MAJOR IN ENGLISH
The Department of English
The Department of English at UBC is one of the two largest English departments in Canada. As a result, our students have access to professors whose expertise spans all the major historical fields, genres, critical and theoretical approaches, and who have achieved international reputations for their research and teaching. With well over 500 students enrolled each year, the English major is also one of the largest programs in the University, enabling us to offer a wide range of courses, library, and other educational resources.
The English Major
The English Major typically takes two years to complete. Students apply to the Major at the end of their second year. They apply as either literature or language specialists.
The second-year course prerequisites to the literature major are chosen from among historical surveys of British, Canadian, American and world literature and convey a strong sense of the aesthetic, cultural, and contextual development of the literatures studied. Upper-level courses for the literature major are chosen from across the spectrum of world literatures in English, including Canadian content and a substantial historical grounding, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. Literature students also take a research-intensive capstone seminar, the instructors and topics of which change from year to year.
The second-year course prerequisites to the language stream introduce students to a wide range of topics in linguistic, rhetorical, and discourse analysis in combination with the study of literary history. Upper-level courses for the language major cover the history and structure of the language as well as rhetorical theory and approaches to the study of discourse.
Each of these thirty-credit streams of study toward the English Major leaves room for students to investigate topics in other literatures, other humanities and social sciences, the arts, and other topics of their choice. All students have access to majors advisors to help them plan programs of study that are coherent and whose components complement and enrich one another.