>>The English Department website

Sample Courses:
  • EGL-301. Fiction Workshop. Features critiques of students' stories; for students with some experience and a serious interest in writing fiction.
  • EGL-238. Jewish Women Writers. This study of Jewish women’s writing addresses how the question of religion complicates female representations of gender, nationality, class, sexual orientation and ethnicity.
  • EGL-304. American Heartbeat: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder. This seminar takes a close look at the writers of the Beat generation as well as some who were influenced by them in the context of the cultural history of the 1950s and 1960s.
  • EGL-298-01. Radical Rhetoric. An exploration of radical rhetoric as practiced by a range of writers throughout history to the present.
  • EGL-267. Philosophical Fiction. An examination of works of fiction in which philosophy or philosophical concepts play a significant role; authors may include Descartes, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky, Borges, Calvino, Lem, and Le Guin.
  • EGL-254. Narratives of Haunting in U.S. Ethnic Literature. Examines the theme of haunting in contemporary U.S. ethnic literature by such authors as Lan Cao, Nora Okja Keller, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cynthia Ozick, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros and Leslie Marmon Silko.
  • EGL-253. Desire, Incest, Cross-dressing and Homo-erotica: Identity Politics in the Early American Sentimental Novel. Explores disjunctions between the sentimental structure of the early American novel and its contradictory attitudes toward liberty and self-expression.
  • EGL-211. British Literature in Historical Context: Romanticism. An investigation of the various causes that were envisioned, promoted and enacted during this era, and their often wide-ranging and revolutionary effects; author selections may include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley and Keats.
  • EGL-247. Irish Literature and Film. An introduction to the field of Irish Studies, examining how issues relating to language, identity and nationhood are intimately connected in Irish literature and film.
  • EGL-240. Black Women Writers. An introduction to the major themes and concerns of 20th and 21st century African American women writers, using a variety of genres by such writers as Frances Harper, Sojourner Truth, Anne Spencer, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Gloria Naylor and Octavia Butler.
  • EGL-203. British Literature in Historical Context: The Age of Heroes. The literature of the Anglo-Saxon era, which, despite (or perhaps because of) successive waves of foreign invasion and political disunity, developed arguably the most distinctive and sophisticated culture in early medieval Europe.
After Union:
After Union
  • Associate Editor, Pearson Education
  • Marketing Assistant, LEGO Systems Inc
  • Senior Web Writer and Editor, Quinnipiac University
  • Speech Language Pathologist, Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 8th Grade English Language Arts Teacher
  • Senior Producer, Hot Snakes Media television concepts
  • Director of Admissions, Champlain College
  • Communications Associate, American Cancer Society

English

Great literature engages the mind and the heart in search of answers to some of life's toughest questions. Who am I, and what has shaped me? What gives life meaning? What is love? Justice? Evil? Literature confronts and expresses the most fundamental quandary of all: what it means to be human.

As an English major at Union, you will study how great authors, from Keats to Maxine Hong Kingston, have wrestled with such questions. You will tackle a broad range of topics, including historical, cultural, gender and author studies.

Explore diverse cultures in "Discourses on the Vietnam War," "Jewish Women Writers," "Asian American Literature and Film” or "Irish Literature and Sexual Identity."  Delve into the relationship between culture and literature in a seminar on the Beatles.  Or make your own claims about what it means to be human through creative writing workshops in a range of genres, including fiction, non-fiction prose and poetry.

Through intensive reading, writing, research projects, oral presentations and discussions with your peers and professors, you will sharpen your analytical eye, hone your persuasive and writing skills, and develop your critical thinking skills.

English majors regularly present at Union's Steinmetz Research Symposium each spring. Topics have included "The Scottish Curse,"  "Melville, Romanticism and the Scientific Imagination," "Poetry's Broadening Sexual Definitions” and "Challenging the Glorification of Humanity in Human and Monster Literature."

Our program is also rich in study abroad opportunities and visiting writers. Literary figures such as Maya Angelou, Andrea Barrett (a Union alumna), Andre Dubus III and Richard Russo have visited campus to talk with students and give readings.

English majors contribute to the campus literary magazine, the Idol, and student newspaper, Concordiensis, as well as poetry and fiction readings. They edit and frequently publish in The Minerva Review, an undergraduate scholarly journal for students from Union, Hamilton, Siena, Skidmore and Wellesley.

Our graduates work in advertising, business, communications, journalism, publishing, radio and television. They also pursue degrees in education and business and go on to law and medical schools. Whatever their profession, they reap the rewards of their commitment to critical analysis, clear thought and speech, and precise, graceful writing.