Students who seek a learning environment that supports them even as it challenges them to enhance their knowledge, explore new ideas, and gain experience in literary analysis, research, writing, and teaching will find themselves at home with us. Our critical strength is our diversity of approaches and the kinds of experiences we offer. MA candidates can expect to grow in different and sometimes unexpected directions as they explore many different facets of English studies. While deepening and widening their knowledge of literature, our MA candidates find themselves preparing technical documentation, editing a short story, writing an innovative assignment sequence or grant application, and/or taking up the challenges of poetics, empirical field-research on writing, and literary and rhetorical theory.

The Master of Arts in English is normally a 30-credit degree (ten courses), which may include six credits of thesis work, and involves a course of study that leads to these program outcomes.

The department offers four optional concentration areas:

Writing Studies

The concentration in Writing Studies allows students to develop an interest in the theory and practice of teaching composition and empirical research in writing studies. The student may choose from among available courses in composition theory, pedagogy, linguistics, literacy, and rhetoric.

Concentration in Creative Writing – Fiction

The concentration in Fiction Writing allows the student to focus on the writing of fiction, an on preparing a creative thesis, in addition to receiving graduate-level training in literature and literary criticism. Graduate fiction writing courses combine workshop situations with one-on-one instruction and enable students to work closely with practicing professionals.

Concentration in Gender & Literature

The concentration in Gender & Literature allows students to pursue focused study of the workings of gender in language and literature. Coursework may include studies of women writers, of feminist criticism, gender criticism, or queer theory, of femininities and/or masculinities in particular literary periods or schools, as well as of theoretical questions such as the gendered nature of language.

Concentration in Poetry & Poetics

Poetry and poetics students benefit from the presence in the department of the New Writing Series as well as events sponsored by the Center for Poetry and Poetics, and may have the opportunity to contribute editorial assistance to the Center’s publications.