Creative Writing Major

English Overview

Undergraduate Programs within the English Department

The English program offers courses for majors and minors and electives for non-majors. The program is designed to develop a sense of literature, literary history, and sensitivity to cultural values. Students will also acquire the ability to analyze effectively and to write persuasively, skills that are valuable to almost any vocation. Our program offers a range of courses, from foundational areas, such as Shakespeare, Romanticism, and global literature, to emergent fields, such as ecocriticism, book history, critical race theory, and sexuality studies. 

We advise English majors and minors to take two historical surveys, one pre-1850 and one post-1850, early in their programs. A 100-level genre course is another good introductory class for students contemplating the major. Once a student declares (or knows they intend to declare) the major, they should take the “gateway” course, ENG 199: The Text, the World, and the Critic, ideally by spring semester of their sophomore year.

In addition, we have a Creative Writing major and minor with courses in poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction taught by professional writers. These courses guide students to examine literary works as a writer to apply what they learn to their own writing. Interactive workshops provide the feedback that helps students to develop and refine their work. Please contact Coordinator of Creative Writing, Phil Lemos, for more information.

Our program provides a number of scholarly opportunities, such as participation in Sigma Tau Delta (our national Honors Society), our Capstone in English, and our Honors program. We also have connections to a number of internships, such as the London Internship Program, which offers positions in the fields of theater and journalism, in addition to internships with local newspapers and journals, as well as national organizations. Our program has strong ties with the American Antiquarian Society, which offers seminars and the opportunity to participate in archival research. For those interested in studying abroad, the English Department has a partner program at the University of East Anglia and Advanced Studies in English in Bath, England. 

For more information, please visit the English Department’s website.

Creative Writing Major Requirements

English Department Faculty

English & Creative Writing Courses

• ENG 020 - Introduction to Literary Analysis
• CRW 100 - “Burn Away All the Peripherals”: Introduction to Creative Writing
• CRW 106 - Creative Writing: Fiction
• CRW 107 - Creative Writing: Poetry
• ENG 110 - Lyric Architectures: Reading Poetry
• CRW 111 - Creative Writing: Nonfiction
• ENG 115 - Speculative Fiction
• ENG 120 - Introduction to Shakespeare
• ENG 123 - Voicing the Verse: Poetry in Performance
• ENG 131 - Border Crossings: Narratives of Travel, Exile, and Immigration
• ENG 133 - Women Writers I
• ENG 134 - Survey of Women Writers II
• ENG 135 - The Short Story
• ENG 139 - Queer Literature
• ENG 140 - British Literature I
• ENG 141 - British Literature II
• ENG 164 - The Gothic
• ENG 165 - American Ethnic Writers
• ENG 180 - American Literature I
• ENG 181 - Major American Writers II
• ENG 182 - African American Literature I
• ENG 183 - African American Literature II
• CRW 206 - Writing the Novel
• CRW 207 - Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction
• CRW 208 - Writing the Borderlands
• CRW 211 - Creative Writing: Advanced Poetry
• CRW 213 - Utopias/Dystopias: Writing Resistance and Identity
• CRW 214 - Creative Writing Capstone
• ENG 225 - American Print Culture 1700-1900
• ENG 227 - The Book in the Early Modern World
• ENG 230 - Reading Voraciously: Food and Literature in the 20th Century
• ENG 231 - Queer Modernisms
• ENG 232 - Modernist Literature
• ENG 234 - Virginia Woolf
• ENG 238 - Contemporary Latino/a Literature
• ENG 248 - Contemporary Literary Theory
• ENG 250 - Medieval Literature
• ENG 253 - Advanced Studies in Shakespeare
• ENG 255 - Studies in the Renaissance
• ENG 256 - Ecologies in Crisis
• ENG 260 - Making Gender through the Eighteenth-Century Novel
• ENG 262 - Special Topics in 19th-Century British Literature
• ENG 263 - Traumatic Tales: National Trauma in Romantic Literature
• ENG 264 - Queer Victorians
• ENG 276 - Ethnic America: Literature, Theory, Politics
• ENG 279 - Fictions of Asian America
• ENG 281 - Special Topics in 19th-C American Literature
• ENG 285 - Topics in Seventeenth-Century Literature
• ENG 290 - Capstone
• ENG 292 - Toni Morrison
• ENG 293 - Special Topics in African American Literature
• ENG 297 - Honors
• ENG 298 - Internships
• ENG 299 - Directed Study
• WGS 200 - Topics in Feminist Theory