English

English courses at Mount Holyoke offer students an opportunity to study texts and writers from the many cultural traditions that have shaped, and been shaped by, the English language. Our offerings range from Anglo-Saxon England through the twenty-first century and encompass multiple national, racial, and cultural identities. The department’s courses cultivate skills in close reading, critical thinking, and persuasive writing. For students interested in writing, a number of courses offer practical instruction in the techniques of fiction, poetry, and other literary genres, as well as journalism. The major helps prepare students for a wide range of careers, including teaching at all levels, law, business, and graduate study in literature and culture.

The department reflects in its offerings a balanced variety of historical and theoretical approaches to the study of language, literature, and culture. Many courses locate British and American literary texts within their historical contexts; many courses employ approaches drawn from gender studies, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. We regularly offer courses on African American, Asian American, and other ethnically defined American literatures, as well as on writings from Africa, Asia, the Pacific Rim, and Ireland. Some members of the department study visual culture in many different media, including film. The department expects its majors to study texts from a variety of historical periods and challenges students to respond to new questions about the theoretical relationships of literary and cultural forms and historical transformation.

Meet the Department

Cormac McCarthy ... James Joyce ... Cyberpunk? Ask Bill Quillian.

Corinne Demas is the author of two novels, two collections of short stories, and numerous books for children.

Poet Robert Shaw also writes essays and books about John Donne, George Herbert, and the history and use of blank verse.

At present Shakespeare scholar Frank Brownlow is working on a new book about Queen Elizabeth I and her favorite torturer.

Lois Brown’s research and teaching focus on nineteenth-century African American and American literature and culture, abolitionist narratives, and evangelical juvenilia.

How have modern Jewish writers and makers of popular culture responded to the challenge of adjusting to America? Donald Weber knows.

Interested in women’s writing during the American Civil War or the role of Frankenstein?—that’s right, the monster—in America’s complex racial history? These are some of Elizabeth Young’s areas of interest.

Peter Berek’s recent scholarly work focuses on Shakespeare and early modern theatre, with a particular interest in representations of Jews, gender and sexuality, and the history of the book.

Where’s Christopher Benfey? In Slate, the New York Times Sunday Book Review, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Professor Elizabeth Young with MHC students