The English Department

Powerful Writing. Creative Reading. Language for a Lifetime. Florida State University's English department reflects the creative diversity and interdisciplinary potential of the language that connects us. Our internationally acclaimed faculty have won more teaching awards than any other academic department at Florida State. We also write prize-winning fiction, prize-winning poetry, prize-winning scholarly editions, essays and books. We explore the best of the past and present in order to create a better future for everyone who reads (or hears) English. We aspire to train every student, at every level, how to get more from what they read, and how to achieve more with what they write.

With innovative academic programs, we now graduate more English majors than any other public university in America. Our sustained and continuing strategic commitment to diversity has been a role-model for other departments at Florida State and around the country. We equip our ambitious, multi-talented undergraduate and graduate students to venture out into every corner of the new creative economies: from Broadway to the ACLU, from tenure-track professors in other Research 1 universities to Pulitzer Prize-winning artistic entrepreneurs. Come read with us, and write the future.

Gary Taylor

Department Chair 

Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor