University of California, Santa Barbara
UndergraduateFor Majors

Major Requirements

The New English Major

Welcome to the English Major!
Below you’ll find inviting paths through the major and exciting courses that reflect the diverse voices and intellectual richness of the English department. The new English Major requirements go into effect in Fall 2023. Students who declared the major before Fall 2023 should consult the pre-Fall 2023 requirements.

New Major Sheet
Preparation for the Major
At the Upper Division
Subject Area Requirements
Historical Field Requirements
Senior Seminar

The English Department prides itself on providing a welcoming environment for all students, especially first-year and transfer students.  To consult about requirements, courses, or your path through the major, please contact the Undergraduate Advisor, Jessica Good, , or the Vice Chair of the department, Jim Kearney .

The English major requires 56 units in English, at least 44 of which must be upper-division units, distributed in the manner outlined below. Students interested in petitioning a course outside the English Department to count for credit towards the major should contact Undergraduate Advisor for assistance with the petition process.

Preparation for the Major

We want students to be able to enter the major from a variety of directions, and so we offer a range of options at the lower division. Students should take two courses from the following:

To provide students greater flexibility, we also allow majors to take one of their elective courses (four units) at either the lower or upper division.

At the Upper Division

The English Department offers innovative courses that address the challenges of the twenty-first century even as they attend to the traditions and histories that shape us. The following requirements are designed to reflect the department’s unique profile and to capture the diversity of approaches and materials that we want our students to encounter in their time at the university and in the major.

At least 44 upper division units in English are required, as follows:

Subject Area Requirements

    • Majors should take one course from each of the following areas:

    • Literature and the Social
    • Form, Media, Expression
    • Regions, Borders, Worlds
    • Literature across Disciplines

See the major sheet for the extensive list of courses that fulfill each of these requirements.

Historical Field Requirements

    • Majors should take one course from each of the following historical fields:

    • Literatures & Cultures, pre-1500
    • Literatures & Cultures, 1500-1700
    • Literatures & Cultures, 1700-1900
    • Literatures & Cultures, post-1500

See the major sheet for the extensive list of courses that fulfill each of these requirements.

Senior Seminar

  • English 197 – the capstone course of the English Major

Subject Area Requirements

(four courses, 16 units)

Explore courses that expand your knowledge of literatures and cultures around the globe and that expose you to a range of ideas and approaches. Virtually all upper-division English courses fulfill at least one of these subject areas, and most fulfill more than one. See the major sheet for the complete list of courses that fulfill each of these requirements

Majors should take one course from each of the following subject areas:

  • Literature and the Social
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following courses can fulfill this requirement:

  • Form, Media, Expression
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following courses can fulfill this requirement:

    • FALL English 134RJ Creative Imaginations of Racial Justice Prof Swati Rana
    • FALL English 165AD Imagining Asian Pacific Futures Prof Heidi Amin-Hong
    • FALL English 176ML Performance of Literature: African American Modernisms Prof Stephanie Batiste
    • WINTER English 105 The Craft of Fiction Prof Cathy Thomas
    • WINTER English 128GN Graphic Novel and Trauma Prof Russell Samolsky
    • WINTER English 128NA Native Feminist/2 Spirit Memoir Prof Amrah Salomon
    • WINTER English 132EP The Shorter Fiction of Henry James Prof Mark Maslan
    • WINTER English 132PR The Fiction of Philip Roth Prof Mark Maslan
    • WINTER English 147MC Media History and Theory Prof Jim Casey
    • WINTER English 170IC Imagination and Creativity Prof Julie Carlson
    • WINTER English 176TJ Postmodern African American Literature and Drama Prof Stephanie Batiste
    • WINTER English 192DF Science Fiction: Dystopian Fiction Prof Brian Donnelly
    • SPRING English 165AE The Graphic Novel: Animals and Ecology Prof Russell Samolsky
    • SPRING English 192SS Science Fiction Short Stories Prof Melody Jue
  • Regions, Borders, Worlds
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following courses can fulfill this requirement:

    • FALL English 122NE Cultural Representations: Nature and the Environment Prof Timothy Gilmore
    • WINTER English 150 Anglo-Irish Literature Prof Enda Duffy
    • SPRING English 122UE Cityscapes: The Urban Experience Prof Maurizia Boscagli
    • SPRING English 165IB Indigenous Border Studies Prof Amrah Salomon
    • SPRING English 171NH Neurohumanism Prof Sowon Park
    • SPRING English 192SS Science Fiction Short Stories Prof Melody Jue
  • Literature across Disciplines
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following courses can fulfill this requirement:

Historical Field Requirements

(four courses, 16 units)

Explore courses that expand your knowledge of literary history and expose you to a range of cultures and histories. See the major sheet for the extensive list of courses that fulfill each of these requirements

Majors should take one course from each of the following historical fields:

  • Literature & Cultures pre-1500
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following course can fulfill this requirement:

    • SPRING English 101ML British Literature before 1500 Professor Daniel Reeve
    • SPRING English 115 Medieval Literature Professor James Donelan
  • Literatures & Cultures 1500-1700
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following course can fulfill this requirement:

    • WINTER English 102WR Did Women Have a Renaissance? Olivia Henderson
    • SPRING English 102QA Poetry by the Numbers: Quantitative Approaches to Literary Analysis and the Sonnet Henry Coburn
  • Literatures & Cultures 1700-1900
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following course can fulfill this requirement:

    • WINTER English 103UD Transatlantic English Lit 1660-1789: The World Upside Down Professor E Cook
    • WINTER English 103SH The Secret History of Eighteenth-Century Literature Professor Rachael King
    • WINTER English 103B British Literature from 1789 to 1900 Professor Julie Carlson
    • SPRING English 103WT Wilde Times: Late Victorian Literature and Aesthetics Professor Brian Donnelly
  • Literatures & Cultures post-1900
    For the 2025-2026 school year, the following course can fulfill this requirement:

    • FALL English 134AA Cultural Poetics of the Asian Americas Professor Yunte Huang
    • WINTER English 104A American Literature from 1900 to Present Professor Yunte Huang
    • SPRING English 104LC Literature, Culture, and Society: the 20th and 21st Century Professor Maurizia Boscagli

Senior Seminar

(one course, 4 units)

The capstone of the English major is the senior seminar (English 197), which gives students the opportunity to work closely in small classes with our faculty. The topics covered in these courses range widely. Recent titles include: Ghosts and War in Asian America; Poetry Lab; Feminist Interventions: Women/Writing/Film; Humor and Ecology; James Joyce’s Ulysses; Trauma and Somatic Reading; Pre-Raphaelites and Victorian Culture; Digital Humanities; Steal From the Rich: Robin Hood in Literature and Media; J.M. Coetzee: Ethics and the Other; The Culture and Politics of the Long 1960s. Search the English Department’s Courses page for more information.

The department offers multiple iterations of the senior seminar in every quarter (Fall, Winter, Spring).

Undergraduate