English Department

You are fascinated by words.

You are fascinated by reading and thinking about them, talking and writing about them. As an English major at Drew, you will indulge your passion for language while choosing the approach you want to take.

Do you love to read fiction and poetry? Choose the Literature emphasis.
Are you a creative writer? Practice your art and get feedback in the small workshops that make up the Creative Writing emphasis.
Are you intrigued by language and the power of words to communicate and shape the world? Perhaps the Writing and Communication Studies emphasis is for you.

Whatever emphasis you choose, you will emerge from the major thoroughly prepared for a career or further graduate or professional education. Business, law, and medical schools are all clamoring for people who can communicate effectively. In professional settings, English majors soon surpass their peers from other disciplines, because they can communicate and analyze with clarity and precision.

So, what can you do with an English major?

More than you might think! Our students go on to a wide variety of successes. Some head for grad school in English, or to creative writing MFA programs. Others go into law, teaching, digital media or international nongovernment organizations around the globe. Learn more about what our students do after graduation.

What you’ll learn.

As English majors, students read widely, engaging with many kinds of texts from multiple periods, geographical areas, genres and literary traditions. See more program details below.

Student Learning Outcomes

Within the major, students choose a specific emphasis (Literature, Creative Writing, or Writing and communication Studies) as their focus and develop their skills and knowledge through in-depth exploration within that emphasis. Through the major, students develop flexibility of thought, attentiveness to language, an ability to engage with the world around them, and to understand difference (gender, race, class, ability, religion, nation), capacities which they may apply in almost any area of study or employment after college. Upon completion of the major, students will particularly demonstrate the following:

Close Reading: In their reading of a text, students demonstrate attentiveness to language, technique, structure, cultural/historical reference, and forms and genres.
Range of Approaches: Students use critical frameworks to open texts in different ways.
Historicizing: Students analyze texts in relation to the historical period and culture in which they were produced.
Writing: Students write clearly and flexibly, using writing to develop and express ideas, to construct narratives, to connect with multiple audiences, and as a tool for thinking.
Information Literacy. Students can find, evaluate, and engage with sources using disciplinary research tools.
Synthesizing: In creating their own arguments, students draw on a variety of texts, scholars, and/or theories and place them into conversation with each other.
Value of the Major. Students are able to articulate the value of the analytical and critical skills they have learned as majors for engaging with larger social realities.

Less sitting. More doing.

Hands-on learning at Drew is the norm—not the exception. Enjoy out-of-the-classroom opportunities like our New York Semester on Communications & Media, where students spend two days a week learning from industry leaders, or the London Semester where modern mixes with the medieval. Talk with painters, catch a band in a pub, or question writers, composers, actors and directors and detect a new artistic generation emerging.

Writers@Drew

Co-Sponsored by The Casement Fund and the English Department, the Writers@Drew reading series hosts a variety of published authors, who recite excerpts from their works for the Drew community throughout the academic year.

See past guest authors and events.