Welcome to the website of the English Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  We are a dynamic and diverse community committed to the study and teaching of British, American, and anglophone literature and film, Creative Writing, and Writing Studies. 

Our tradition of first-rate, cutting-edge research, together with the exceptional productivity of our faculty, has meant that we are consistently ranked among the top twenty English departments in the nation. In keeping with this tradition, the department hosts four major scholarly journals—American Literary History, Configurations, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and International Journal of Lexicography—as well as the prize-winning magazine, Ninth Letter, which has become a centerpiece of our MFA program.  Much of the work we do is interdisciplinary and intercultural in nature, so we have strong ties as well to other interdisciplinary units on campus such as American Indian Studies, Asian-American Studies, Cinema Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Latina/o Studies, Medieval Studies, the Program for Jewish Culture and Society, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory.

We are also a department of committed and highly successful teachers and mentors, serving thriving graduate programs and two lively undergraduate majors.  Every year our faculty and graduate students are recognized on campus for their teaching excellence.  We strive to help prepare our students for both their lives and their careers, and the success of our graduates is always a point of pride.