Department of English
English at Brown
Fostering an open understanding of literatures and cultures in English
English at Brown
Fostering an open understanding of literatures and cultures in English
Upcoming Events
News
The Rumpus
Grace Talusan Interviews Monica Macansantos
Grace Talusan, Lecturer in the Nonfiction Writing Program, interviews Monica Macansantos about her latest collection of stories, Love and Other Rituals (University of Melbourne’s Grattan Street Press, 2022).
Professor Ada Smailbegović received honorable mention in the Matei Calinescu Prize, awarded for "a distinguished work of scholarship in twentieth- or twenty-first-century literature and thought in any geographical context," for her book Poetics of Liveliness: Molecules, Fibers, Tissues, Clouds (Columbia University Press, 2021). Twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, Smailbegović argues, have intermingled scientific methodologies with poetic form to reveal unfolding processes of change. Their works can be envisioned as laboratories within which the methodologies of experimentation, natural historical description, and taxonomic classification allow poetic language to register the rhythms and durations of material transformation.
Professor Kevin Quashie has won the James Russell Lowell Prize, awarded to "an outstanding literary or linguistic study or a critical biography," for his 2021 book Black Aliveness; or, a Poetics of Being (Duke University Press). In Black Aliveness, Quashie imagines a Black world in which one encounters Black being as it is, rather than only as it exists in the shadow of anti-Black violence. As such, he makes a case for Black aliveness even in the face of the persistence of death in Black life and Black study.
Academic Programs
Undergraduate Studies
We study how literature works, how we understand it, and how we write about it. We examine closely matters of language, form, genre, and critical method.
Nonfiction Writing Program
The Nonfiction Writing Program, unique to Brown University in its scope, teaches the writing of nonfiction in its predominant modes: the academic essay, creative nonfiction, and journalism.
Graduate Studies
Brown's doctoral program in English offers professional training in literary criticism, critical theory, intellectual history, and all aspects of research and pedagogy in the humanities.
For First Year Students
There are several ways to start your journey with English at Brown.
The Department of English offers several pathways for incoming students to deepen and strengthen their ability to think and write about literature and culture.
The Nonfiction Writing Program brings together three forms of writing: academic essay, journalism, and creative nonfiction.