Undergraduates who major in English or film studies work with their academic advisor advisor to design a concentration—a program of study organized around a controlling theme or topic. Though concentrations are tailored to your specific interests, many fall within one or more of our research and teaching areas. Explore this website and schedule a meeting with your advisor to learn more.
English majors explore print and digital texts to discover deeper meanings through literary, rhetorical and historical analysis. Learn how to write fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction with award-winning authors.
Major • Minor
Film studies majors practice empathetic imagination by thinking critically about global film history in its variety—from discovering how cinema informs who “we” are to carefully analyzing questions of genre, nationality, race/ethnicity, and gender/sexuality in films from many historical, aesthetic, and critical approaches.
Major • Minor
Outcomes
Graduates with a major in English will:
- Explore innovative methods of creative expression, with an awareness of the contexts that inform language, invention, and originality.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major writers, forms, and genres of literatures in English, through critical reading alongside the contexts that shape cultural history.
- Write, revise and respond to texts in ways that demonstrate an understanding of the rhetorical nature of writing—with attention to purpose, social context, and audience.
- Write coherent and compelling arguments grounded in independent and critical thinking and founded on wide-ranging and careful research.
- Develop imaginative reasoning through the study of poets and prose writers of the past and present, especially women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, LGBTQIA+, local and transnational authors, and other writers representative of global diversity.
Graduates of film studies will be able to:
- Understand the history, theory, archival preservation, and criticism of film in diverse cultures, with attention to global perspectives as well as the diversity of cultures within the US, and in media both analog and digital.
- Develop ability to apply knowledge of film language, history, criticism, and theory, i.e. writing a portfolio of film criticism and/or making a film (screenwriting, directing, and/or producing).
- Understand the main contributions of cinematic culture to our society as a whole.
- Understand and appreciate the many contributions by minoritized filmmakers in cinema history.
- Develop critical writing and research skills, encompassing both primary and secondary research.