The requirements for an MA degree in English consist of 21 credit hours in courses numbered 300 or above, successful completion of a comprehensive examination, and a thesis along with any additional prerequisite courses determined by the department to make up for deficiencies in undergraduate preparation.
Students working for an
MA degree in English Language must take English 301, 327, 341 or 342, and 345. Two additional elective English Language graduate courses from among those offered in the department must be taken. Students must take a further graduate course, which may be from outside the English language course offerings, subject to departmental approval.
Students working for the degree of MA in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) should refer to the Department of Education catalogue section.
Students working for an
MA degree in English Literature must complete English 301. In addition, they must take one course from each of the following three categories: Literary History, Comparative Literature, and Literary and Cultural Studies. Of the remaining three courses, two may be taken outside the Literature program, subject to departmental approval.
For more information about the MA program in English Language and Literature, click
here.
Also, check out the
MA Graduate flyer.
Draft description of the graduate courses for F ALL 2024 - 2025
ENGL 301A: Introduction to Bibliography and Research Methods
Professor Sonja Mejcher-Atassi
Overview
Why do literary studies matter and what do we do in literary studies? What are our objects and
methods of inquiry? What are our resources? What kind of material do we work with?
This course accompanies you through your first steps in our graduate program in English
Literature as we set out to explore these questions. Its aim is twofold: First, to familiarize you with
the resources available in the field of literary studies and with key components of a research project, such as finding a research topic and narrowing it down, drafting research questions and framing them theoretically, writing an annotated bibliography and a literature review, and formulating an argument with which you enter a scholarly conversation. Second, to explore the very material we work with in literary studies: texts, books, libraries, and archives. In this context, we critically reflect on our very reading and writing practices and changing notions of text and author. Like all of our graduate courses, this is a reading and writing intensive course. The required reading listed in the weekly schedule below is subject to change, depending on your input and course progress.
ENGL 307C: Postcolonialism and Youth
Professor Sreemoyee Dasgupta
Overview
“In the simplest of terms, at the heart of the colonial enterprise, there was a battle over childhood and youth,” claim Diptee and Trotman in the introduction to a special issue of Atlantic Studies on childhood in the Global South. This class will take up this claim and attempt to extend it by exploring the myriad ways children’s literature can intersect with postcolonial studies. Most scholarship on Southern childhoods tends to be located within interdisciplinary discourses emphasizing the social sciences, often from a Human Rights perspective. This class proposes an interdisciplinary lens with literature and literary studies located at the center of our inquiries, allowing us to not only explore/reconceptualize/define Southern/postcolonial epistemologies and methodologies, but also to investigate the position of literary studies within the field of childhood studies. What are the heretofore unacknowledged or hidden histories of childhood in the Global South? How are these histories determined by the European colonial project and vice versa? In what ways can we productively read Southern/postcolonial childhoods through a literary lens? How do these readings go on to redetermine apparently universal definitions such as “childhood,” “youth,” and the figure of “the child” as well as national futurities in postcolonies? This class will explore these questions through colonial/postcolonial children’s literature, texts about childhood aimed at non-children audiences, children’s literature theory, and canonical postcolonial theory through a children’s literature lens.