Nationally recognized for vitality and innovation, the Department of English fosters lively intellectual exchange among graduate students and faculty. In recent years we have enrolled approximately 200 graduate students each year; about 15 to 20 of them are new M.A. or Ph.D. students, and 10 to 13 are new to the M.F.A.
Graduate students come from all over the United States and from abroad, with undergraduate degrees from a wide variety of institutions, both public and private: from Harvard to the University of California, from University of Florida to the University of Toronto, and more.
We are home to celebrated researchers, educators, scholars, and writers, including around fifty full-time faculty members in Literature and Language and in Creative Writing. They represent the diverse topics of study available to our students, with interests ranging from Anglo-Saxon language and literature to twenty-first century poetry, narrative, rhetoric, and drama.
Students and faculty explore a wide variety of approaches to literature—reading, writing, and discussing intersections of meaning and cultural significance. These include language and linguistics, literacy, composition and culture, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial and comparative ethnic studies, literary and cultural theory, literary history, aesthetics, performance studies, digital humanities, and more.
Whatever interests drive your intellectual curiosity and attention, you will find a way to develop them and bring them to bear on your degree.
Meet our faculty Meet our graduate students