An English major offers you the opportunity to study works that stretch from Beowulf and Shakespeare to Jane Austen and Toni Morrison, from canonical to minority to world literatures, and from strictly literary to non-literary texts. In encountering this breadth of writing in English, you ll be trained to become an informed and critical reader. You ll learn to analyze linguistic expression in a sophisticated manner that makes clear how literature and writing more generally reflect upon the moral, ethical, social, and political dilemmas of the human situation.