Are words really powerful? We believe they are.

Undergraduate students in the Department of English at Eastern Illinois enjoy maximum flexibility, with more choices of areas of study than at many similarly sized universities. Students who wish to teach English at the secondary level major in English Language Arts. Students with other career plans can choose from the emphases in Creative Writing, Professional Writing, or Literary and Cultural Studies. Students who want to mix and match among the emphases choose English Studies. For more information on each program, scroll down to “Undergraduate Programs.”

The department supports student success in many ways: with scholarship dollars (in spring 2016, we gave out over $50,000 to continuing English majors), with opportunities for individualized research and creative projects, with an annual student conference, with a student-written and student-run literary magazine, and with courses that connect English studies with topics such as social justice, media, law, popular culture, personal identity, science, the environment.