Welcome to the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University.

Every year, thousands of SDSU undergraduates and graduate students learn to read, think, and write more critically and insightfully from our award-winning faculty.

By teaching our students to value the complexity and richness of humanity, the open-ended pursuit of knowledge, and the power of language, our department gives California its future teachers, leaders, organizers, lawyers, artists, visionaries, and voters.

Our curriculum draws inspiration from the energy of San Diego’s borderlands culture, from the beauty of our desert and coastal environment, and from the deep sense of history our faculty has developed through years of study at first-rate academic institutions and grant-supported research in the premier libraries and archives of the world.

Our department is home to nationally-recognized programs in children’s literature and one of the top graduate creative writing programs on the West Coast, as well as specializations in American, British, and Comparative Literature. We also support three journals: Fiction International, Poetry International, and Pacific Arts Review.

Please join us each semester for readings by outstanding poets and writers sponsored by the Hyde Living Writers Series, one of the longest-running reading series in the nation. Past readings have featured eminent and award-winning writers such as Derek Walcott, Tillie Olsen, and Luisa Valenzuela.

If you would like to learn more about us or how you can support literature at San Diego State University, please email EandCL@mail.sdsu.edu.