Three images put together to create a banner image. First image is a student reading a book, second is a faculty member pointing to the board in a classroom, third is a faculty member working with a student.

English

What You'll Study

Gonzaga's Department of English offers a Bachelor degree in English (B.A) and offers two areas of emphasis: a Literature Concentration and a Writing Concentration. The department also offers two minors, English and Writing.

Gonzaga University’s rigorous English curriculum stimulates personal and intellectual growth. Rooted in the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, our program values Experience, Reflection, and Action. Faculty and students engage in the practice of critical inquiry in the careful use of language, and we take seriously the study of how writing both reflects and creates our society.

The department curriculum represents the diversity of faculty expertise as well as the department’s belief that students should have more flexibility within their curricular choices. Founded on solid introductory writing and literature courses and covering a variety of genres, time periods, and theoretical approaches to texts, the English major now offers two areas of emphasis: a Literature Concentration and a Writing Concentration.

Students in both concentrations take the same foundational courses: a Core Writing course, lower-division courses on literary form and literary history, and an upper-division course on literature before 1660. All English majors must also take a course with a multicultural designation. Once students decide which concentration they will pursue, they study the curriculum specific to each concentration. If so motivated, they can complete both Concentrations.

What Can I do With an English Degree?

An English graduate from Gonzaga University has the skills and habits of mind to succeed in a wide variety of vocations. Any field that values critical analysis, the ability to research and think creatively, and a deep understanding of language needs people who do what we do. Recent Gonzaga English graduates have found employment in a variety of fields, which include:

  • Advertising
  • Armed Forces
  • Copy Editing
  • Government
  • Insurance
  • Jesuit Volunteer Corps
  • Journalism
  • Marketing
  • Medicine
  • Public Relations
  • Publication Design
  • Teaching
  • Teaching ESL Abroad
  • Technical Writing
  • Video Production

"What can you do with an English major?" poster courtesy W.W. Norton.

Graduate School

  • Graduate Programs in English
  • Graduate Programs in Women’s and/or Gender Studies
  • Law Schools
  • Master of Fine Arts Programs

The Children of the Sun trail in Spokane.

100K Grant Awarded

Congratulations to Dr. Katey Roden (English) and Dr. Greg Gordon (Environmental Studies & Sciences), who were awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The grant will fund the “Finding Our Way,” project, which will use “digital deep mapping” to build a website for communities along the new Children of the Sun Trail to tell their stories and document the past, present, and future of their neighborhoods.

Learn more about the project.
Dr. Tod Marshall talking about a paper with a student.
Dr. Yu-Kyung Kang

Visiting Writers Series

The Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series brings distinguished authors to campus to engage both the Gonzaga audience and the wider Spokane community.

Writing Center

The Writing Center provides trained staff and a comfortable space to write, work with tutors and peers, read, and research.

Kailee Haong '17

What Are You Going to Do with That?

What Are You Going to Do with That?, is a podcast that explores everyday folks’ decisions to study the humanities as undergraduates and their pathways to fulfilling careers.

Want to connect with the English Department?