The Birth of the English Major – An Origin Story

The Birth of the English Major tells the story of how literature written in English became established as a field of study in American universities. Dayton Haskin examines archival materials drawn from more than thirty colleges to explore the shift from prioritizing classical education, focused on Latin, Greek, and mathematics, to offering courses on English literature. Unlike accounts of the rise of English as a discipline in which professionals do research, produce scholarship, and train specialists, The Birth of the English Major focuses on undergraduate education and illustrates the processes through which the study of vernacular literary works entered the curriculum. Analyzing educational materials such as assignments and examinations, students' notebooks and essays, faculty lecture notes, and annual catalogs, Haskin traces the methods used by imaginative educators to create a new subject for undergraduate study. His accounts of both failed and successful experiments show a surprising variety of conceptions about what studying English might entail. The narrative culminates in the 1890s, when the practice of declaring a major emerged in the U.S. and undergraduates made English a widely popular choice. At a time when colleges are cutting programs in the humanities and the popular press declares "the end of the English major," Haskin's elegantly written work of cultural history shows that academic English did not descend from on high with a ready-made canon but was built from the bottom up by diligent educators. The Birth of the English Major gives hope that, in our time, the study of English as a global language and of its exponentially ampler literature will be reinvented in various corners of the world.