UH English Majors

Thanks to everyone who dropped by the English Winter Social last week – and especially those who donated to our book drive. Have a good break, all! 🎄✨☃️

This spring, join Prof. Margot Backus in an exploration of British, Irish, and other modernist literatures.

Needing some end-of-semester cheer? Come hang out with the .eua at our first ever Winter Social ⛄️ on December 4th. Invite your friends, wear your favorite holiday sweater, and bring used books for our book drive. 🎁🎊

Wafa Kamzi graduated from UH in 2017 with a double major in English (Creative Writing emphasis) and Communication Sciences and Disorders. After UH, she received her J.D./LL.M. at Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently a corporate attorney who also does pro bono immigration work with refugee and vulnerable clients.

She describes her UH creative writing workshops as an essential counterbalance to her legal studies. “In my fiction classes, I learned to break language down to the level of the single word—its weight, its intention, the way it shifts a moment. Fiction invites you to stay with the gray areas, to populate something that could be black and white with subtext and nuance. Legal writing, for the most part, asks you to do the reverse. You take an inherently gray issue and translate it into a black and white issue. The skill set I built at UH—studying ambiguity, watching how meaning tilts depending on phrasing—ended up being exactly what I needed as a lawyer. The constant practice of empathy in reading fiction also made me better at my job, especially the immigration work. The craft skills I learned at UH are still what I lean on every day.”

For this reason, even as Wafa continues to practice law, she is also pursuing her MFA at Warren Wilson College.

Next Spring, join Prof. Kavita Singh in an exploration of how our concepts such as “Western” and “Non-Western” shape our understanding of "Literature" itself. ENGL 2325 also fulfills the CORE requirement for Language, Culture, and Philosophy.

Next spring, Prof. David Womble offers A Brief History of the Novel in ENGL 3328 (Masterpieces of British Lit II). What kind of power do novels have over us? How do they take possession of our attention and our feelings? What do they do with that power.

This course fulfills the CORE requirement for Language, Philosophy, and Culture.

Join Prof. Paul Butler in the Spring of 2026 for an exploration of style in writing. Explore how voice functions argumentatively and rhetorically in a range of genres, and develop your own style as you go.

Next spring, join Prof. Haylee Harrell for a section of ENGL 3363 (African-American Fiction) focused on Black Speculative fiction. Explore how Black authors have used speculative devices to imagine a world without, or beyond, anti blackness.

Submit your 1301 or 1302 essays to our 16th Annual First-Year Writing contest! This award recognizes undergraduate student work that demonstrates significant original insight into a topic and careful control of language choices. Projects for multimodal assignments with a digital/technical component may be submitted. These may take the form of a video project, website, poster, online presentation, or the like, along with a written essay component.

All undergraduates who have taken ENGL 1301 and/or ENGL 1302 at UH in Summer 2025, Fall 2025, or Spring 2026 may apply.

Submit a clean copy of your essay, a copy of the assignment, and a cover sheet to [email protected] by Friday, November 14, 2025, at noon.

For important details and for the cover sheet template, please contact Dr. Nathan Shepley, Director of First-Year writing ([email protected]).

This spring, join Prof. Alex Parsons in ENGL 4385: Fiction Forms. In this workshop-based seminar you will hone your skills as both a critic and a fiction-writer through rigorous, craft-focused close readings.

Thank you to everyone who turned out for the .eua Halloween Social last week! We had a great evening of costumes, coloring, and candy.

Spring into a New Semester with English!

Registration for Spring 2026 is now open, don’t miss your chance to secure a spot in our exciting lineup of English courses! Whether you’re exploring new genres, diving into creative writing, or sharpening your analytical skills, there’s something for everyone. Also be sure to double check your selections as some course days, modes, and times have changed due to campus construction updates.

Plan early, enroll today, and make this spring your most inspiring semester yet!

We can’t wait to see what you’ll explore next semester!