The English Department takes great pride in our combination of award-winning research and deep commitment to students and teaching. Our faculty are among the most productive researchers at UMBC and have interests in a wide range of specialties in literature, writing, communication, and technology. UMBC?s outstanding English faculty past and present includes winners of the Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo fellowships, as well as recipients of the American Book Award, the American Studies Network Prize, the James N. Britten Award for Inquiry in the Language Arts, the James Thurber Prize for Comic Fiction, the Society for Professional Journalists? Award for commentary, the City and Regional Magazine Award for column writing, and Baltimore Magazine?s Best of the Web award.

The faculty are also deeply committed to teaching, from first-year seminars to senior capstone research courses, and to mentoring students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Our courses emphasize student engagement in reading, discussion, and writing and encourage active learning. We pride ourselves on our accessibility and every English Department course offers an opportunity for close contact between students and faculty.