Welcome to the English Department at UNCG!
Founded as a woman's college in 1891, UNC Greensboro became co-educational in 1963. Its traditional academic strengths in humanities and the fine arts foster the creative energies of more than 18,000 students, who make up the most ethnically and racially diverse student body of the 17 UNC-system campuses.
In this dynamic university environment, the English Department serves more than 400 undergraduate majors, about one-third of whom seek the BA with teaching licensure. Undergraduates have opportunities to create for-credit senior-year internships, to take poetry and fiction writing workshops at three levels, and to tutor in the University Writing Center. BA candidates choose among courses on Native American Literature, Shakespeare's Early Plays and Sonnets, Literature and the Environment, Contemporary British Literature and Culture, American Life-Writing, Early English Women Writers, and many other topics ranging across the field of English language, literature and writing. English majors may seek University or disciplinary honors, participate in study abroad programs in Glasgow or Brisbane, and aspire to be initiated in Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honors society. Intellectually adventurous and vividly creative, diverse and free-thinking, our English majors embody UNCG's greatest strengths.
These same strengths are evident in the more than 150 graduate students working toward the MA, MFA, and PhD in English. Some seek credentials for community college teaching or master-teacher status in secondary schools, while others pursue the path of the scholar-teacher toward university faculty positions, curatorial work, or writing program administration. MFA candidates hone their fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction skills in a studio-style program distinguished by individual tutorials, small workshops, craft classes, and a close-knit community of students and faculty.
The foundation of our students' achievements is the English Department faculty, a teaching staff of nearly 100 including graduate assistants, lecturers, and 35 tenure-stream faculty who represent the full range of specializations in literary studies, rhetoric and composition, and creative writing. From 2004 through 2010, English Department faculty won 6 NEH and NEA fellowships, 2 NEH single and multi-year Scholarly Editions fellowships, a Guggenheim, a Fulbright at Queens University Belfast, and many other grants and awards of national and regional importance. We remain dedicated to scholarly and creative excellence as the fount of teaching excellence, and to innovative, engaged teaching as the engine of scholarly and creative work.
We invite you to learn more about the shared endeavors of our community by exploring our website and, if you are already here on campus, joining in our activities.
Again, welcome!
