Program Overview

English Program

The English program at Vanderbilt University is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of literature and the literary imagination. The program enables students to become conversant with non-Western literary texts and new media forms, while gaining a solid grasp of English literary histories.

Program Description

The English departments interdisciplinary and transnational focus allows majors to explore fiction, poetry, new media, memoirs, and non-fiction, ranging from the personal to the political, from historical texts to contemporary social problems such as AI and climate change. The departments courses aim to give students sophisticated skills in literary and cultural analysisskills that equip them for a lifetime of ongoing education.

Tracks

The English major encourages students to personalize their studies while still acquiring the breadth of knowledge across histories, genres, and media platforms. The program offers three distinct tracks, allowing students to focus on their areas of interest.

Courses

The English department teaches an array of courses designed for majors, minors, and students from across the university. Courses include:

• Survey courses focused on various literary traditions
• Seminars devoted to particular literary problems, writers, or movements
• Recent courses have addressed the literature of such urgent complexities as:
  • Literature and Public Policy
  • Histories and Futures of Abolition
  • The Divided Metropolis: Design and Culture in the City
  • Race and the Technological Imagination
  • Contemporary U.S. Climate Fiction
• Other courses include:
  • African American Women Writers
  • The Art of Blogging
  • Literature of the Caribbean
  • Genetics in Literature, Film, and Media
• Courses focusing on specific authors such as Tony Morrison, Langston Hughes, Earnest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, and John Milton

Honors Program

In the English Honors program, qualified students pursue advanced studies in small, intensive discussion sections and write a senior Honors thesis on a subject they choose. Recent projects include:

• Scenes of Sacrifice: Violence as Female Agency in Wide Sargasso Sea and Beloved
• Aristotle Meets Apple: Rhetoric in the Podcast
• Learning How to Fall (fiction)
• Worm-Guts and Buried Spirits: The Nonhuman in The Hamlet and Sing, Unburied, Sing
• Comptons Human Sacrifice: Kendrick Lamar and the Identity of Exile
• Into the Sun We Go Blindly: Poems
• Techno-Existentialism
• Portrait of a Grandmother (literary nonfiction)
• A Study in Empathy: Cognitive Disorders Exposed in First-Person Narrators
• Whats So Funny? From the Origins to the Contemporary Era of Sketch Comedy (Followed by a sketch comedy of my own)
• Unsophisticated Productions: Unpacking the Elusive Politics of the Scarlet Pimpernel

Special Opportunities

The English department encourages students to participate in study abroad programs that enhance their exploration of literature and culture. The departments Visiting Writers Series is one of the most extensive reading series in the nation, bringing renowned and up-and-coming writers to campus to give public readings and to meet with students.

After Vanderbilt

A degree in English prepares students for a wide range of careers. Graduates have gone on to work in medicine, law, business, entrepreneurship, digital media, publishing, and journalism, as well as to pursue advanced degrees in either creative writing or English literature.

Faculty

The English faculty are authors of more than one hundred books and winners of numerous awards and recognitions. They are devoted to both teaching and scholarship, bringing their original works into the classroom and inviting students to share in the process of research and discovery.