English

Related Student Organizations

English Club
Sigma Tau Delta (English Honor Society)
Writers of Rohan

Career Paths

Majors in English find themselves well prepared for graduate school in English and creative writing, for teaching, for law school and other professional schools, for careers in publishing, film, management, advertising and for other professions requiring creativity, careful attention to language and critical thinking.

Recent alumni have secured the following sampling of positions:

• Human Resources Specialist, Marsh USA, Inc.
• Litigation Legal Assistant, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
• Marketing Analyst, Government Procurement Federal Sources, Inc.
• Publicity Manager, Arcadia Publishing

Undergraduate Research and Creative Projects

Students in the English program have many opportunities to work with professors and pursue scholarly and creative projects. This work often culminates in an honors thesis.

Recently, students have worked on the following projects:

• Early Medieval Ecology: An Ecocritical View of Eriugena’s Periphyseon
• Global Readers: Woolf on the Russians, Emerson on the Persians
• Taking the Stand: Meditations on Suffering

Additionally, students have opportunities to present at academic conferences and publish their own scholarly articles in periodicals and books. Recently, a student presented a paper at the International Medieval Congress.

Resources

The Stadler Center for Poetry brings well-known creative writers to campus to offer readings and to interact with students. These writers’ visits occur as part of the Stadler Center’s annual reading series or through one of the center’s other programs, including the Poet-in-Residence Program, the Sandra and Gary Sojka Visiting Poet series and the Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing.

The Stadler Center’s Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets allows undergraduate poets from across the country, as well as Bucknell students, to study as fellows during the month of June.

Study Abroad

English majors can complement their education by spending a summer, semester or year abroad.

Through Bucknell in Barbados and Bucknell in London, English students can explore culture, tradition, language and literary and artistic styles alongside University students and faculty. They can also study in places all over the world. Recently, an English student traveled the globe through Semester at Sea.

Quick Facts

Number of full-time faculty: 22

Average number of majors per class year: 64

Courses Offered

19th-century American Women Writers
19th-century English Novel
20th-century American Women Writers
African American Literature
American Literature
American Realism and Naturalism
American Romanticism 1800-1865
Art, Nature and Knowledge
Capstone in 19th-century Studies
Capstone in Contemporary Drama
Capstone in Renaissance Literature
Caribbean Literature
Chaucer
Contemporary American Literature
Creative Writing: Fiction
Creative Writing: Form & Theory
Creative Writing: Nonfiction
Creative Writing: Poetry
Cultural Shakespeare
Early American Colonial Literature
Early American National Literature
English Capstone
The Early English Novel
Film History I and II
Foundation Seminar in English
History in Fiction
Individual Projects
Introduction to Graduate Studies
Introduction to Literary Theory
Introduction to World Literature
Introduction to Women’s and Gender
Studies
Irish Literature
Law and Literature
Literature and Composition
Literature and Creative Writing
Literature and the Environment
Medieval English Literature to 1485
Modern British and American Poetry 1890-1960
Modern American Literature 1900- 1950
Modern Drama
Modern Literature
The Modern Novel
Myth, Reason, Faith
Nation, Race and History
National Cinemas
Nihilism, Modernism, Uncertainty
Poet-In-Residence Workshop
Pre- and Early Cinema
Renaissance Literature 1485-1660
Restoration and 18th-century Literature
Romantic Literature 1780-1832
Seminar: 19th-century American Literature
Seminar: 19th-century English Literature
Seminar: 20th-century British Literature
Seminar: African American Literature
Seminar: American Literature Topics
Seminar: Caribbean Literature
Seminar: Contemporary American Literature
Seminar: Contemporary Drama
Seminar: Contemporary Literature
Seminar: Creative Nonfiction
Seminar: Cultural Studies
Seminar: Early American Literature
Seminar: Early English Literature to 1485
Seminar: Film and Technology
Seminar: Film Genres and Auteurs
Seminar: Film Theory
Seminar: Gender and Film
Seminar: Irish Literature
Seminar: Literary and Critical Theory
Seminar: Modern American Literature
Seminar: Novel
Seminar: Poetry
Seminar: Renaissance Literature
Seminar: Restoration and 18th-century Literature
Seminar: Selected American Writers
Seminar: Shakespeare
Seminar: Special Topics
Seminar: Women’s Literature
Seminar: Writing Fiction
Seminar: Writing Poetry
Senior Thesis
Shakespeare
Special Topics in American Literature
Special Topics in Film Studies
The Stories of English
Studies in American Literary Genres
Studies in Children’s Literature
Studies in Contemporary Literature
Studies in Dramatic Literature
Studies in Renaissance Literature
Studies in Selected American Authors
Studies in Shakespeare
Studies in 19th-century English Literature
Studies in Restoration and 18th-century Literature
Survey of English and American Literature
Survey of the Novel
Survey of Women's Literature
The Teaching of English
Thesis Workshop
Topics Capstone in English
Topics in Gender Studies
Voices of the Renaissance
Writing about Film
Young Adult Fiction

Program Details

• Three concentrations are available: literary studies, creative writing and film and media studies.
• Three minors are available: American literature, British literature and creative writing.
• Students study a range of topics in literature and culture, such as Caribbean and Irish literature, literary theory, African American literature, gay and lesbian literature, gender studies, film studies, science and literature and children’s literature.
• The English department has an active schedule of visiting lecturers, critics and writers. These visitors are frequently invited to participate in class discussions. A recent symposium on “The Patient” brought writers and speakers from around the world to address questions related to medicine and the humanities.
• Students publish in literary magazines and participate in poetry and fiction readings.

Grants & Awards

English faculty members have recently received grants and awards from:

• John Ben Snow Memorial Trust (environmental humanities)
• Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

Selected Faculty Publications

Paula Closson Buck: Litanies Near Water

Christopher Camuto: Hunting from Home

Michael Drexler: Secret History; Or, the Horrors of Santa Domingo and Laura

Greg Clingham: Johnson, Writing, and Memory

Shara McCallum: Song of Thieves

Ghislaine McDayter, editor: Romantic Generations

Saundra Morris, co-editor: Emerson’s Prose and Poetry

Harriet Pollack: Emmet Till in Literary Memory and Imagination

Robert Rosenberg: This is Not Civilization

Harold Schweizer: On Waiting

G.C. Waldrep: Disclamor

Alf Siewers, co-editor: Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages

Virginia Zimmerman: Excavating Victorians

Internships

Internships prepare English majors for career success by providing firsthand experience in the field.

Recently, English students have interned with:

• Goldman Sachs
• People Magazine
• CBS News

West Branch is a nationally distributed and widely respected literary magazine published at Bucknell. The magazine offers internships to two Bucknell students each semester.

Faculty

Alexandra Block
M.A. University of Wisconsin - Madison
Scholarly interests: Renaissance literature, lyric poetry, theology and literature

Paula Closson Buck
Ph.D. Ohio
Scholarly interests: creative writing (poetry), modern British and American literature

Christopher Camuto
Ph.D. Virginia
Scholarly interests: creative writing (non-fiction), American and Native American literature

Glynis Carr
Ph.D. Ohio State
Scholarly interests: American literature, feminist theory, women’s studies, eco-feminism

Greg Clingham, Director of the Bucknell University Press
Ph.D. Cambridge
Scholarly interests: English literature 1660–1832, historiography

Mara de Gennaro
Ph.D. Columbia
Scholarly interests: postcolonial literature and theory

Michael Drexler
Ph.D. Brown
Scholarly interests: early American literature

Eric Faden
Ph.D. Florida
Scholarly interests: film studies, video production

Carmen Gillespie, Director of the Griot Institute for Africana Studies
Ph.D. Emory
Scholarly interests: American literature, African American literature, Caribbean literature, creative writing

Shara McCallum, Director of the Stadler Center for Poetry
Ph.D. Binghamton
Scholarly interests: creative writing (poetry and creative nonfiction), contemporary poetry and poetics

Ghislaine McDayter, department chair
Ph.D. Duke
Scholarly interests: Romantic literature, literary theory, 18th- and 19th-century English literature, women’s studies

Saundra Morris
Ph.D. Cornell
Scholarly interests: 19th-century American literature, American poetry, social justice

Jean Peterson
Ph.D. Pennsylvania
Scholarly interests: Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, dramatic literature

Harriet Pollack
Ph.D. Virginia
Scholarly interests: American literature, the modern novel, Southern literature, American women writers, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty

Meenakshi Ponnuswami
Ph.D. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Scholarly interests: dramatic literature, theater history, performance theory

John Rickard
Ph.D. North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Scholarly interests: James Joyce, Irish studies, modern British literature, science and literature

Robert Rosenberg
M.F.A. Iowa
Scholarly interests: creative writing (fiction), American and British Literature

Harold Schweizer
Ph.D. University of Zürich
Scholarly interests: modern poetry, literary theory, studies in suffering and representation, comparative humanities

Alf Siewers
Ph.D. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Scholarly interests: medieval literature, Celtic studies, literature and the environment

G.C. Waldrep, Director of Graduate Studies in English and Editor of West Branch
Ph.D. Duke
Scholarly interests: history, creative writing/poetry, American Studies

Claire Watkins
MFA Ohio State University
Scholarly interests: Creative Writing (fiction and creative nonfiction); Contemporary Literature, Literature of the American West

Virginia Zimmerman
Ph.D. Virginia
Scholarly interests: Victorian literature, children’s literature, science and literature

Graduate and Professional School

Many Bucknell English majors go on to graduate school in English, creative writing or journalism, or in related fields such as philosophy. Others go on to professional school in law, business and medicine.

Recently, alumni have gone on to:

• Oxford University
• New York University
• Rice University
• University of Michigan
• University of Toronto
• Brown University
• Columbia University
• Duke University
• Harvard
• Princeton
• University of Iowa
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Sussex