With about 200 undergraduate majors, more than 70 graduate students, and some 32 faculty members, the English Department is one of the largest in the UHM College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures (LLL). The Department is the site of dynamic creative and scholarly work and, with more award-winning teachers than any other department at UHM, has a demonstrated commitment to teaching at all levels of the curriculum.
At both the undergraduate and graduate level, we offer flexible yet challenging courses with emphases in Literary Studies in English, Creative Writing, Composition and Rhetoric and Cultural Studies. The Department also has special emphases in Hawaiian literature, other literatures of Hawai`i, Pacific literatures, children’s literature, life writing, and oral traditions.
The English minor consists of 15 upper-division English credits and allows the student three elective courses in addition to two required courses. Pursuing Honors in English offers students a dynamic and focused intellectual experience as they select from a range of Honors tutorials, work closely with faculty members and one another, and write creative or scholarly theses.
Our graduate program offers both the MA and the PhD degrees. Students may pursue the MA with a concentration in Literary Studies in English, Composition and Rhetoric, Creative Writing, or Cultural Studies in Asia/Pacific. Doctoral candidates in Creative Writing may submit creative work for the dissertation.
The Department supports a number of scholarly and creative print and on-line journals and sponsors readings and talks by visiting writers and scholars throughout the year. There are opportunities to work on journals and conferences, to do undergraduate tutoring, to serve as a writing mentor as an MA student, to teach undergraduates as a PhD Graduate Assistant, and to do internships in the community, and much more.