Faculty and students in an English class

Training in the rigors and pleasures of critical thinking, close reading and lucid writing

Academics

The Cornell Literatures in English Department retains the pluralistic ideals of the university’s founders and continues to respond to and embody a constantly evolving discipline. Within the department, ongoing debates about the role of critical theory or cultural studies, the status of popular culture, the relevance of film studies and hip hop, or the definition of the words “English” and “literature” themselves have led to new understandings of the discipline, as well as a range of textual productivity, from producing critical editions to writing poetry.

Popular Destinations

Undergraduate Study Graduate Study Prize Competitions

Students in a First-year Writing Seminar

Outside the department, the growth of interdisciplinary work has led to a range of connections across the humanities at Cornell, from comparative literature to medieval studies, from Asian-American Studies to feminist, gender and sexuality studies, with English faculty maintaining affiliations in all of these disciplines.

Along with teaching more than a third of the Freshman Writing Seminars offered by Cornell’s Knight Institute of Writing in the Disciplines, the Literatures in English Department’s nourishing of this wide range of scholarly and creative writing has maintained the department’s central importance in the humanities at Cornell and world-wide.

Literatures in English Events

May 22

Friday 12:00 AM

University Commencement Weekend

Schoellkopf Field

May 23

Saturday 12:00 AM

University Commencement Weekend

Schoellkopf Field

May 24

Sunday 12:00 AM

University Commencement Weekend

Schoellkopf Field

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Literatures in English News

Two people sitting at a table, reading in a room full of books on shelves; the books are reflected on the surface of the table, creating a sense of immersion

Your December 2025 reads

This month’s featured titles include fiction from A&S alum Thomas Pynchon ’59, an award-winning poetry collection and a study of a small town.

Undergrads launch magazine featuring in-depth stories

A new student-run magazine focuses on long-form journalism that reflects the culture of Cornell and Ithaca.

Plot Twist! Professors Love Genre Fiction and You Should Too

Finding joy in reading through Genre writing. In the course How Reading Changes Your Life, Prof. Raskolnikov is on a mission to help students rediscover that sense of wonder often lost after childhood. The students enrolled in the class are “beginning to realize that in addition to having a job, y...