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DEPARTMENT OFFICE
Engineering and Technology A604
Phone: (323) 343-4140
Chair: Andrew Knighton
Website: www.calstatela.edu/academic/english

The English Department at California State University, Los Angeles, cultivates students’ imaginations and critical skills through the intensive study of literature and language. Offering programs leading to the Bachelor of Arts and the Master of Arts degrees, the department provides courses that build on the traditional study of British and American literary history while encouraging students to further explore literary theory and criticism, world literatures and transnational critical paradigms, children’s literature, creative writing, rhetoric and composition, interdisciplinary cultural analysis, and the history and structure of the English language.  Drawing on the richness of L.A.’s geographical and cultural context, the department equips students to see the study of literature and language as both personally enriching and publicly meaningful within their own communities. Those communities may be defined through the department’s direct engagement with the neighborhoods of East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley or regarded as a global terrain, in which Oxford connects to Oaxaca and where ideas resonate from ancient Greece and Rome to the contemporary Pacific Rim. These broad horizons signal a commitment to both the mastery of literary traditions and the development of new kinds of knowledge, both local and global.

Study in English provokes intellectual and personal development while providing effective preparation for a number of careers. Graduates of Cal State LA’s M.A. program in English regularly gain acceptance to the top doctoral programs in the country; the department’s undergraduate Single Subject Credential option and emphasis on pedagogy help to prepare students for careers in education. Teaching, however, is only one of the many professions open to English majors; the department’s commitment to providing students with rigorous training in close reading, research, writing, and critical thinking skills makes graduates attractive to professional schools and a wide array of employers in the legal profession, business, civil service, the non-profit sector, the entertainment industry, and other venues. Whatever their vocation, English majors possess not only practical abilities but also a subtle understanding of the varied ways in which human beings search for meaning and strive to express the complexity of individual and communal experience.

The Faculty

Professors: Mary Bucci Bush, Michael A. Calabrese, Hema Chari, Michelle Hawley, Maria Karafilis, Andrew Knighton (Chair), Jun Liu, Caroline H. McManus, Lauri Ramey, Alison Taufer.

Associate Professors: Robert Benjamin Bateman, Linda M. Greenberg, Christopher S. Harris, Atef Laouyene, Bidhan Roy, Aaron H. Sonnenschein.

Assistant Professors: Nicole Horejsi, Kathryn Perry.

Emeriti: Betty Bamberg, Sharon Bassett, Alfred Bendixen, Peter A. Brier, Roberto Cantú, John L. Cleman, Saralyn R. Daly, Melvin Donalson, Marilyn R. Elkins, Rosemary L. Hake, Martin Huld, Steven S. Jones, Barry Munitz, Elaine Osio, Thomas H. Peterson, Vilma Potter, Ruben Quintero, Sidney Richman, Alice M. Roy, Carl M. Selkin, Timothy Steele, Gaby Stuart, John H. Weston.

Programs for this Department

Undergraduate Major

• English, B.A. 
Undergraduate Minor

• Comparative Linguistics Interdisciplinary Minor  

• Minor in Creative Writing 
• Minor in English  
Graduate Major

• English, M.A.  

Credential

• The Credential Program 
 

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