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Whether you’re an avid reader, aspiring writer, or somewhere in between, Seattle University’s English Department has a place for you. With courses in literature, creative writing and writing studies we prepare you to read, write and create in a powerful way, while providing you a foundation to pursue and be successful in a variety of careers.
Dive into cultural and literary inquiry as you grapple with the complex questions of justice and value that arise from a range of texts spanning various historical periods and the globe.
Great writers are strong readers: become both — with a curriculum that blends the skills of literary study with the craft of creative writing.
Strengthen your rhetorical awareness and practical skills with this minor, as you study different genres of writing, forms of argumentation, and traditions of persuasion.
Through the study of different perspectives and voices in literary texts, you will develop a broad and deep understanding of a range of human experiences and expressions, so you can make a difference. With a passionate and dedicated faculty as well as several student-run organizations and study abroad opportunities, you will find both a support system and the tools to achieve your goals.
Designated a UNESCO World ity of Literature, Seattle booms with passionate readers, writers and thinkers. With a campus nestled in the heart of Capitol Hill, you are just steps away from cinemas, theaters, iconic literary sites and more. Grab coffee at a local café as you study before a poetry reading or support a local author by buying their book at Elliott Bay Book Company.
Victorian England was rife with forms of quarantine, isolation, and constraint—both physical and spatial boundaries and various forms of social control. The darker side of isolation? Institutionalization of the “mad”; racist “theories” of eugenics; venereal disease law that allowed for detention and examination of prostitutes, and more.Together we’ll read works like Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady, Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Grey, the memoir of nurse Mary Secole, and the poetry of Bengali writer and translator Toru Dutt to explore how Victorian literature responded to various Victorian quarantines.
Investigates various forms of the marvelous as they appeared throughout the Middle Ages. While we certainly deal with dragons, griffins, and lion-headed men, we also deal with marvelous encounters that are more intimate: the ways in which the category of the monstrous was used to define women as opposed to men; the miraculous visions and powers of saints; the interactions between the living and the dead in both "real life" and in dreams.
This course focuses on literary works from contemporary India to explore such topics as the emergence of English language writing in India, the formation of a postcolonial nation, shifting borders and boundaries, questions of socio-economic inequities, and globalization. We will study the history of English fiction in India within the context of political and social history and pay particular attention to questions of gender, religion, caste and class.
Writing effective fiction is about more than developing stories: It’s about creating a proxy for life. The challenge is, life slips around; it’s not easy to pin down. Becoming a fiction writer, then, means learning to encounter the ways that life contradicts itself. Moreover, it means learning to consider your audience carefully, as stories work best when both reader and writer can agree on a particular imagined view of the world.
Meet your peers, develop your writing (creative and academic) as well as editing and/or research skills, or help other students develop their own.
Established in 1958, we annually publish the best literary and visual art of the Seattle U community. Students can submit work, join the staff, or volunteer. Copies are available in the English Dept.
Developed to highlight undergraduate research, Seattle University Undergraduate Research Journal publishes peer-reviewed student work, offering editorial apprenticeships in a credit-bearing program.
Appointed Theiline Pigott McCone Chair 2020-22
On Dec. 11, 2-4 pm EST/11am-1 pm PT, Dr. Sean McDowell will be presenting at a free webinar called “Teaching Donne in Emergent Occasions.”
Learn about our 2019-2020 Visiting Writers.
For English and Literature
English and Literature
