English Department

An Education in Imaginative Reasoning

The Baylor English department is a diverse community of faculty, staff, undergraduate students, and graduate students who share a love for language.  We’re interested in what language can tell us about who we are as people and how it can help us be agents of good in the world.  We divide our research and courses into three main categories: Literature, Linguistics, and Professional Writing and Rhetoric.  Enjoy learning more about us from our website!

Undergraduate

Literature, Linguistics, and Professional Writing and Rhetoric

We love our English undergraduates! We offer majors in English Literature, Linguistics, or Professional Writing and Rhetoric. We also offer a minor in Creative Writing. Our students work with top scholars in their fields and benefit from small, discussion-oriented classes. They also enjoy opportunities to test out possible careers, whether through internships or as staff members of The Phoenix, the department’s student-run magazine.

Undergraduates

Graduate

Why Study English?

We’re proud of our Ph.D. completion percentage and job placement rate and have been ranked best in the nation for Student Support and Outcomes by the National Research Council. Our graduate faculty offer the M.A. and Ph.D. in literary criticism as well as a certificate in literature and religion. Our graduates are both generalists who can teach a range of courses and specialists with significant books and articles.

Graduate Studies

News

More News
Nov. 1, 2022
Spring 2023 English Courses

Registration for the spring semester begins this week! Follow the link to check out the English Department's course offerings in the spring.

May 19, 2022
English Professor Receives National Fellowship

Dr. Ryan Sharp has been selected as one of twenty-eight Career Enhancement Fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars! Congratulations, Dr. Sharp! Read more about Dr. Sharp and this exciting opportunity at the Baylor A&S blog post linked below.

Apr. 12, 2022
English Professor Received NEH Award

Dr. Sebastian Langdell has been awarded a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to be be used towards the completion of his second book, Thomas Hoccleve’s Collected Shorter Poems: A Critical Edition. This book is a critical edition of the first author-curated “collected poems” in the English language, now preserved in two complementary manuscripts in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, one of which was copied out by Hoccleve himself between 1422 and 1426.

Apr. 1, 2022
How Poetry Changes the World

In conjunction with the Beall Poetry Festival, Ginger Hanchey's class, "How Poetry Changes the World," created poetry installations on campus: writing lines of poetry on windows, chalking poetry on sidewalks, creating a walking trail with QR codes linking to poetry, tying tags with poems on bushes and plants in the garden next to ABL, and handing out stickers with images from poems - filling the campus with poetry.