The English Major
Declaring an English major is simple. Just follow the Step-By-Step Checklist linked to this page.
Students deciding to pursue the new English major at Penn study literature, literary history, and theories of literary production in a twelve-course major of flexible design, consisting of:
Most new majors will pursue our Standard Curriculum, designed to provide the broadest foundation and greatest possible range of mastery across literary periods, genres, and national literatures. Majors adopting the Standard Curriculum have the option of later adding a Concentration if they wish. English offers 15 distinct Concentrations, and these go everywhere that English goes or has gone.
Still, many other majors will find their interests drawn by our special tracks in Creative Writing and Cinema Studies. Indeed, English is the only major that allows students to major with an emphasis in Creative Writing.
Because our majors pursue emphases and concentrations of their own choosing, they are able to construct courses of study that correspond to their own growing intellectual interests. Some decide to explore entire literary periods (from medieval to the present day), others individual genres (poetry, prose, drama, and cinema), and others specific literary cultures (whether British American, or African-American, Asian-American, Latina/o, Caribbean, Celtic, South African, or other literatures in English).
