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The Department of English

The University of California, Irvine was founded in 1965. We are therefore a relatively new institution. In a visionary anticipation of a future that would make critical theory a driving force in our discipline, our founders designed a program and assembled a faculty prepared to explore the frontiers of literary study. A distinguishing feature of this design was to have the Department allow for close interaction between the English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing programs; it is only recently, indeed, that Comparative Literature has become a separate department, and at the graduate level students move freely across the three programs. This range has given us a cosmopolitan outlook, and our intellectual flexibility has allowed us to accommodate changes in the disciplinary and cultural landscape as our field has become increasingly sophisticated and diverse. At the same time, we have been careful to maintain strength in all the canonical periods of English literary history. Our graduate programs encourage students to customize their course of study to fit their interests, while a carefully designed advising system assures that they are well grounded in literary tradition. Our undergraduate program emphasizes training in criticism, and the curriculum is designed to accommodate an ever-changing array of new courses. Community is as important to us as excellence, and we try to remember--in our study and in our institutional conduct--that the concept of the humane is central to the concerns of the Humanities.
UC Irvine Department of English