English is a famously interdisciplinary subject, with our faculty regularly engaging with studies in visual media; philosophy; classics; ethnic studies; history; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; and comparative literature as part of their research and teaching. We also have faculty who teach and research at the intersections of English and law; English and food studies; English and folklore; and English and game studies, among others. At the graduate level we have extensive partnerships with the Environmental Studies program, and through the Politics, Culture, and Identity specialization, with the Political Science program. Undergraduates will find our minor programs offer exceptional interdisciplinary opportunities—in Writing, Public Speaking, and Critical Reasoning (WSCR); in Digital Humanities; in Disability Studies; and in Comic Studies.
Structured Emphasis Option for Doctoral Students
PhD students in the English Department may elect one of seven special curriculums created by participating faculty in adjacent fields as a structured emphasis. All involve interdisciplinary courseowrk and doctoral study with faculty who align with the department's strengths.
Affiliated Centers and Institutes
The Center for Teaching Writing
The Center for Teaching Writing is located on the 3rd floor of Tykeson and is an umbrella that includes the Writing Associates and Writing Tutors programs. Writing associates and tutors are available to meet with students on written work and research projects. The Center for Teaching Writing is committed to enhancing undergraduate education at the University of Oregon. By training undergraduate and graduate students and professors to be better teachers of writing, to use writing technologies effectively, and to incorporate writing as a way of learning, the Center aims to improve both the quality of writing instruction and the quality of student writing at the university. Linking research and pedagogy, the Center also supports the examination of writing pedagogy, both on campus and in dialogue with the greater community.
Prince Lucien Campbell Hall (PLC)
Faculty offices, as well as the main Department of English office is located in PLC, in addition to our graduate seminar room and two composition classrooms.
Interdisciplinary Student Research Profiles
Cassandra Galentine, Doctoral Candidate in the English Department
"There's nobody with common sense that can look down on the domestic worker: Dirt, Disease, and Hygiene in Alice Childress's Like One of the Family."
Galentine's project argues that the reading of dirty materials like dirt, dust, and garbage and the resulting discourses of hygiene are an environmental justice issue wherein the responsibility and burden of environmental harm is shifted to its victims through racial capitalism. Her analysis of works by Anizia Yezierska, Anora Babb, and Alice Childress explores how women within these texts resist "gendered imperatives of hygiene" by embracing dirty material.
Teresa Hernández, English Department
Dissertation: Contested Motherlands
Teresa Hernández, a Doctoral Candidate and first-generation college student in the English Department, has been awarded a 2021-2022 CSWS Research Grant for her transdisciplinary work within critical border feminist and Chicanx nationalist discourses. Her dissertation, "Contested Motherlands," is invested in the futurity of Chicanx and Latinx literary studies through a new spatial imaginary wherein she examines "the overlapping and contentious geopolitical spatializations in Mexican and Mexican American literature and cultural studies."
Hernández's work interrogates intersections of sovereignties and nationalisms, challenging current definitions of decolonization and border feminisms. In a self-analysis of the stakes of her work Hernández humbly suggests that while her work cannot "correct the violence committed in the name of nationalism in the fields of Chicanx and Latinx literary studies," she does the final realization of her work as "one that begins with admission and ends with possibility."