- Undergraduate
This program is ideal for students who: love to read and write, enjoy working independently, seek valuable preparation for graduate schol, wish to enhance their applications for jobs or graduate school, enjoy small classroom settings, and want to work closely with a faculty member who shares their intellectual interests. For more information, visit these links:
- Graduate
This program of study is designed to give students the opportunity to specialize in one of four areas of concentration while requiring that they do approximately half of their course work in other subject areas. For more information, visit these links:
Ph.D. candidates are given a great deal of freedom to create an individualized program around their own interests and objectives. Learn more by visiting the links below:
- Fields
Fields of Study
Composition
Creative Writing
Children's Literature
Cultural Studies
Literary Studies
Pacific Literature
- (coming soon)
- Department
People
Our faculty includes not only many award-winning teachers, but American Council of Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society, Folger Library, Fulbright, Guggenheim, Huntington Library, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Newberry Library fellows.
- Events
Colloquium Series
The Chadwick Lecture Series
An annual series of lectures in the areas most associated with Chadwick’s work: gay studies, Irish studies, multiculturalism and emergent literatures, creative writing, and translation studies.
The Marjorie Edel Reading Series
The Marjorie Putnam Sinclair Edel Reading Series honors the memory of poet, novelist, biographer, and teacher Marjorie Putnam Sinclair Edel (1913-2005) and her lasting contributions to Hawai‘i’s literary communities.
- Journals
HONORS Program
ideal for students who love to read and write
COLLOQUIUM SERIES
BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Experience, interpret and create...The Mission
The fundamental mission of the Department of English is to develop students’ critical reading, writing, and creative skills through the study of various literatures in the English language, composition and rhetoric, and creative writing. In carrying out this mission, the Department places particular emphasis upon the diversity of cultures in Hawai‘i, Asia, and the Pacific. Faculty members are committed to quality research and scholarship, generous public service, and exemplary teaching, working directly with students in relatively small classes to allow close attention. [ More ]
About the Department
With over 300 undergraduate majors and minors, 100 graduate students, and some 45 faculty members, the English Department is the largest in the UHM College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures (LLL). The Department offers a flexible yet challenging 33-credit undergraduate major with emphases in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, Composition/ Rhetoric, and Asia/Pacific Studies.
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 do mentoring as a graduate student, to do internships in the community, and much more.
