Greetings from the Chair
Welcome to the Department of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the largest department in Humanities at the University. You can find us in Lucas Hall on North Campus, where you can meet our advisors and learn about our programs and activities in literature, writing, and the teaching of literature and writing on and off campus.
You’ll meet our faculty of dedicated and talented teachers, scholars, editors, literary critics, biographers, linguists, rhetoricians, and writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Our professors appear regularly in the Monday Noon series of the Center for the Humanities and in the Department’s own Colloquium series. When you visit us on fourth-floor Lucas, look for our display of dust jackets from faculty books. Stop in to visit me in the Chair’s office, 461 Lucas, where faculty books, department journals, and creative and scholarly theses by our students are currently shelved.
As a student, you may become acquainted with the English Department in a required First-Year or Third-Year Writing course or in a literature or creative writing course taken for a General Education requirement. You may wish to major or minor in English, a richly literary concentration with its wide range of courses, its own essay competition, and its loyal following in the community, which supports an annual Short Story contest and scholarship program. Undergraduate creative writers are invited to become involved in the student Litmag. You may specialize in the teaching of English, too. In collaboration with the College of Education, historically our Department has prepared more teachers of English than any other campus in the state.
Regardless of your major, you may pursue professional writing through the Certificate in Writing. Through the Certificate you can study business, technical, creative, and public affairs writing and prepare for a writing internship. Honored by the English Institute, the Writing Certificate recognizes its best graduate yearly with the Robert Smith Award.
As an aspiring graduate student, you may apply year-round to our Master’s in English. With its internationally known faculty in literature and composition, the M.A. offers both traditional learning and contemporary preparation and awards yearly prizes in literary criticism and composition studies. The M.A. prepares its hard-working students to teach, edit, or pursue an advanced degree.
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing accepts applications by a February 15 deadline. As an MFA student, you write under a well-published faculty of novelists, poets, and short story writers, including a Visiting Writer each spring and sometimes summer, sometimes in playwriting or nonfiction. Many MFA students and alums publish actively in national venues. The program produces its own journal, Natural Bridge: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, which you as an MFA student may help edit. Teaching Assistantships are awarded to a few outstanding applicants in both Master’s programs: you must apply by February 15 for these.
Graduate students may pursue a Certificate in the Teaching of Writing. The Department’s Gateway Writing Program (307 Tower) may interest you if you are a practicing teacher. As an affiliate of the National Writing Project, the GWP prepares teachers of all levels (K-12, college, adult) to use writing to improve student learning.
As a student in any division of the University, you may use the Department’s Writing Lab (409 SSB). The Lab is open on a walk-in basis and offers student-friendly workshops throughout the year.
You are cordially invited to explore our website. And please visit us in person in Lucas Hall and at our other sites.
Nanora Sweet, Chair, Department of English
461 Lucas Hall, 314-516-5510, sweet@umsl.edu