Doctor of Philosophy Program
[Please note: We describe here the proposed revisions to our Ph.D. program, pending approval from the appropriate college and university committees. We intend to implement this program and these courses for the fall 2008 semester.]
Doctoral work in English at Michigan State University prepares students to engage as scholars and teachers in the professional environment of the university and as contributors to ongoing conversations and debates around questions of textual representation and discursive practice, interpretation, cultural practices and histories, and pedagogies. Doctoral education in English aims at training scholars/teachers who have both the breadth of knowledge necessary to contribute to the basic programmatic needs of most English departments, as well as the focused expertise necessary to contribute original scholarly work in professional and public arenas.
Our curriculum seeks to produce students who are well-read, theoretically sophisticated, and able to think broadly about critical problems across traditional periods and national boundaries. Its goal is to prepare students for a diverse job market by encouraging historical breadth as well as theoretical and scholarly depth. In order to balance these discrete but intimately related goals, the curriculum consists of three “blocks” of courses.
The first block constitutes a core curriculum in criticism, theory, and method. It is designed to provide students at various levels with an introduction to the discipline and to the stakes and practices of current literary and cultural scholarship.
The second block of courses in language and literature is designed to provide students with historical field competence through broad reading in specific areas of study. In order to facilitate the assimilation of large swaths of material, students in these courses would be expected to produce shorter pieces of writing rather than sustained research papers. These courses are conceived as opportunities for students to begin developing their specialized field mastery. They are intended as reading courses that privilege primary texts and explore multiple themes, rather than as seminars structured around a specific critical problem.
The third block of courses is designed to introduce students to the critical problems associated with the doctoral emphasis areas. Open only to doctoral students (and advanced M.A. students at the discretion of the graduate chairperson), these courses require students to engage in longer writing assignments and to produce article-length research papers. They are conceived as preparing students for the more sustained rigors of dissertation writing and research.
Students would combine courses from these three blocks as they proceed through their programs. See requirements.
