Graduate Studies
The English Department offers M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English. The M.A. degree program provides multiple perspectives and broad background in the advanced study of literature and critical theory. The Ph.D. program offers advanced study at the doctoral level in interdisciplinary, cross-field areas of emphasis, including:
- African American Literature and Culture
- Feminisms, Genders, Sexualities
- Film and Visual Culture
- History and Theory of Narrative
- Literature of the Americas
- Medieval/Early Modern Literature and Culture
- Postcolonial and Diaspora Studies
- Transatlantic Modernities
Students may also choose to work in more traditional areas of study, such as Renaissance Literature, Antebellum America Literature, or the novel.
The Ph.D. emphasis areas help students to conceptualize their research projects within larger rubrics that cross traditional areas of research. They attempt, in other words, to mirror and to model the innovative changes taking place in the discipline at large. The emphasis areas are intended to be flexible and suggestive, not prescriptive. They are reviewed and modified regularly by the faculty to reflect the faculty’s current and future strengths, and they place students at the forefront of methodological and theoretical change in the profession at large.
Because the emphasis areas are not prescriptive, students may also, with the approval of an advisor, create a specialized emphasis that bridges interdisciplinary areas of interest or that carves out areas of research not represented by existing emphases. Or, they may choose to define themselves within more traditional fields of study and shape a course of study that prepares them to engage in long-standing questions about a period, author, or genre.
Our faculty members are dedicated to preparing graduate students for careers in college and university teaching, as well as professional careers that require highly developed critical, analytical, editorial, and writing skills. Doctoral graduates have recently acquired teaching positions at such institutions as Clemson University, Elon University, the University of Florida, Hendrix College, the University of Memphis, Central Michigan University, and others.
One particular strength of our program is that students have opportunities to teach as graduate assistants in several different venues, including the English Department, the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities (IAH), the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Culture (WRAC), and the Writing Center.
Our graduate faculty members have achieved high distinction and are engaged actively in diverse research. They have published significant work in their fields of study and have received many distinguished awards, including those from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Spencer Foundation.
