An English degree: Applicable to every job, everywhere.
Whether you want to become a teacher, a writer, a social media marketer, or something else entirely, Hartwick’s English major prepares you for your future. Hartwick English students come to realize that language and the imagination can create worlds which, like ours, delight, disturb, and challenge. The study of literature, therefore, helps students understand the world in which they live and their places in it.
- Engage in an informed search for subtle meanings
- Explore our diverse literary heritage
- Release the imagination
- Write! Write! Write!
Where degrees in English can take you.
Hartwick English “literarians,” whether majoring in creative writing or in literature, learn how language and the imagination create worlds. Through analysis, critique, and debate, students become better able to express their own ideas and understand the world.
Select a program that suits your passion.
Hartwick’s English Department offers two majors, each with its own requirements. In addition, students may choose to obtain New York state teacher certification in English.
- Literature: A wide range of courses in canonical American and British literature, women’s literature, literary theory, ethnic literatures, regional literatures, period surveys, and major authors.
- Creative writing: Courses in writing fiction, poetry, play-writing, and creative non-fiction
Beyond the basic.
Through the Visiting Writers Series, students have been able to interact with writers like Nobel Laureates Joseph Brodsky and Derek Walcott; Pulitzer Prize winners Donald Justice and N. Scott Momaday; former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky; and authors Jamaica Kincaid and Joyce Carol Oates. Each fall, exciting new poets and fiction writers lead special workshops for students in the New American Writing Festival.
Putting English to work.
Hartwick English majors graduate with verbal and analytical skills that serve them well in a variety of occupations. Many have completed advanced study at prestigious institutions.
Hartwick alumni work for:
- Cambridge Business Publishers
- Northwestern Mutual
- Scientific American
- University of Nice
Recent Hartwick graduates have been accepted to:
- Chapman University
- University of California at Davis
- NYU’s Tisch School of the Dramatic Arts
- Mary Baldwin College
- The Actor’s Studio
Meet the English faculty.
Hartwick’s expert English faculty are future-focused. They work closely to inspire students who are meant for more. Students who will change the world into which they graduate in countless ways. Hartwick students.
Robert Bensen Professor of English and Director of Writing
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Areas of expertise:
composition, poetry & fiction writing, 17th Century English literature, American Indian literature and law, West Indian literature
David Cody Professor of English
Ph.D., Brown University
Areas of expertise:
19th century American literature and culture, the relationship between English and American literature; science and literature; the literature of imperialism; the literature of horror
Lisa Darien Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., University of California - Berkeley
Areas of expertise:
Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature and culture, Beowulf, Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture, Middle English and Chaucer, women in the middle Ages, nineteenth-century medievalism
Bradley J. Fest Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of Pittsburgh - Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Areas of expertise:
Creative writing; poetry; twentieth- and twenty-first-century United States literature and culture; history of literary criticism and theory; ecological humanities; digital studies
Susan J. Navarette Professor of English and Department Chair
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Areas of expertise:
narrative, genre, and cultural studies; 18th through early 20th-century British culture and literature; scientific theory and narrative form; gender studies; film studies
Robert Seguin Associate Professor of English, Coordinator of Race & Ethnic Studies
Ph.D., Duke University
Areas of expertise:
modern and contemporary American literature, literary and cultural theory, the utopian tradition in literature, modernism in the arts
Julia Suarez Hayes Assistant Professor of English and Writing Center Coordinator
MA, State University of New York at Oneonta
Areas of expertise:
creative writing; composition; grammar; American literature; American Romantics
Thomas Travisano Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Virginia
Areas of expertise:
modern and contemporary American literature; twentieth-century poetry; Elizabeth Bishop; Robert Lowell
Jake Wolff Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison - Ph.D., Florida State University
Areas of expertise:
creative writing; fiction; non-fiction; contemporary American short stories and novels; medical writing in fiction and nonfiction; historical fiction
Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree Program.
Ready to move faster? Get the full Hartwick English experience in three-quarters the time at three-quarters the cost. Learn more about the three-year program.
