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Undergraduate Program Information

 

The English Department offers degree-concentrations in a variety of specialized areas of study: literature, creative writing, digital technology, and pedagogy. All of these concentrations promote in their specific ways the crucial liberal-arts skills of advanced literacy: critical reading and high-quality writing.

Although it's difficult to identify a single key experience that Undergraduate English Majors at UNC Charlotte all share, there are central questions to which our majors pursue answers. "What does the text (a novel, a poem, an essay, a film, a website, a speech, a story, a brochure) mean? How do meanings change over time, across historical periods? How do we come to our own interpretations? What can we teach others? What does it mean to revise? How can we best use technologies to research, draft, edit, and publish our work?"

If these are the kind of questions that intrigue you, consider an English Major at UNC Charlotte.

Admission and Progression Requirements and all Program Requirements can be found in the Undergraduate Catalog. Please see the information below:

Majors

The English Department offers degree-concentrations in a variety of specialized areas of study: literature, creative writing, digital technology, and pedagogy. All of these concentrations promote in their specific ways the crucial liberal-arts skills of advanced literacy: critical reading and high-quality writing. But what if you’re interested in sampling the full array of areas, rather than concentrating in only one? For you, the general English BA will be the way to go. The general English BA will give you the broadest training in the essential liberal-arts skills. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]

Students in the Creative Writing concentration will study and practice the art and craft of writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction as part of a broader humanistic inquiry. As students progress through introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses, they will sharpen skills in crafting poetry and prose while refining aesthetics, style, grammar, and mechanics. They will become engaged, insightful readers and critics of contemporary poetry and prose, regularly exchange drafts with peers and learn to offer thoughtful, substantial feedback, and actively revise creative work and reflect on their growth and processes. The act of writing creatively gives students valuable sentence-level expertise but also instills in them how to question, contemplate, explore, problem-solve, empathize, observe, and imagine—all of which can open opportunities in the fields of writing, editing, publishing, education, and the arts, as well as in law, business, public service, and nonprofit sectors. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]

This pioneering concentration combines linguistics and technical/professional writing, offering unique and cutting-edge applied-language expertise to English majors interested in any career that requires expertise in how people interact and present themselves on different platforms and media, how they respond to language, and how they negotiate power and identity through language. Such knowledge is necessary in many careers such as speech writing, advertising, medical narratives, education, profiling, belief formation, corporate storytelling, and bibliotherapy. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]

Literature and Culture courses offer imaginative, interdisciplinary and theoretical engagement with Anglophone literatures in all their historical, formal, generic, and global diversity. They emphasize critical thinking and writing. This major fosters our students’ ability to read, appreciate, and interpret literary texts. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]

Pedagogy majors will be prepared to teach secondary English in settings as diverse as large city high schools to smaller more rural schools. Graduates of the program will be effective and engaging teachers of literature, literacy, and writing. The Pedagogy program focuses on preparing educators to design and implement instruction that is socially just, addresses critical issues in the English Education classroom, and incorporates digital tools. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]

Minors

Children's Literature and Childhood Studies (CLCS) is an interdisciplinary minor which focuses on children's literature as well as a range of other child-related fields of study, including child psychology, language acquisition, education, pediatric nursing, juvenile law, and the history and culture of childhood. Along with two non-literature courses, students in the minor are introduced to British, American, and Anglophone literature for young people, emphasizing historical context, diversity, language, media studies, iconography, childhood studies, creative writing, and the digital humanities. This minor pairs especially well with majors in English, Communications, Psychology, Computer Science, and History, as well as with Elementary, Secondary, and Theater Education. The applications for this growing field of study are practically limitless: students can use this material as parents, teachers, editors, writers, professors, therapists, lawyers, filmmakers, and as graphic and game designers to explore not just the humanities, but also almost any area of endeavor from STEM subjects to the fine arts. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]
Students in the Diverse Literatures and Cultural Studies Minor will be able to complement their education by exploring some of the most important issues concerning cultural, national, racial, ethnic, religious, and other forms of diversity related to identity, gender and sexuality, disability, age, and socio-economic status. Combining courses offered in English as well as other areas, students are invited to follow their interests in a number of literary and cultural studies fields, expand their intellectual horizons, and become better prepared to be active participants in our increasingly diverse society. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]
Why consider an English minor? All college-level degrees require advanced levels of literacy within their specific subject. But only one discipline, English, zeroes in on the skills of advanced literacy itself—the ability to read critically and write analytically. Because an English minor directly trains you in the skills of advanced reading and writing, it will necessarily enhance your success in literally any other college degree.  [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]
World wide, the language industry is among the leading employers after governments and armed forces. Large branches of industry require linguistic expertise, including automated translation, human-machine interfacing, data mining, localization, terminology extraction/standardization, trademarking, legal and diplomatic professions. Our linguistics minor is, correspondingly, interdisciplinary, and attracts students from different majors and colleges. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]
Students in the technical/professional writing minor focus on writing in a variety of technical forms of discourse and engage in critical thinking and writing by developing their writing processes and producing a variety of communication. This minor emphasizes understanding technical/professional writing as critical awareness of texts and technologies enmeshed in technical, social, and political contexts. Through research, problem-solving, and theoretical discussions, students engage in recognizing the rhetorical character of technical and professional discourse with its multiple purposes and audiences. Such knowledge, including evaluating and integrating written, visual, and oral elements to create effective rhetorical strategies for all communication situations, grounds the 21st Century global citizen and provides field-specific expertise for developing and disseminating information required by ever-evolving discourse communities across disciplines. [Link to Undergraduate Catalog]

Honors Program

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Early Entry

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Academic Plans of Study

 

Additional Resources for Students

Undergraduate Advising

Professional Internships
Students are strongly encouraged to participate in an internship during their undergraduate career. Internships provide a real-life work experience, so take a few moments to review the information and consult with the internship coordinator for additional information.

Teacher licensure
If, as part of your B.A. in English, you are seeking licensure to teach English in grades 9-12, you should consult with your advisor in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and K-12 Education for specific requirements. You can also download a teacher licensure worksheet.

For students interested in signing up for writing courses, see: University Writing Program