English at Rice offers a distinctively innovative creative and critical education. Unique among our peer institutions, our signature creative and critical curriculum integrates the creative aspects of the study of literature and the critical features of creative writing. Across research, reading and writing, students and faculty encounter literature’s power to transform what we know and who we can be. Our courses examine how cultural forms and legacies shape our imagination and craft creative visions of the possible. We invite you to explore our department’s offerings. We promise that the work you do in English will open new worlds, alter how you see yourself and profoundly imprint anyCreative Critical path you pursue.
Rice English integrates creative and critical practice through training in close reading, analytical writing, cultural history and craft/form. Our faculty research and pedagogy cover the breadth of the study of British and American literatures and cultures ranging from the medieval era to the present. The curriculum emphasizes literature and literary history, race and ethnicity studies, feminist and gender studies, queer theory and the history of sexuality, visual culture and comparative media studies, and the Anglophone literature of the postcolonial world. Faculty have particular strengths in the newer interdisciplinary areas of medical humanities, ecocriticism, posthumanism and environmental humanities. Rice English is also home to a vibrant creative writing concentration offering a range of courses in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and podcasting.