Welcome to the English Department Website

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

"Whose woods these are I think I know."

"Call me Ishmael."

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board"

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'"

"Morning and evening / Maids heard the goblins cry"

"A screaming comes across the sky. . . ."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man. . . .must be in need of a wife."

"Come live with me and be my love."

"April is the cruelest month. . . .."

"124 was spiteful."

"They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did."

"Five years have past; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters!"

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."

"Hwæt!"

These opening lines indicate the variety of literature you will encounter in English courses at Siena. The English Department mission is to foster both understanding and enjoyment of literature, explored within a diversity of social and cultural contexts.

Students can select from courses organized by genre, historical period, national and/or cultural focus, or by topic. Courses in literary criticism, creative writing, and linguistics are also offered on a regular basis.

So, what can I do with an English major?