing associates are available to help students develop the writing skills necessary to succeed in the major. Associates provide peer responses to student work and help edit and revise papers and projects. The associates work with the students of a faculty sponsor. They help to identify such concerns in writing as theme and organization. They help students with these bigger ideas before moving on to more detail-oriented changes such as grammar and syntax. If you have strong writing and comprehension skills, you can put them to use in this terrific teaching and learning experience.

Interdisciplinary Opportunities

Strong connections between the English department and these affiliated centers and programs add to the interdisciplinary nature of the program:

Centers

• Center for Teaching Writing
• Oregon Humanities Center
• Center for the Study of Women in Society
• Center for Race, Ethnicity, & Sexuality Studies

Programs

• Comparative Literature
  
• Creative Writing
  
• Environmental Studies
  
• Ethnic Studies
• Folklore
• Humanities
  
• Medieval Studies
  
• Oregon Writing Project
• Women's and Gender Studies
• Robert D. Clark Honors College

Student Work

When Shannon Boyer won the 2006 Kidd Prize for fiction, she decided, together with the prize’s second place winner for poetry, Hajara Quinn, to use the money to start their own creative literary journal called Dry Erase. “Starting it took most of our winnings,” Boyer says. “We’ll publish most anything, and it’s a spot for students to get their work out there.”

Boyer decided on the English program because of the vast array of classes, and because it offered small workshops where she could delve into her self-exploration as a writer. But, she says, there is more to English than writing prizewinning stories and analyzing literature. “English makes you a critical reader and writer,” she says. “But, English also helps you with your problem-solving skills in any situation.”

“I have loved to write as long as I can remember,” says Chelsea Maricle. “And I just eat up books, so a degree in English was a no-brainer.” Maricle is also majoring in International Studies and will receive a minor in dance. Last year Maricle took a class that ended up being her favorite of her undergraduate career: Literature Editing for Northwest Review.

“It was a really good experience,” she says. “The class gives you a competitive edge for getting a job. Most jobs and internships don’t want you unless you have experience, but how are you supposed to get it in no one will hire you? It’s a Catch-22. So, this class was great at giving you real-world experience.”

Nicole Dalton has always known that she wants to be a teacher. “I took a teaching class in high school and decided that I wanted to teach English instead of math and science,” she says. “I decided on English because it is hard. We talk about complex things and it is a very rewarding mix of challenge and reward.”

Dalton volunteers at a local high school, working with students to improve their reading and writing skills. Her involvement at the school started as an internship requirement for one of her English classes, but she enjoyed the work so much she continued as a volunteer after the class ended. “It’s fun because I started working there as a sophomore, when a lot of the students I was helping were also sophomores, so we’re going to graduate at the same time.” Dalton's advice for new students is to “go to office hours and build relationships with your professors. Office hours are great; they really help you finalize your thoughts.” 

Selected Faculty Work

Professor John Gage’s interests are in rhetorical theory, composition pedagogy, and twentieth-century American poetry. His publications include The Shape of Reason; In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism; “An Adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspectives;” and “Rhetoric and Dialectic in Robert Frost’s ‘A Masque of Reason’.”

Associate Professor Shari Huhndorf’s primary fields of focus are ethnic literature and film studies. Her other interests include Native American literature, history, and politics; film, autobiography, American cultural history and popular culture. Huhndorf is currently working on Topographies of Race and Gender: Mapping Cultural Representations (co-edited with Patricia Penn Hilden).

Professor Linda Kintz’s fields of focus are modern literature, British and American ethnic literature, literary theory, and women and literature. Kintz’s interests include performance studies, psychoanalytic criticism, cultural studies, and the rhetoric and signifying systems of political economy and the religious right.

Associate Professor Ben Saunders specializes in Renaissance/Early Modern studies. His primary areas of interest are the poetry and drama of the English Renaissance, and in the study of sexuality. His other interests include poetry and poetics, literary theory, the history of pornography, the relation of violence to the sacred, and Anglo-American popular music and graphic storytelling.

Career Opportunities

A background in English can take you so many places. You might continue writing and research through a master’s or doctoral program. An English degree provides a strong foundation for a career in law. You might be interested in filmmaking or film criticism. You can use an English background to develop community literacy programs. English hones essential reading, writing, and comprehension skills that will serve you well, whether you’re writing the great American novel, teaching elementary grammar, or editing websites.