The College of Arts and Sciences requirement to pursue a doctoral minor distinguishes IU’s unique brand of graduate education from its peers. It also affords important interdisciplinary opportunities and a unique vantage point from which to pursue the work of writing a dissertation. As a major location for Humanities research, the College of Arts and Sciences on the Bloomington campus offers an extraordinary number of rich and compelling academic resources.
Requirements for the minor are set by the minor department or program, providing English Ph.D. candidates an awareness of the methodological issues pertinent to diverse areas of study. A faculty representative from the student’s minor field typically serves as a fourth reader on the dissertation committee.
Ph.D. students in English pursue minors in a wide range of departments, programs, and even schools. Our students commonly pursue doctoral minors in: American studies, Afro-American studies, Art History, Cognitive Science, Communication and Culture (film and media studies), Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Eighteenth-century Studies, Folklore, French, Gender Studies, German, Greek, History, Italian, Journalism, Latin, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Performance Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Renaissance Studies, Slavics, Spanish, Theatre and Drama, Victorian studies, and West European studies (among others).
Students have occasionally ventured outside the College to minor in Music through the Jacobs Music School or Law though the Maurer School of Law on the IUB campus.
We also offer a series of internal minors appealing to students with particular interests and goals. These include minors in American Literature, British Literature, Pedagogy, Creative Writing, English and Germanic Philology, English Language, and Textual Studies.
All of these options mean that you can craft a path to your Ph.D. that makes the most sense and has the greatest intellectual appeal, given your particular array of interests.
The Department of English also offers a Ph.D. Minor in English for Ph.D. students in other departments, as well as several variants, including a Minor in American Literature, in British Literature, in Creative Writing, in Literary Theory (jointly administered by the Departments of English & Comparative Literature), a Minor in Literature and Science, and others. The Minor in English consists of a minimum of twelve hours (at least three courses) in English Department coursework in a chosen field within English Literature; examples may include, but are not limited to, English Language, 20th Century Fiction, Transatlantic literature, Digital English, the Novel, Literature and the Environment, etc. Consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies is required to declare the minor and determine field of study. For full details, see the most current University Graduate School Bulletin
The College of Arts