Of special interest to creative writing students are the readings and class visits by established fiction writers and poets sponsored each year by the English department.

The field of English studies has grown rapidly over the course of the last half century. Today, English scholars read and discuss works written in the English language from across the globe—novels, plays and poems written by women as well as by men and by members of many widely varying cultures. We explore the social contexts in which each work was written and the impact it had in (and on) its time. We have widened our horizon to include the study of film as well as of written texts, and we have come to recognize the overall importance of minor literary figures as well as the traditionally acclaimed giants.

In the classroom, teachers ask students to act scenes from plays; they show videotapes, assign field trips to local museums and galleries, and encourage the students they advise to consider internships in companies that value language skills. Our goal is to equip students with practical skills, while opening up for them the exciting world of the literary imagination