English majors focus on one of three emphases: Literary Studies, Film and Media Studies, or Creative Writing. Regardless of their emphasis, all students acquire a wide breadth of knowledge about the past and present of literature, film, and media. Our interdisciplinary program equips students with the skills to interpret the variety of texts and images they encounter on a daily basis and to contribute to their cultural environment in passionate, innovative, and insightful ways.
Click here to see descriptions of our advanced course offerings in the 2022-2023 academic year.
Students regularly engage with contemporary issues in the literary and media arts through on-campus
Hendrix-Murphy Foundation programming, the Drake lecture series, and Odyssey Professorship events. Leading novelists, filmmakers, and critics regularly come to campus to give talks and workshops. Internships, study abroad programs, campus publications, and media organizations further enhance the major.
Our talented faculty includes four recipients of the annual college-wide teaching award, has held eight Odyssey professorships, and now holds two of the college's six distinguished professors.
What to do with an English Major? Check out the chart below! Students also go on to successful careers in higher education. We regularly place students in some of the top graduate programs in the country, including Harvard, University of Chicago, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
To get a flavor of our community and upcoming events, please check our calendar or find us on
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Statement of Purpose and Diversity
We publicly affirm and celebrate Hendrix College’s
Statement of Purpose and our recently-adopted
Diversity Statement as the guiding principles by which we teach, advise, and serve as English Department faculty at Hendrix College. We strive to create and sustain an inclusive, welcoming, and diverse community—of students and faculty, alumni and
friends—who values engagement with literature, film, and media as a practice of reading and making with discernment, of acting with empathy and benevolence, of building a respectful dialogue with texts, images, and each other.
Given our rigorous study of the histories and theories of artistic expression and textual analysis; given our vast appreciation for language’s power to make and unmake a community; given our passionate interest in how literature, film, and media can challenge and give rise to our socio-political realities; given our
active practice of writing and reading as way of cultivating “empathy, creativity, self-understanding, rigorous inquiry, informed deliberation, and active learning…toward the development of the whole person,” we want to remind our community of students, alumni, friends, and family that our own
departmental commitment “to diversity, inclusion, justice, and sustainable living” heartily matches that of the College’s Statement of Purpose (quoted here).
As offered by Hendrix College’s Diversity Statement, we affirm our college community’s commitment to “a diverse learning environment enriched by the race, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, socioeconomic status, ability, culture, political philosophies, geographical
backgrounds, and intellectual perspectives of its students, faculty, staff, and administrators. We believe diversity makes the whole richer, and that participating in a dynamically inclusive community provides a framework for successful leadership and engaged citizenship in the 21st century.”
As a department within Hendrix College, our adherence to our institution’s abiding principles is expected and unremarkable, but we would rather risk an overemphasis than a silence perceived as indifference. We affirm our commitment to being a community that welcomes, celebrates, and works through and across difference.
Faculty contact:
Dr. Ty Jaeger