The Department of English offers a curriculum that traverses historical eras and global boundaries to explore various literatures and critical approaches to them. The Department has reimagined what it means to teach the humanities by integrating eight multidisciplinary research centers into its courses and programs. These research clusters provide an innovative complement to the classroom, allowing undergraduate students to collaborate with faculty and post-doctoral and visiting scholars.
Our undergraduate programs are research-intensive and production-based. As part of our research-hub model, we encourage students to choose from seven specializations: American Cultures; Early Modern Studies; Literatures & Cultures of Information; Literature & the Environment; Literature & the Mind; Medieval Literature; and Modern Literature and Critical Theory. On all these fronts, we prepare our students to study, write, design, and perform the imaginative arts to transform everyday worlds.
Ben Olguín, a professor in UC Santa Barbara's English Department, discusses the department's interdisciplinary studies in art and politics across time and place. This video was produced by UCSB Instructional Development.
The UCSB Department of English is proud to foster an inclusive, interdisciplinary culture that challenges students to do their best work with the support and guidance of stellar faculty mentors. Watch our impressive students in action as they explain what they love about UCSB English.
The English Broadside Ballad Archive has digitized over 7000 Broadside Ballads that were produced between the 16th and 19th centuries. Not only do they transcribe and photograph the artwork, they also record the ballads as they would have been sung during the time of their mass popularity.
Follow these links to the work of our undergraduates in two publications: Emergence, a journal associated with a research fellowship, and the student-run zine The Catalyst.
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English News & Features
Cherríe Moraga, playwright, essayist and activist, gave a talk titled “Imagine This: The (Re)generation of Place,” for the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s Imagining California series. Moraga tackled the inherent struggle to define one’s cultural identity in the aftermath of hundreds of years of degradation and mistreatment.