Faculty and students on the second floor of Decio Hall know a thing or two about stories.
As the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame, they’re in the discipline of creating and analyzing all types of tales — poems, essays, novels, articles, memoirs.
But the most important story is their own.
“We’re pushing into new areas of the discipline and accomplishing things that we didn’t do before,” said Laura Knoppers, the George N. Shuster Professor of English Literature, who recently finished a four-year term as department chair.
“We’re pushing into new areas of the discipline and accomplishing
things that we didn’t do before.”
- Laura Knoppers, the George N. Shuster Professor of English Literature
Knoppers led the department through a period of reflection, investment, and growth, particularly in its graduate program, which this year ranked No. 21 on U.S. News and World Report’s list of the Best English Programs — 13 spots higher than previous years.
There is no shortage of individual recognition throughout the department’s faculty, with prestigious accolades and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Notre Dame English professors have won more than 20 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships since 1999, and several hold editorial positions in major journals and book series.
But the rankings jump is a special moment for the department, as the accolade is determined by surveys of senior faculty members at peer and aspirational peer institutions. Those who’ve been a part of the department’s success know it has been a long time coming.
“This news reflects what we’ve known about our reputation and the standing of the scholars in our faculty,” said Kate Marshall, the Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs College Professor and former director of graduate studies, who has been at Notre Dame since 2009.
The ranking increase also indicates that the department has learned how to effectively tell its story.
“People are paying attention because we’re surprising them by going out and doing new things,” Knoppers said.
Expanding on tradition
One of the department’s most effective strategies for meeting the future is hiring faculty who continue its known excellence in historical fields, while also hiring those who specialize in emerging areas such as digital humanities, global Anglophone, and multi-ethnic literatures.
“Hiring really is one of the most exciting things a department does,” Marshall said. “It allows us to identify where scholarship is going and bring that into the department.”
The department still maintains investment in its traditional strengths — medieval, early modern, 18th-century, late American, and Romantic-era literature — and that’s not in opposition to their pursuit of innovation.
“One of the nice things about working in literature is it’s never static,” said Ian Newman, an associate professor and the director of graduate studies. “It’s not like somebody wrote something 400 years ago and there’s nothing new to say about it.”
Even when studying old texts, scholars are always responding with new, interdisciplinary perspectives. English and history combine to read works of the Romantic period through the lens of the Industrial Revolution. English and science combine to better understand Robert Frost’s 20th-century nature poetry through the lens of the environmental humanities. English and digital studies combine to assess the sound technologies through which poetry is performed, preserved, and circulated.
“You can never study English in isolation,” Newman said.
The department is also building new strength in the study of global Anglophone literatures — works in English coming from parts of the world other than England and the United States. This includes former British colonies in Africa or the U.S.-Mexico border, where English and Spanish intertwine.
The department’s output and curriculum are not limited to traditional scholarly analysis of the written word, either. Its profile has broadened significantly in recent years through the growing strength of the Creative Writing Program, which offers an MFA degree and an undergraduate concentration. The creative writing faculty includes a PEN/Faulkner Award winner and another finalist, two Guggenheim recipients, and writers whose novels have been reviewed by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and other prominent media outlets.
“Writing and reading naturally belong together,” said Joyelle McSweeney, a professor and current chair of the department who spent four years as director of the Creative Writing Program, “and you need to do both if you want to understand text or understand writing.”
Current students, future colleagues
Part of bringing in new perspectives is cultivating young voices. Notre Dame’s English faculty view their teaching and mentoring responsibilities as intertwined with their individual scholarly pursuits.
“We work very hard as a department to include our graduate students in the department culture in a serious way,” said Marshall, who is also the associate dean for research and strategic initiatives in the College of Arts & Letters.
To cultivate this culture, mentorship is the backbone of the Ph.D. program by providing support before students arrive, and it continues long after their dissertation defense. The department is committed to holistic mentorship that pairs students with multiple faculty, combining different kinds of thinkers with different points of view, through both dissertation committees and individual relationships.
“We prioritize community in English,” Knoppers said.
The comprehensive nature of the mentorship structure is a large part of how the department gets along so well. No student or professor is left out, with the idea that strong current faculty will make strong future faculty, Knoppers said.
“We take our grad students really seriously, both as folks who we’re going to mentor and as future colleagues,” said McSweeney, who led the Creative Writing Program for four of her 19 years in the department.
Graduates have great success in tenure-track placements, with seven in 2022 alone, but some students aim for other opportunities. An English advanced degree can also lead to diverse futures in areas like university administration, library science, journalism, and more.
To prepare students for any possibility, the department puts energy in preparing students to use their education outside of an academic setting. Postdoctoral fellowships at places like the Hesburgh Libraries, the Notre Dame Shakespeare Program, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, and various academic journals provide realistic work experience.
“We’re trying to position the department to meet and expand with the trends that are coming in now — be ready to meet the future,” said professor Susan Harris, a former director of graduate studies.
Sharing the good
English faculty don’t limit their impact to their own department; their passion and energy flow through the rest of Notre Dame’s campus, particularly through involvement in University and Arts & Letters initiatives.
Several members are affiliated faculty in the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience, including Dionne Bremyer, an associate professor and the initiative’s director, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English, who through IRR launched Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance, a research collective and lecture series that explores exile, transnational migration, and human rights abuses. Associate English professor Roy Scranton leads the Environmental Humanities Initiative, and Marshall is the director of the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good. She’s also a member of the executive committee of the University Arts Initiative and the Ethics Initiative.
"The future of the English department is bright."
– Kate Marshall, Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs College Professor
“We’re all going out and bringing our ideas to other parts of campus,” McSweeney said. “And bringing in energy and scholars and critics and students from other parts of campus.”
Through both interdisciplinary initiatives and work within the department, English is part of a wider effort at Notre Dame to advance the liberal arts beyond previous accomplishments and beyond tradition.
“The future of the English department is bright,” Marshall said. “The University’s investment in the humanities means that we can thrive and really direct a national conversation.”
And the driving force behind the department’s innovation and success is a shared love for what they do and a firm belief that literature is essential to humanity.
“Using language is how we’re here for each other, and how we show up for each other as humans, ” McSweeney said. “Being given the chance to keep that passion going and the resources to do it is a privilege.”
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on October 23, 2025.