About our Department

In both research and teaching, our department combines a strong emphasis on English and American literature and culture with a wider, comparative and interdisciplinary framework. Our approach to literature and culture is diverse, both theoretically and methodologically, and we examine literary texts and contexts from a variety of historical, formalist, sociological, and psychological perspectives. We also encourage combinations and interactions with other fields of study in the humanities and social sciences.

Our research strengths include Postcolonialism, Gender Studies and Queer Theory, Shakespearean and Renaissance drama, Victorian literature, Native American and African American Studies, 19th- and 20th-century American fiction, Judaic Studies, Book History, Comparative Literature, and Cognitive Poetics.

Our courses in literatary studies have multiple foci, ranging from major authors, genres, and periods, t​o the history of reading, psychoanalytic criticism, modern Jewish studies, cognitive poetics, and critical race studies. Our students acquire tools for literary analysis along with an understanding of developments in cultural and literary history, while honing their skills in both written and oral expression.

In the undergraduate level, we offer a BA in English Literature, introducing students to the major traditions and texts of​ literatures in English, primarily British literature and American literature, while helping students develop their analytical skills and improve their proficiency in Engish.

Our graduate program offers an MA in Foreign Literatures which explores Western literature of various periods and contexts. A strong focus on British and American literature is combined with theoretical and critical tools, familiar from the study of Comparative Literature.