English at UNF — About Us

Located at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, the English Department offers courses in American, British, Irish, and world literature, creative and expository writing, and linguistics.

The department offers the B.A. in English and the M.A. in English. Minors are offered in film studies, drama, and English. Two tracks lead to the B.A. in English: the basic major and the drama track. For those who major in English in the College of Education and Human Services, the Department offers courses toward certification at the secondary level.

Why Study English?

Every culture possesses a fund of stories, poems, traditions, and sayings which helps to construct its sense of the world. Our most complete sense of the experience of another comes through study of those texts, whether of another culture, another gender, another time, or just of another person. We even find out about ourselves—define ourselves—through making our own texts. English is the study of how we and others construct and record experience through our narrative and lyric arts.

Educated people everywhere are recognized through their ability to use language well. Our lives — professional, personal, and artistic — are enriched by our powers to speak and write as we would wish. The Department of English is devoted to the arts and skills of language. English majors are equipped for any profession which prizes communication skills — the law, sales, management, teaching, and professional writing are common fields for English graduates, though in truth our graduates do such a wide variety of things that summation must be misleading.