English

As an English major at Union, you will study how great authors, from Melville to Morrison, have used literature to confront and engage with timeless questions about love, justice, truth and evil.

In small classes that encourage and illuminate the exchange of multiple perspectives, you will be exposed to historical, cultural, gender and author studies across continents and traditions. Guided by our esteemed faculty, you will learn to read thoughtfully, think analytically, and write and communicate with clarity. Through intensive reading, writing, research projects, oral presentations and discussions with your peers and professors, you will gain a nuanced understanding of the range and complexity of human behavior and endeavors.

Our courses cover a wide array of historical and cultural areas, such as Asian American Literature and Film, Discourses on the Vietnam War, Introduction to Black Poetry, Irish Literature and Film, Jewish Women Writers, Victorian Detective Fiction, Literature and Psychoanalysis, and Seminar on the Beatles and African-American Music. Or make your own claims about what it means to be human through creative writing workshops in fiction, non-fiction prose and poetry.

English majors regularly present at the Steinmetz Symposium research day each spring. Topics have included “Melville, Romanticism and the Scientific Imagination,” “Poetry’s Broadening Sexual Definitions” and “Post-9/11 Politics in Superhero Comics, TV and Film.” Our students have held internships at Condé Nast, Martha Stewart Living, NBC, Y&R global marketing and Hearst, among other businesses in the communications and publishing world.

English majors contribute to the campus literary magazine, the Idol, and the student newspaper, Concordiensis, as well as poetry and fiction readings. They edit and publish in The Minerva Review, an undergraduate scholarly journal, and the Garnet yearbook. Students who live in Dickens House, one of our many theme houses, host events based on literary works and thought. Students also enjoy guest lectures and readings by prominent literary figures. Among those who have come to campus in recent years to talk with students and give readings and class lectures are Maya Angelou, Andrea Barrett ’72, Andre Dubus III, Anne Enright, Nikki Giovanni, Richard Russo and Colm Tóibín.