English (B.A.)

All students take ENGL 301 as an introduction to the full range of the English discipline, including an overview of the major’s tracks to help you gauge what field and methods best fit your intellectual and career goals.  

History is central to English Studies. In order to interpret and create, we must understand how literature, language, rhetoric, and media have changed along with cultural change in their work of representing, critiquing, and imagining, and also how literature, language, rhetoric, and media thereby give us what we know as histories and counter histories. All students must take four courses covering a minimum of three of the following four historical periods.

• Beginnings, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods
• Long Eighteenth Century
• Long Nineteenth Century
• Modern and Contemporary Periods

All students choose a particular field of English on which to focus in order to add depth to the breadth of Elements 1 and 2. Students select a track from among those listed below and take 12 credits (typically 4 courses) in that track. Scroll down the page to learn more about each track.

• Literary and Cultural Studies
• Language, Writing and Rhetoric
• Media Studies
• Creative Writing

To allow students to explore additional topics, skills and encounters of interest, the major includes elective credits, which may be filled by any English (ENGL) or Comparative Literature (CMLT) course or any approved course outside of the department. Students often use these credits to pursue internships within the department or beyond, or to complete our career preparation course, ENGL497: “English at Work.”

These co-requirements guide students toward approaches, skills and perspectives that inform all fields within the English discipline in their effort to analyze, theorize and practice literature, language and media. Students cannot count the same course for more than one of these co-requirements.

• Differences and Diasporas: Literature, language and media serve as a crucial means for articulating heterogeneity, charting local and global networks of belonging and pursuing civic engagement and responsibility. Students take at least 1 course focusing on minority and other non-dominant voices pertaining to forms of social difference, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and mental or physical ability.
• Methods: Assumptions about method imbue every analytical and creative engagement with literature, language and media, shaping decisions about everything from what research questions deserve our attention to what techniques convey and multiply meaning. These assumptions must become explicit for critics and artists to make informed decisions about their ideas and performances. Students gain this awareness by taking at least 1 course that foregrounds major methods within the English discipline, including poetics, critical theory, discourse analysis, archival research, critical making and more. Note that Methods courses must be taken at the 200, 300 or 400 levels. Students are encouraged to focus on methods within their selected track, but that isn’t required.
• Advanced Writing: Writing is a fundamental skill in the English discipline and is one that students hone in all of their major courses, starting with ENGL301. But, to ensure that students have dedicated time, space and guidance in composition and analysis, they must take a least one course designated as Advanced Writing. These courses feature fewer students and a more concerted focus on discussing, workshopping and practicing writing. Note that Advanced Writing courses must be taken at the 300 or 400 levels. Students cannot count their Fundamental Studies Professional Writing course toward this requirement (or toward the major more generally).

Learn to read with attention to forms of literary expression and to the cultural force of what’s being expressed. Trace how literature informs local, national and global perspectives and how it offers histories, counter histories and possible futures. Students in this track take 1 course in each of the following topics, leaving the remaining credits open for any literature course:

• Form, Genres and Poetics
• National, Transnational and/or Global Literatures 

Requirements checklist for the Literary and Cultural Studies track.

Gain the essential tools of writing, presentation, communication and persuasion by studying rhetorical and linguistic principles as well as discourse conventions and audience beliefs, both past and present. Students in this track take 1 course in each of following topics, leaving the remaining credits open for any language, writing or rhetoric course:

• History, Analysis and Theory
• Practice, Performance and Pedagogy

Requirements checklist for the Language, Writing and Rhetoric track.

Learn about the materials, technologies and practices of dissemination for a range of media, including comparative study to understand how media shape meaning individually and as a network. Students in this track take a course in at least 2 of the following categories (2 courses total) and are encouraged to cover more, though the remaining credits are open for any media course:

• Print and Script
• Music and Sound
• Image and Moving Image
• Digital Cultures

Requirements checklist for the Media Studies track.

Creative writing is a process of sustained engagement with one’s own work and close study of established writers. Tackle the process through workshops in multiple genres and learn the creative concepts and methods that writers use to make meaning—and resist it. Students take 1 of each of the following course types, leaving the remaining credits open for any creative writing workshop course:

• 200-level Creative Writing Workshop
• 300-level Creative Writing Workshop
• Creative Form and Theory

Note that students cannot pursue the Creative Writing track and also be a Creative Writing minor. To enroll in a 300-level workshop, students must receive an A or A- in a 200-level workshop or must submit an acceptable portfolio of work to the Creative Writing faculty. Students may substitute 1 approved UMD workshop course taught outside of the English department for their 300-level creative writing workshop, but may not take a 400-level workshop in the English department without taking a 300-level workshop in the department. Students may only count a Creative Form and Theory course once toward their 4 required courses for the track.

Requirements checklist for the Creative Writing track.