[ English ]

About the Department

With a dynamic, innovative faculty, a forward-looking curriculum, and plenty of extracurricular opportunities to hone your skills, the Department of English at Elmhurst College will challenge and inspire you.

Here’s some of what you’ll find at Elmhurst:

• A personal learning environment. Our student-faculty ratio of 13 to 1 ensures that you’ll develop close relationships with your professors. A faculty member—never a teaching assistant—teaches every course here. Classes are small; discussions are lively and intense. 
  
• Strong academic programs. U.S.News & World Report ranks Elmhurst among the top 10 comprehensive colleges in the Midwest. As an English major, you can choose to concentrate on literature or writing, or earn a teaching certification. 
  
• A modern curriculum. A respect for the diversity of human experience is woven into all literature courses at Elmhurst, so our majors read Amy Tan and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in addition to Shakespeare and Dickens. Courses focus on women’s writing, on literary theory, on ethical values in literature, and many more innovative topics. 
  
• Hands-on experience. Elmhurst offers plenty of opportunities to gain professional experience as a writer or editor. You might write for The Leader, Elmhurst’s student-run newspaper, which wins awards and has a professional edge; or see your work published in The MiddleWestern Voice, the College’s full-color journal of literature and the arts. If you’re interested in teaching, you could help run the College’s creative writing workshops for high school students. Want to travel? We’ll take you to Oxford to study at the university’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.