<p>How is the English department at UChicago? Are there any English majors or anyone that took UChicago's English courses that can give me some insight as to how the English classes are at the university?</p>
<p>1 Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
1 University of California--Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
1 Yale University
New Haven, CT
4 Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
4 Stanford University
Stanford, CA
6 Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
6 University of Chicago
Chicago, IL</p>
<p>considering that its probably a little bit better than cornell, i'd place it as 5th in the nation... for how they teach? socratic method, a lot of paper writing, constant readings, and i think most professors study the victorian era</p>
<p>also, english doesnt stray away from chicago's balls to the wall philosophy... you'll be swamped with work compared to other english programs</p>
<p>not surprising, actually. but sounds awesome haha</p>
<p>I'm not a student, so this is impressionistic and second- or third-hand.</p>
<p>Chicago's English Department has always been highly ranked, but it doesn't have the glittery public intellectuals that populate some other departments (or doesn't anymore). In terms of star power, there is a huge gap between Harvard or Yale and Chicago. Your mother won't recognize any of your professors from reviews in the New York Times Book Review. I'm not really that current on English program reputations, but historically I would have regarded Cornell and Hopkins both as stronger than Chicago, and Columbia too. (You can tell a lot about what programs are well-regarded based on where the faculty comes from: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins probably account for 90% of the department. Berkeley is missing for some reason, and Princeton's placement on that list is news to me.)</p>
<p>It also has a smattering of this / smattering of that character. There are crusty old close readers, wild-eyed gender and queercore theorists, appropriately political post-colonialists, measured historicists, and people working on the literary aspects of video games and other nontraditional media (including, of course, film). More than perhaps most other highly regarded English programs, there are a bunch of people with a serious interest in the moral and philosophical aspects of literature, something that ties in with the Core and with Chicago's Fundamentals program. Thus, although the department is probably typically lefty on average, there is a stronger politically and aesthetically conservative presence than you might find elsewhere. I also haven't heard much about the kind of internecine warfare that often characterizes English departments elsewhere (notably Columbia, where the English department had to be put in receivership a few years ago because there was a complete standoff between various faculty factions). As is the case elsewhere at Chicago, people seem to like and to respect one another across ideological and methodological lines.</p>
<p>The English major is one of the most popular majors in the college, in part because it is relatively undemanding in terms of requirements, and you don't have to write a BA thesis if you don't want to. (About half the students do.) It would be perfectly possible to complete the requirements in four or five quarters if you needed to, especially if you already had enough foreign language credit to pass the foreign language requirement. As a result, my impression is that there is something of a range of dedication and seriousness among English majors, from hard-core scholars aiming at good graduate programs to people who are having a good time and are aiming to graduate.</p>
<p>My impression is different from Absolut3's in several respects. If anything, my sense is that the department is weighted away from the 18th and 19th centuries compared to other places. There seem to be lots of people working on 17th century and older texts, and plenty of 20th-21st century types, but authors like Pope, Fielding, Sterne, Dickens, the Romantic poets, and the entire American canon pre Henry James seem to be MIA. Also, I don't know that the classes are really harder than those at equivalent universities. They all want you to drink from a firehose.</p>
<p>wow JHS, thanks for such a thorough response. i'm impressed that you know so much, while not being a student at the university. i appreciate your post :]</p>
<p>Stasis:</p>
<p>Here are some helpful links--</p>
<p><a href="http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/pdf_09/ENGL.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/pdf_09/ENGL.pdf</a>
Department</a> of English - Undergraduate Program
Department</a> of English - Faculty</p>
<p>I think the real question is: what do you define as a "good" English program, and what do you want out of it? If somebody here can't answer your questions, try contacting a professor or two.</p>