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Mission

The Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison includes a wide array of disciplines in contemporary English studies: literary studies, composition and rhetoric, creative writing, English linguistics and English as a second language. We offer a strong undergraduate major in literature, with complementary tracks in creative writing and linguistics. Along with our undergraduate curriculum, we offer four programs of graduate study in literary studies, rhetoric and composition, English linguistics and creative writing. Our faculty is productive and diverse and we are growing. With representation across the university in programs and centers devoted to humanistic inquiry for our time and across time, the UW-Madison English Department is at the forefront of disciplinary inquiries that engage its students, faculty and the broader public community to which we are also committed. Those inquiries include reading across the domains of global literature in English, from the early medieval era to the present; literary practice and rhetorical theory; oral, manuscript, print and digital cultures and artifacts; archival research; rhetorical practices and communities; forms and cultures of English language learning, literacy, dialect and speech; public culture and the humanities; digital studies; writing prose fiction, memoir, poetry and plays; the DARE project (Dictionary of American Regional English); and the Writing Center and the undergraduate Writing Fellows program. English at UW-Madison is all of these, as well as the alumni who have studied here and remain part of our wider community. Welcome.