Our Mission
The Department of English creates and teaches knowledge about literature, poetics, writing, media, language and cultures in the English-speaking world. The Department serves constituents both inside and outside the university — including interdisciplinary programs, service-learning projects and the discipline at large — and prepares students for careers inside and outside of academia. We believe that the analytical study of our sub-disciplines helps develop logical thought, awareness of the complexity of texts and of value judgments, apprehension of others’ points of view, and imagination. English studies can expand creative, communicative and cognitive capacities; can sharpen the ability to make difficult judgments; and can help us understand societies, times and cultures different from our own.
What We Care About
- Human connection: community and communication
- Finding meaning(s) in life
- Making a difference in the world
- Active, participatory learning
- Textual production, creation and expression
- Artifacts of language: books, media, writing, comics, talk
- The arts of persuasion
- The pleasures of analysis
- The ways language structures the world and the self
- Structural change for social justice
- The history and future of English(es)
- The interdependency of form and content
Sean O'Sullivan (1965–2023)
We honor the life of Sean O'Sullivan, associate professor of English, who died October 17 in Columbus, Ohio, after surviving 16 months with brain cancer. Sean was a dedicated teacher, colleague and friend; read more about him and our other departed colleagues at our In Memoriam page.