English

Mission

The English Department at UMass Lowell provides a rigorous and diverse curriculum for its majors, combining solid disciplinary foundations with opportunities for research, writing, performance, community engagement, and practical experience, leading to a range of possible career pathways and graduate programs for students to pursue. The curriculum across our five concentrations encourages the development of critical thinking, reading, and writing skills that serve English majors well beyond the university. Small class sizes encourage active learning, interaction with student peers, and engagement with faculty who are renowned scholars, writers, and artists publishing and performing in a wide variety of literary and cultural traditions. The English Department serves the broader university community with its First Year Writing Program and its required College Writing sequence, and by offering a range of General Education/Core Curriculum courses that appeal to students from a variety of departments and colleges across campus. The English Department also believes in service to and partnership with the broader community and regularly integrates scholarship, creative work, teaching, and service with community engagement.

Requirements of the Major

Creative Writing Learning Outcomes

Students who complete their degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing will be able to do the following:

  1. Demonstrate a working knowledge of the fundamental elements of craft and process across the major genres
  2. Analyze literary texts from the perspectives of genre, literary history, theory, and theme
  3. Critically evaluate their own and others’ work in a workshop setting
  4. Hone and refine critical reading and writing skills in specialized workshops
  5. Participate in a vibrant creative community of faculty, visiting writers, and student peers
  6. Create a rigorously revised body of work under the close supervision of faculty