University of Maryland English Home
English weds critical inquiry and creative expression to unleash the power of words.
The department’s award-winning faculty whose research programs reflect the vitality of the Washington, D.C.-Maryland research, art and politics corridor, prepares students for leadership roles in a range of 21st-century careers. Trained in digital and media studies, a wide variety of literary and cultural traditions, and critical race and other interdisciplinary studies, students learn how critical thinking and persuasive writing can change the world.
Prospective & Current Students
Prospective Students
Why choose the University of Maryland for English?
Our department champions innovation, diversity and flexibility in pursuit of higher education. Our 50-plus tenure-track faculty are first in their fields, with a wide-ranging and award-winning body of work in digital media, scholarly essays and books, novels, short stories and poetry.
Current Students
Current Students
Looking for information about how to declare the major, curriculum requirements or how to apply for grants and scholarships?
Find advising, program requirements, course descriptions and writing support.
Faculty & Staff Directory
Faculty, graduate student and staff directory
Search our directory to learn about our faculty, graduate students and staff.
DirectoryOur People
Recent PublicationsView All
“Postcolonially Speaking?"
A trenchant critique of Post Critique Methodologies. Special Issue on “What Is and Isn’t Changing” From MLQ (Modern Language Quarterly).
Author/Lead: Sangeeta RayHas postcolonial literary criticism been affected by the postcritical antihistoricist turn? The short answer is no. It is hard to imagine what an antihistoricist postcolonial literary criticism might look like, since any investment in the term postcolonial assumes a simultaneous commitment to history and politics. While the term from its inception has been subject to criticism, it continues to hold its own despite more recent terms like global and world. While they may signal a post-postcolonial turn, a term initially used by Erin O’Connor (2003) to critique postcolonial analyses of Victorian novels, the use of and engagement with the postcolonial still provide a methodological challenge to modes of criticism advanced under the global and the world. Postcolonial literary criticism remains attuned to questions of aesthetics and ethics.
All Death
This first-of-its-kind anthology brings together the best of contemporary queer poetry from South Asia, both from the subcontinent and its many diasporas.
Author/Lead: Aqdas AftabThe anthology features well-known voices like Hoshang Merchant, Ruth Vanita, Suniti Namjoshi, Kazim Ali, Rajiv Mohabir as well as a host of new poets. The themes range from desire and loneliness, sexual intimacy and struggles, caste and language, activism both on the streets and in the homes, the role of family both given and chosen, and heartbreaks and heartjoins. Writing from Bangalore, Baroda, Benares, Boston, Chennai, Colombo, Dhaka, Delhi, Dublin, Karachi, Kathmandu, Lahore, London, New York City, and writing in languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Urdu, Manipuri, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and, of course, English, the result is an urgent, imaginative and beautiful testament to the diversity, politics, aesthetics and ethics of queer life in South Asia today.
“Queering the Black Arts Movement”
In 1970 Black Panther leader Huey Newton published a letter in The Black Panther newspaper about women’s liberation and gay liberation.
Author/Lead: GerShun AvilezNewton s statement made one year after Stonewall and the same month Newton was released from prison takes the unorthodox step of suggesting the importance of black radical organizations and collectives.