Overview

The English Department at Lewis University strives to impart an appreciation for literature as a means of understanding human experience in all its variety and wholeness. We advocate for writing as both a means and an end, as an art form which serves as the principal form of communication between people, and which gives both pleasure and provocation to the writer and reader alike.

Students can specialize in creative and professional writing, in literature, and in preparation for teaching at the secondary level. We offer minors in creative and professional writing, in literature, and in film studies; and we also support the University’s Foreign Language Program. In all of these areas, students are invited to explore the substance, style, and subtleties of texts – whether in print or other technologies, whether “classic” or contemporary, whether produced by established or student authors. We also invite our students to examine carefully and to celebrate passionately the moral and ethical dimensions, the depictions of spiritual understanding, the presentations of emotional truth, the explorations of diversity, and the literary excellence through which those texts allow us all to engage the dynamic complexity of human experience.

We invite you to join us in the demanding yet endlessly rewarding delights of language. After all, earning your B.A. in English – in whatever area of concentration you choose – is your best preparation for becoming a more literate contributor to any commercial or professional endeavor.