With 40 full-time standing faculty, nearly 400 majors, 75 minors, and a graduate program that enrolls 12 Ph.D. students and 3-5 Masters students each year, English is one of the largest departments in Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. Our research faculty is among the nation's best across the whole range of periods and subfields, from Medieval and Renaissance Studies to Gender and Sexuality Studies, Transatlantic Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Postcolonial and Globalization Theory, Asian American Literature, and Contemporary Poetics. Our goal is not to entrench these existing areas of disciplinary specialization but to bring them into new and productive articulation with one another and with the innovative work being done in other disciplines.

One indication of our interdisciplinary orientation is that our faculty are serving or have recently served as directors of the Penn Humanities Forum, Kelly Writers House, the Material Text Seminar, the Africana Studies Center, the South Asia Center, and the Programs in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Cinema Studies, and Women's Studies.

Our faculty are equally known for their innovative and inspirational teaching, and have won more teaching awards than any other department in the School. Our undergraduate Alumni have gone on to highly successful careers in advertising, publishing, journalism, law, information technology, and other fields; many of them participate in our Career Nights or have joined our English Career Liaison Database, providing a network of helpful contacts for current Penn English Majors.

Our Ph.D. program receives nearly 500 applications a year, and has achieved the strongest job placement record in the country, with 80% of our graduates taking tenure-track positions. We invite you to browse our website and learn more about Penn English. Please feel free to send questions or comments, or to drop by our offices in the newly renovated Fisher-Bennett Hall to meet us in person.