The English Department Mission Statement

The undergraduate and graduate programs in English offer a wide selection of courses in literature, rhetoric, composition, and literary and cultural theory. Their overall purpose is to enable students to understand, critique, and work in teaching, scholarship, writing, or other fields that value strong backgrounds in language, rhetoric, and the study of culture through texts and traditions of discourse. The courses and the scholarship of the faculty contribute to the advancement of knowledge by developing and disseminating significant understandings of literature, literary theory, rhetoric, composition, and the diversity of cultures. On the University level the department makes particular contribution to primary goals of the core curriculum (the development of critical thinking and reading and effective writing; and the understanding of literary forms, aesthetic principles, and diversity) and to specific undergraduate and graduate programs, including Honors, Humanities, Interdisciplinary Studies, Women’s Studies, and Teacher Education.