The Department of English at New York University promotes the rigorous study of English-language literature from the variety of periods and places in which it has been produced.  Understanding “literature” to encompass such matters as textual production and circulation, societal reading practices, generic differentiation, and aesthetic attitudes--as well as discrete bodies of work by recognized authors--the Department strives to elucidate literary significance in all its manifestations.  Departmental faculty accordingly work and train students in textual analysis, archival research, theoretical critique, and cultural historiography, among other scholarly methods.  In addition to awarding B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in literature, the Department offers both an M.A. and an M.F.A. degree in creative writing, through its affiliated program in that field.

In recent years, professors in the English Department have won fellowships and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the American Comparative Literature Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, among other organizations.  Department faculty provide intensive mentoring to students both in and beyond the classroom in a wide variety of forums, including lecture series, film screenings, symposia, conferences, and scholarly field colloquia.  Our B.A. and M.A. recipients have successfully pursued further study in graduate and professional schools and have also gone on to careers in education, publishing, media, and the arts.  Recent Ph.Ds have taken up faculty positions at colleges and universities such as Macalester, Middlebury, Yale, Berkeley, Tulane, and Brandeis.