English & Creative Writing

Academic Department Introduction

We believe literary study to be creative and critical in equal measure. Our courses range from introductory writing to in-depth studies of influential writers, genres, historical periods, theories, and themes in English, American, and world literatures in English. Critical courses span a broad range of topics and approaches, from Shakespeare to the Harlem Renaissance to speculative fiction. Numerous courses in creative writing include poetry, creative nonfiction, writing for children, and writing for film, television, and video games. Our creative writing and critical courses are not separated from each other but closely intertwined and mutually supportive. In all courses, we foster and develop a deep, complex, passionate response to literary language.

Learning goals

Acquire a knowledge of English literary history, including canonical and contemporary works from diverse traditions.
Recognize and demonstrate an ability to work with critical methodologies employed in the discipline of literary studies.
Read literature with deep attention and responsiveness to content, language, and form.

Programs of study

English major and minor

Students form and develop the skills of analysis, interpretation, and argument through the intensive study of writers and their works in literary, cultural, and historical contexts.

Major requirements

Minor requirements

English & Creative writing major

In addition to acquiring the skills of analysis, interpretation, and argument, students develop a distinctive literary voice and study the history and cross-cultural diversity of the genres, traditions, and styles in which they are working.

Major requirements

Course highlights

Poetics of the Body

ENG248

Sensual and emotionally powerful, American poetry of the body explores living and knowing through physical, bodily experience. From Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” to contemporary spoken word performances, body poems move us through the strangeness and familiarity of embodiment, voicing the manifold discomforts, pains, pleasures, and ecstasies of living in and through bodies. We’ll trace a number of recurring themes: the relationship between body and mind, female embodiment, queer bodies, race, sexuality, disability, illness and medicine, mortality, appetite, and the poem itself as a body. Poets include Whitman, Ama Codjoe, Rita Dove, Ada Limón, Claudia Rankine, Ocean Vuong, Tyehimba Jess, Ina Cariño, Max Ritvo, Laurie Lambeth, Chen Chen, and Danez Smith. Fulfills the Diversity of Literatures in English requirement.

(AMST 248 and ENG 248 are cross-listed courses.)

Contemporary Historical Fiction in English and in Translation

ENG354

In the 21st century, the historical novel has moved globally into literary fiction--novels characterized by complex narrative structures, richer use of language, and more wide-ranging questions about history, time, identity. What makes a novel precisely historical? Why do recent literary historical fictions often toggle between the past and present, as characters in the present look to the past for their own histories? How do historical novels embrace genre hybridity by incorporating science fiction or the gothic? How do these novels not only use history as their setting, but seek to question our notions of history? Texts range from the Ugandan epic Kintu (Jennifer Nansuguba Makumbi), to You Dreamed of Empires A (Álvaro Enrique)--a mashup of the encounter of Cortés and Moctezuma in Tenochtitlan, to Han Kang''s Human Acts--the visceral account of the 1980 democratic uprising in South Korea. All texts will be read in English. (CPLT 354 and ENG 354 are cross-listed courses.)
Gotham: New York City in Literature, Art, and Film

ENG258

This course examines how that icon of modernity, New York City, has been variously depicted in literature and the arts, from its evolution into the nation’s cultural and financial capital in the nineteenth century to the present. We’ll consider how urban reformers, boosters, long-time residents, immigrants, tourists, newspaper reporters, journalists, poets, novelists, artists, and filmmakers have shaped new and often highly contested meanings of this dynamic and diverse city. We'll also consider how each vision of the city returns us to crucial questions of perspective, identity, and ownership, and helps us to understand the complexity of metropolitan experience. Authors may include Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, Paule Marshall, Frank O’Hara, and Colson Whitehead. We’ll look at the art of John Sloan, Georgia O’Keeffe, Helen Levitt, and Berenice Abbott, and others. Filmmakers may include Vincente Minnelli, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee.

Explore all courses

Places and spaces

The Department of English & Creative Writing has a common room with a terrace; both are used for quiet study, socializing, and department events.

English & Creative Writing Department Common Room

Research highlights

In her most recent book, The Natural Laws of Plot (Penn Press, 2022), Professor Yoon Sun Lee argues that plot cannot be considered merely as an abstract shape or form. In realist novels, plot is interested not only in human aims but in non-human forces, laws, and structures that operate at various scales independently of any character’s intention or desire. Emerging together with natural philosophy, the plots of realist novels helped envision a unified, objective world within and against which any action unfolds.
Professor Cord Whitaker’s research asks how the Middle Ages matter to the modern study of race and racism. His book, Black Metaphors (Penn Press, 2019), uses rhetoric, theology, and literature to establish the variety of medieval treatments of color and difference. Black Metaphors illuminates the process by which one interpretation among many became established as the truth, and demonstrates how modern movements—from Black Lives Matter to the alt-right—are animated by the medieval origins of the black-white divide.
Limerence (Rebel Satori Press, 2023), a poetry collection by Professor Tavi González, probes the inextricable tension, pain, pleasure, and danger in relationships between men. González’s experiences of love, sexual desire, and romance are not sentimental, as they are often intertwined with questions of consent and violence. Poignant and searing, the poems ask readers to appreciate and reexamine the meaning of love, trust, and safety.

Opportunities

Internships

The Writing Program and the Department of English & Creative Writing jointly sponsor funded summer internships at Slate, W.W. Norton & Company, Maven Screen Media, Calligraph, and Speculum.
Special Collections

The College owns first and early editions of many novels and poetry collections, illuminated manuscripts, and 573 love letters between the Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, which students are invited to view.

Beyond Wellesley

Many of our alums work in publishing, journalism, media, education, and the tech industry. They hold positions as writers, editors, and teachers, among other professions. Recent employers include Hachette Book Group, Publicis Sapient, and City Year.