Mission Statement

The Department of English offers one of the widest ranges of programs available at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. We take a balanced and integrated approach to the advancement and wide dissemination of knowledge. Our English majors are trained to become astute critical thinkers, effective communicators, and insightful interpreters of all kinds of texts.

The undergraduate and graduate programs of the department are intentionally broad to expose you to the diversity of fields within the domain of English studies. The emphasis upon critical thinking, creative and analytical forms of writing, and research is essential for all undergraduates as they encounter other disciplines. At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the Department of English offers an extensive range of courses in historical periods, authors and genres, language and linguistics, creative writing, folklore studies, women’s studies, rhetoric, literary theory, and cultural studies. We are committed to maintaining and developing a strong curriculum that encourages interdisciplinary approaches.

As a department in a university within an active community, we also recognize our vital role in outreach, and we do so as visiting scholars in schools, as participants in community projects, and as hosts for a range of events to which the community is invited. In particular, we organize and host the annual Deep Souths Conference and the weekly Thursday Night Reading Series.

As a department, our goals are:

• To support a general education program that promotes literacy for the general student body and that encourages you to read and write with understanding about a wide range of texts;
• To support an undergraduate program that guides you through complex texts of literary and cultural variety, that inspires you to discover the power of language to teach and delight, and that prepares you to put your language skills to use in a variety of professions;
• To support a graduate program that offers both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English with concentrations in British and American Literature, creative writing, folklore studies, linguistics, or rhetoric; and that responsibly trains professionals for careers in teaching, research, and leadership in higher education;
• To support faculty research and publication of original scholarship in language, lore, and literature.