English

Innovative, skills-based, and imagination friendly, McMurry University’s major in English and writing teaches students how people have used imaginative writing to form and transform identities and anchor change cultures. English studies focuses on three fundamental ways people have used the written word: to struggle for recognition and freedom, imagine how we should relate to ourselves and the rest of nature, and ask big questions about where humans fit in the universe. English majors further diversify their skills and explore their interests by choosing a concentration in film studies or writing. 

Every so often we hear someone exclaim that politics has no place in an English course. Such a viewpoint is perhaps understandable but incorrect. We construct our identities and make sense of our societies through language. All phases of literature and composition studies inescapably involve meanings, contexts and issues that people have struggled through or fought about. Since, in many cases, we are still working our way through serious conflicts, the McMurry English Studies program fosters conversations regarding how traditional literary topics intersect with race and racism, immigration, gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, and colonialisms. The English studies faculty are committed to a culture in which faculty and students can examine evidence, consider how values shape the human experience, and hone their abilities to demonstrate their qualitative-reasoning skills in imaginative and analytic writing about subjects that matter.

As an English student, you’ll develop fulfilling and marketable skills by thinking critically and creatively about how literature and other imaginative uses of media reflect and influence the human experience. The McMurry Department of English challenges students not only to think deeply and creatively about literature, film, language or writing, but to imagine new possibilities for these forms of expression. Our degree program reimagines a liberal arts education.