Academic Programs
The Department of English promotes the profound value of writing, reading, and humanistic inquiry. With over 100 years of history at Carnegie Mellon, English is inspired by tradition and dedicated to innovation. Find more about each specific English program below.
Undergraduate Programs
Undergraduate Programs
Writing & Communication
All CMU students are required to take First-Year Writing. In addition to original courses helping students develop writing and communication knowledge, our W&C faculty also produce award-winning research and tools in this area, across diverse academic and professional contexts.
Creative Writing
CMU's English Department is one of a small number of Departments nationwide to offer a major in Creative Writing. The Creative Writing program spans fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and creative nonfiction.
Offering: Major (B.A.), Additional Major, Minor
Film & Visual Media
CMU's Department of English is an ideal home for the university's Film and Visual Media program: The program offers a combination of creative writing, film and media studies, filmmaking expertise, digital humanities, and visual communication research.
Offering: Major (B.A.), Additional Major, Minor
Literature & Culture
The Literature and Culture major explores and produces research on the importance of understanding imaginative works within their cultural and historical contexts.
Offering: Major (B.A.), Additional Major, Minor
Professional Writing
Professional Writing explores best practices in communication across sectors, document design, and conveying information between multiple stakeholders in a shifting, globalized economy.
Offering: Major (B.A.), Additional Major, Minor
Technical Writing
Technical Writing offers English's only Bachelor of Science degree. This area blends writing, document design, and user experience methods with additional work in computer science, mathematics, and statistics.
Offering: Major (B.S.), Additional Major, Minor
Humanities Analytics
Humanities Analytics (HumAn) is the discipline in CMU English dedicated to analyzing, digitizing, questioning, quantifying, and visualizing different types of humanities and cultural phenomena: including printed books, fan fiction, manuscripts, historical records, art, music, and film.
Offering: Minor
Gender Studies
Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary field that investigates how gender is embedded in social, cultural, and political relationships. This work understands gender as a category of power that intersects with other power relations, including race, class, and sexuality.
Offering: Minor
Masters Programs
Master of Arts in Global Communication & Applied Translation
A partnership between the Departments of English and Modern Languages, the GCAT M.A. program's work focuses on principles and practices of professional translation, localization, and global communication.
Learn more about M.A. Global Communication & Applied Translation
Master of Arts in Literary & Cultural Studies
The M.A. in LCS concerns the fields of performance studies, the history of books and reading, Shakespeare and early modern media, contemporary literatures both American and global, modern media studies, black studies, and more.
Master of Arts in Professional Writing
The M.A. in Professional Writing (MAPW) explores best practices in communication across sectors, document design, and conveying information between multiple stakeholders in a shifting, globalized economy.
Master of Arts in Rhetoric
The M.A. in Rhetoric explores current theory, history, and field-leading pedagogical practices of rhetoric, as well as produces unique work from specialized analytic methods, both qualitative and quantitative.
Ph.D. Programs
Ph.D. in Literary & Cultural Studies
The Ph.D. in LCS explores and produces research on the importance of understanding imaginative works within their cultural and historical contexts.
