Study English at University of Vermont

UVM’s English Department offers instruction in a wide range of areas of literary and cultural studies, as well as creative writing and composition and rhetoric. One of the oldest English departments in the nation, the Department offers courses ranging from those in major figures (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison), eras (Renaissance, Victorian, Modern), and genres (novel, drama, poetry), through offerings in critical theory and literatures outside the established canon (including women’s writing, the history and criticism of film and television, and post-colonial Anglophone literatures in Africa and the Caribbean), to courses in creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Uniting most of these offerings is a commitment to understanding the richness and workings of texts, with film, television, popular culture and women’s studies extending that commitment into new and exciting dimensions. The Department is justly proud of its offerings in African-American, post-colonial, and women’s writing.
The English Department is made up of 28 tenured and tenure-track professors, each with particular scholarly and teaching interests, 13 lecturers, and 11 graduate teaching fellows in its M.A. program. Because the faculty is committed to teaching at all levels, introductory through graduate, students have access to any professor in the department through courses, advising, and independent study work. With rare exceptions, class size is held to 35 and, more usually, 30, and advanced writing courses and seminars are limited to 18. The department currently has over 400 English majors, making it one of the largest in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Our recently redesigned major places priority on two things: paying close attention to texts and their contexts, and developing approaches to works of literature and cultural production informed by recent developments in literary theory. The choices within the major are many and flexible: It is possible to be an English major with a strong concentration in such special interests as creative writing or the literature of a specific period. Each semester the Deparment offers between 30 and 40 different courses for English majors, with multiple sections of the most popular courses so that classes are small enough to enable professors to emphasize discussion and pay attention to individual students’ work.

English majors can participate in the Buckham Program of Study Abroad, a year- or semester-long program of study at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. There is a special yearly Buckham Seminar in which a distinguished visitor meets with a seminar for a week or more - recent years have seen the novelists John Edgar Wideman, Amitav Ghosh, Stephen King and William Kennedy, and the scholars Stanley Fish, Sacvan Bercovitch, Houston Baker, and Barbara Johnson come to campus. Majors can also sign up for College Honors, Departmental Honors, and independent study. The Department supports an English Majors’ Union, a literary magazine, and student-sponsored colloquia with faculty. Each fall begins with an English majors’ barbeque attended by over 200 students and faculty, and each spring ends with Departmental Honors Day, when the department awards a variety of prizes in recognition of scholarly and artistic achievement.
Besides graduate study in a number of fields such as medicine, law, journalism, education, or of course English, English majors from UVM’s English Department have followed a variety of interesting career paths. About 30 percent enter education in a variety of capacities; 26 percent turn to business and finance; and 14 percent are involved in journalism, publishing, public relations, or advertising. sizing as it does precision of thought and clarity of expression, as well as critical thinking and research methods-is fine preparation for a variety of careers.
The scholarship of the English faculty covers most facets of literary, critical, cultural studies, and composition study, as well as significant creative publication in fiction, non-fiction narrative, and poetry. On the fourth floor of the Old Mill, where the English Department is located, two bookcases display the books which have been recently authored by members of the Department.

 
For further information contact:  
Professor Lisa Schnell,
Head of Undergraduate Advising
Department of English
University of Vermont
400 Old Mill
94 University Place
Burlington, VT 05405-0114
Telephone: (802) 656-3056
e-mail: lschnell@uvm.edu