English Department
An Education in Imaginative Reasoning
The Baylor English department is a diverse community of faculty, staff, undergraduate students, and graduate students who share a love for language. We’re interested in what language can tell us about who we are as people and how it can help us be agents of good in the world. We divide our research and courses into three main categories: Literature, Linguistics, and Professional Writing and Rhetoric. Enjoy learning more about us from our website!
Undergraduate
Literature, Linguistics, and Professional Writing and Rhetoric
We love our English undergraduates! We offer majors in English Literature, Linguistics, or Professional Writing and Rhetoric. We also offer a minor in Creative Writing. Our students work with top scholars in their fields and benefit from small, discussion-oriented classes. They also enjoy opportunities to test out possible careers, whether through internships or as staff members of The Phoenix, the department’s student-run magazine.
Graduate
Why Study English?
We’re proud of our Ph.D. completion percentage and job placement rate and have been ranked best in the nation for Student Support and Outcomes by the National Research Council. Our graduate faculty offer the M.A. and Ph.D. in literary criticism as well as a certificate in literature and religion. Our graduates are both generalists who can teach a range of courses and specialists with significant books and articles.
News
More NewsRegistration for the spring semester is right around the corner! Follow the link to check out the English Department's course offerings in the spring.
Dr. Joshua King is part of SCRAP (Sustainable Community and Regenerative Agriculture Project), a collective that has received a $150,000 grant from the Cooper Foundation. This grant will allow SCRAP to address the climate crisis and food justice in Waco in collaboration with the new Environmental Humanities Minor. Congratulations, Dr. King! Read the full press release here.
Registration for the fall semester is right around the corner! Follow the link to check out the English Department's course offerings in the fall.
Thank you to everyone who entered and congratulations to this year's winners!
Recent Faculty Publications
All Publications![102 Days of Lying About Lauren](https://english.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/sites/g/files/ecbvkj1086/files/2023-09/102%20Days%20of%20Lying%20About%20Lauren.png)
After being abandoned by her mother in a most unusual place, a defiant heroine sticks to her plan for staying hidden—even though getting caught could mean saving her life. Holiday House, 2023.
![Bastille Day](https://english.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/sites/g/files/ecbvkj1086/files/2023-04/Bastille%20Day.jpeg)
Veteran TV journalist Calvin Jones travels to Paris, where he negotiates love, friendship, and despair in award-winning novelist Greg Garrett’s Bastille Day. Paraclete Press, 2023.
![The Interpretation of Owls](https://english.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/sites/g/files/ecbvkj1086/files/2023-04/The%20Interpretation%20of%20Owls.jpeg)
A representative selection of one of the UK’s most prolific and respected poets, comprised of nearly 300 poems. Baylor University Press, 2023.
![James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality](https://english.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/sites/g/files/ecbvkj1086/files/2023-04/James%20Joyce%20and%20Samaritan%20Hospitality.jpeg)
Assesses Joyce’s employment of the Lukan Good Samaritan parable in relation to his short fiction and Ulysses. Edinburgh University Press, 2022.
![Literacy in a Long Blues Note](https://english.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/sites/g/files/ecbvkj1086/files/2023-01/Literacy%20in%20a%20Long%20Blues%20Note.jpeg)
An analysis of the literary strategies wielded by Black women during the oppressive Jim Crow years. University Press of Mississippi, 2022.