Department of English
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Welcome to the English Department!
Our fabulous English faculty are active scholars and creative writers who conduct research and publish in a wide variety of literary and cultural traditions, including fiction, poetry and non-fiction, English, American, and world literatures, gender studies, American studies, media studies, critical race studies, popular culture and music, book history, rhetoric and composition, and literary theory, among others. Our English faculty are also deeply-committed teachers, and they bring their wide range of expertise into the classroom in ways that both engage and challenge students.
Students who major in English at UMass Lowell can expect a curriculum that combines solid foundations in their chosen concentration with diverse opportunities for advanced study, research, writing, and practical experience. Students can expect small class sizes. Beginning in Spring 2012, nearly all classes for majors will also have 19 students or fewer, which provides for meaningful interaction with faculty and fellow students.
The English Department offers four ways to major in English, with concentrations in Literature, Theatre Arts, Creative Writing, and Journalism and Professional Writing. We also offer a minor in English, a concentration in the university's Bachelor of Liberal Arts program, and many courses that fulfill core General Education requirements in the Arts and Humanities for all UMass Lowell undergraduates. In all of these curricula and course offerings, students develop critical thinking, reading, and writing skills that can serve them well throughout their academic career and beyond the university.
The Department is also home to the First-Year Writing Program, which serves every undergraduate student on campus through the sequence of College Writing I and II and related courses. The FYWP is home to the Common Text, a community-building First-Year Experience initiative in which all first-year students read a Common Text in conjunction with their college writing course. This year's Common Text is Persepolis, the award-winning graphic novel about a young woman growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Past titles have included Nickeled and Dimed, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Class Matters, and The Declaration of Independence.
Like the rest of the university, our Department has a strong commitment to community engagement through its curriculum and its connections to literary, arts, and theatrical events. The Department has three courses devoted to service learning, and has longstanding commitments to the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival, the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, and the Lowell National Historical Park. And every year, we host a number of events at the university, including "Writers on Campus" fiction and poetry readings, theatre performances, and academic conferences.
The Department welcomes you to the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and we hope we see you in our classes, at our events, or around the great city of Lowell.