Welcome to the
Famous English Major Home Page
by Dr. Del Doughty

Back when I was an undergrad I used to wait on tables to pay the bills.  While I pretty much loathed the shlepping of food, I did meet some interesting people.  Often, at the end of a meal, my diners would be taking their napkins in hand to dob the last bits of food from the corners of their mouths as I removed their plates from the table, and they would ask me, "So, Del, are you a college boy?"

And I would say "Why yes I am."

And then they would say, "What are you studying?"

And then I would say, "English, sir (or ma'am, as the case may have been)."

And then there would be a moment of awkward silence before they would clear their throat and say, "English, huh?  Hmmm.  What in the world are you gonna do with an English degree?"

Oh, how naive was I to try and answer that question seriously.  Later, once I learned that most people have no idea what English majors actually do, I would reply "What am I going to do with my English degree?  I'm going to be a spellchecker.  I love spelling and all I want to do is go around checking everyone's spelling.  There's surprising good money in that."  As these were the days before Microsoft Word, I think a few people actually believed me.

I could think of lots of things to do with an English degree.  Writing books or teaching seemed obvious.  So did editing.  But even beyond the easy answers there seemed to be much opportunity.  English was and still is a great course of study for those who aspire to be lawyers.  Or pastors.  Or salespeople.  Or just about anything.

What can you do with an English degree?  Rather than enumerate the possibilities, I thought I might be better to introduce you to some of the names in the Famous English Majors Club, a group that I founded to answer this very question. 

Talk about an exclusive club.  Merely writing a novel or a book of sonnets--even a good one, even one that wins the Nobel Prize for literature--won't get you in.  You need to do something different with your English degree.  Something like . . .

    . . . become a great college football coach.  Joe Paterno majored in English at Brown University in the late 1940s, where he also played football. Since then he's led the Penn State Nittany Lions to two national championships, four undefeated seasons, 18 bowl victories (most ever by a coach), and three hundred victories.  Perhaps even more impressive, though, is his deep love of books:  His favorite is Virgil's Aeneid (he knows Latin well enough to be an honorary member of the university's Classics Society) and he and his wife have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the university libraries.

    . . . become the star of hit t.v. show on the Fox Network, like David Duchovny.  The man who plays Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files has an M.A. in English Literature from Yale University and was only a dissertation away from earning his Ph.D. before heeding the call from stage and screen.  The title of his proposed magnum opus:  "Magic and Technology in Contemporary Prose and Poetry."

. . . win battles for the Union Army in the Civil War, like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  Chamberlain was teaching rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, when war broke out.  Although not trained as a solider, he was named lieutenant colonel of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment.  He had a distinguished military career but is remembered most of all for his role in the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, where he and his troops held the line against the Confederate sieges of July 2. 

. . . earn recognition as one of the nation's pre-eminent journalists in both the print and broadcast media, like Richard Rodriguez.  A graduate of Stanford with a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature, Rodriguez's work appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and The New Republic as well as on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.  In 1997 Rodriguez was awarded a George Foster Peabody Award for his t.v. work.  He also holds a Frankel Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Other famous majors include Alan Alda, Russel Baker, Dave Barry, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, Carol Browner, Chevy Chase, Mario Cuomo, Michael Eisner, Jodi Foster, Kathryn Fuller, Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodor Geisel, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Cathy Guisewite, Chris Isaak, Paul Newman, Sally Ride, Joan Rivers, Diane Sawyer, Paul Simon, Steven Spielberg, Marty Shottenheimer, Superman, Brandon Tartikoff, Clarence Thomas, Grant Tinker, Harold Varmus, Barbara Walters, Sigourney Weaver, Pete Wilson, and Bob Woodward.

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