Senior English major Hannah Buchanan found community and cross-disciplinary opportunities at UT.

When Hannah Buchanan, a native of Asheville, North Carolina, was searching for the right college to attend, she received a simple piece of advice from her teacher: “Just go to a school that feels right for you.”

“I was really looking for a community that felt like everyone was there to support each other,” Buchanan said. Now in her senior year and a recipient of the UT English department’s Edwin Watson Bowe Scholarship, she reflected on how her experience as an English major has given her just that. 

From Associate Professor Iliana Rocha’s poetry workshop to a class on literature and medicine with Stan Garner, the James Douglas Bruce Professor of English, to Teaching Associate Professor John Han’s class on spatial theory, Buchanan has deeply appreciated the variety of coursework and cross-disciplinary opportunities the English department gives its students. The program also has allowed her to take geography classes on top of completing a minor in Italian. “I think looking at other departments was fundamental to how I relate myself to literature,” she said.

In addition to her extracurriculars, which include serving as a member of Sigma Tau Delta and helping run Vol of Duty—an online publication for video game articles she co-founded—Buchanan is in her second year of working as an undergraduate writing consultant at the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center. She recalled how, despite her initial nerves in joining, the writing center quickly became another community where she found friendship and support. “The training process was something that not only made me a good consultant, but made me a better person,” she said. “It’s not just about how people write … it’s more about how people think and how they feel and that relationship people can have with writing, because it’s a really vulnerable and scary thing to do.” 

She also credits the writing center with preparing her toward her goal of working in communications and human relations after graduating. “Working with people every day in so many different circumstances has really given me a love for that and understanding how people are thinking,” she said.

Buchanan hopes more people become aware of the multiple skills that literature and writing provide, especially through UT’s Department of English. “It’s not a degree that’s just about reading old works and writing really formal papers,” she said. “They want you to take classes from different concentrations, different time periods, different departments, which is really refreshing, because it’s not just taught me how to be a good writer or to read critically. It’s taught me how to be a clear communicator, and it’s taught me how to listen to people.”

For anyone who might be interested in majoring in English, Buchanan shares her own piece of advice: “Go on the website, look at the classes they’re offering, and if one of them even piques your interest a little bit, just take it. All of the professors are lovely and helpful, and they want you to stop in their office hours. It will be worth it.”