English and American Literature

The graduate program in English and American literature at Washington University in St. Louis is innovative, approachably sized, and generously funded. Our faculty includes Guggenheim Fellows, winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A participant in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, we exemplify an integrated community of scholars and writers, and are home to one of the top ten MFA programs in the U.S. We sponsor multiple reading groups, regular faculty and student colloquia, and an extensive lecture series.

Areas of Study: Medieval; Early Modern; Early American; Eighteenth-Century British; Nineteenth-Century British; Nineteenth-Century American; Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century British; Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century American; African American Literature and Culture; Irish Literature; Anglophone Postcolonial Literature; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Modernism; Poetry; Poetics Theory

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The Hurst Visiting Professorship

The Hurst Visiting Professorship brings eight or more distinguished creative and critical voices to the department each year for public lectures and small workshops. Recent Hurst Visiting Professors include Charles Taylor, Jerome McGann, Jed Esty, Charles Altieri, Carla Kaplan, Michael Wood, James Longenbach, Peter Coviello, Daniel Vitkus, Rita Felski, Rita Copeland, Laura Marcus, and Kate Zambreno.