About the DepartmentDepartment of English

Read and Write About What You Love

The English Department trains students to analyze and interpret literature, film, and culture from various historical and theoretical perspectives, all while encouraging students to create their own works. We promise to help you strengthen your writing and to support your writing process. The English faculty works with students throughout their time at Gustavus as we prepare you to use your skills in your lives after college. That means helping you prepare for successful entry into careers and to learn ways to keep on reading, writing, and thinking critically long after you leave Gustavus.

English and Communication Arts and Literature Teaching majors (CALT) are encouraged to study abroad to deepen their transhistorical and transcultural knowledge, and to supplement courses at Gustavus, and the Department allows appropriate coursework from approved international programs to apply toward the major. English majors are also urged to pursue internship opportunities locally and outside southern Minnesota.

Who We Are as an English Faculty

Faculty teaching in the English Department brings strengths in American, British, African, and global literature and theory, in Film Studies and Digital Humanities, and in Creative Writing and Composition. We bring experience teaching and studying multiple genres and historical periods, and we are accomplished writers of poetry and essays, short stories, literary criticism, memoir, and nonfiction articles and editorials. We have different pedagogical styles, and we first engage our students where they are, then challenge them to go even further. Many of the recent changes to the major strive to include literary and film representations that were historically excluded from traditional literary and film canons. The diversity of the English curriculum is, we believe, crucial to creating and sustaining a thriving, diverse community of learners throughout Gustavus.

What We Believe About Our Work

We know that the humanities are indispensable in helping us navigate increasing local, regional, national, and global challenges. We share the commitment to teach our students to become better readers and writers, to become more thoughtfully engaged with their own cultures, other cultures and historical periods, and the world at large, and to understand the ways that literature, film, and writing reflect the realities of contemporary life and the lived experiences of earlier historical periods. Our courses offer visions of how to (re)create a world that welcomes everyone and allows for the open exchange of informed and ethical ideas.

The English Department faculty acknowledges its role in perpetuating racism against people of color. We support Black Lives Matter and all Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). We support intersectional approaches that critique racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and economic and class inequality. This acknowledgement governs how we structure our majors, and we promise to continue this overdue work for racial (and all other forms of) justice in our Department, at the College, and throughout the world. We invite you to join us in this crucial work.