English Department

Create Your Own Adventure

Whether you want to improve upon your ability to communicate your ideas more clearly through speaking or writing, you have an apprecation for language, or have an inquiring mind, a major or minor in English can be the key to your future success. The Department of English can help you unlock skills that are essential to possess for practically any job or profession.

Program Highlights

Diverse faculty members who are engaged and productive in their fields.
Through the CSB Literary Arts Institute, English majors learn what it means to be a working author by taking classes from visiting writers throughout the year.
Contribute to Studio One, a literary and visual arts publication, is produced annually. Students can submit poetry, short stories, photographs, paintings, and drawings to be published.
Connect with the English Department on Facebook.
Get involved with literary arts circles through Pseudonym, a student led club for campuses readers and writers.
Discover the English Web, a bi-annual online publication where you can hear from current English faculty and students, along with English alums, on their lives and works.

Overview of Program

Curriculum to include all literature written in English-e.g. works from India, Africa and the Caribbean
Broad scope of world literature while examining traditional works.
Tracks through the Major: Literature, Writing, Teaching Secondary Education, Publishing, Popular/Culture Film.

Read a message from the Department Chair.

News - Extra, extra read all about it!

	April 2012- Professor Steven Thomas wrote a review of the American Literature Association Conference that has been published in the journal Early American Literature, Volume 47, Issue 1. The review can be read here.

April 2012- English Majors and Minors attending the English Banquet. Guest speaker Keri Phillips '00 with S. Mara Faulkner and Mike Optiz.
March 2012-The English Department is pleased to announce that Kia Marie Lor has wond this year's Wagner-Berger Prize for Excellence in Creative Writing for her story "Lub Ntuj Tshiab: Under a New Sky. " Kia is a junior Communication major from St. Paul, MN. The $1000 Wagner-Berger Prize is awarded annually for the best original work of fiction written by a College of Saint Benedict student. Look for Kia's story this spring in Studio One.
March 2012- The Global Ethiopia Conference, sponsored by the English Department, Communication Department, CSB Student Development, and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, attracted over 75 people from around Minnesota. To find out what the conference entailed, please visit the webpage. To read an article that can be found on page 3 of The Record click here. To read an artivle from the CSB\|SJU website click here.
	January 2012 - Professor Cindy Malone gave a presentation entitled "Time and Sequence in Tristram Shandy: Book Art and Literary Criticism" at the College Book Arts Association Conference in San Francisco. Her inventive rendering of Lawrence Sterne's famous eighteenth-century novel enables readers to physically interact with the rather convoluted plot. Her book art was so well received at the conference that curators of several artist's-book collections asked her to reproduce her edition of Tristram Shandy so that they can purchase copies for their collections.
March 2012 -- English faculty member Betsy Johnson-Miller received an Artist Initiative grant for $8250 from the MN State Arts Board to work on a book where she weaves her own spiritual journey into the fabric of the physical and spiritual landscape of Minnesota. To accomplish this, she will travel around the state and talk with people of different faiths and backgrounds about how they experience God's presence and/or absence, and she will also participate in a variety of religious services and rituals. Then she will write a series of essays that chronicle her experiences.
	November 1st - Careers in Film and Video 7 p.m. Gorecki 204A, CSB. Listen to alumni discuss their various careers in film and video!
September 27th - Careers in Writing and Publishing Panel 7 p.m. Gorecki 204, CSB. Come hear about the interesting and unique possibilities in the writing and publishing field.
	July 29th - Recent English graduate Maggie Niebur will be traveling to Tanzania to serve as volunteers for the Benedictine Womens' Service Corps.