phd english subject

Ph.D. Program

The Stanford English department has a long tradition of training the next generation of scholars to become leaders in academia and related fields. Our Ph.D. program encourages the production of ambitious, groundbreaking dissertation work across the diverse field interests of our prestigious faculty.

Fusing deep attention to literary history with newer approaches to media, technology, and performance, our department carefully mentors students in both scholarship and pedagogy through close interaction with faculty. Our location on the edge of the Pacific and at the heart of Silicon Valley encourages expansive, entrepreneurial thinking about the interpenetration of arts and sciences.

Program Overview

The English Department seeks to teach and promote an understanding of both the significance and the history of British and American literature (broadly defined) and to foster an appreciation of the richness and variety of texts in the language. It offers rigorous training in interpretive thinking and precise expression. Our English graduate program features the study of what imaginative language, rhetoric, and narrative art has done, can do, and will do in life, and it focuses on the roles creative writing and representations play in almost every aspect of modern experience. Completing the Ph.D. program prepares a student for full participation as a scholar and literary critic in the profession.

Financial Support

We offer an identical five-year funding package to all admitted students with competitive funding available for a sixth year. Funding covers applicable tuition costs, Stanford Cardinal Care health insurance, and living expenses in the form of direct stipend, teaching assistantships or pre-doctoral research assistantships. The department, in conjunction with the School of Humanities and Sciences, is also committed to supporting students' involvement in professional activities and funds many of the expenses for research travel, summer language study, and participation in academic conferences. Student housing is not included in the funding package.

In addition to our standard doctoral funding package, the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE) provides competitive funding to support individual doctoral students, student groups, and department-based projects. VPGE funding opportunities promote innovation, diversity, and excellence in graduate education. Explore their doctoral  fellowship  and other student  funding  opportunities.

The  Knight-Hennessy Scholars  program cultivates and supports a highly-engaged, multidisciplinary and multicultural community of graduate students from across Stanford University, and delivers a diverse collection of educational experiences, preparing graduates to address complex challenges facing the world. Knight-Hennessy Scholars participate in an experiential leadership development program known as the King Global Leadership Program and receive funding for up to three years of graduate study at Stanford. Two applications must be submitted separately; one to Knight-Hennessy and one to the Stanford English graduate degree program by its deadline. Please refer to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program page to learn more and apply.

Teaching Requirements

One pedagogical seminar and four quarters of supervised teaching. Typically a student will teach three times as a teaching assistant in a literature course. For the fourth course, students will have the option of applying to design and teach a Writing Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) for undergraduate English majors or teaching a fourth quarter as a T.A..

• 1st year: One quarter as T.A. (leading 1-2 discussion sections of undergraduate literature)
• 2nd year: One quarter as T.A. (leading 1-2 discussion sections of undergraduate literature)
• 3rd/4th/5th years: Two quarters of teaching, including the possibility of TA'ing or teaching a WISE course.

Language requirements

All candidates for the Ph.D. degree must demonstrate a reading knowledge of two foreign languages. One language requirement must be completed during the first year of study. The second language must be completed before the oral examination in the third year.

Candidates in the earlier periods must offer Latin and one of the following languages: French, German, Greek, Italian or Spanish. Candidates in the later period (that is, after the Renaissance) must demonstrate a reading knowledge of two languages for which  Stanford’s Language Center  regularly offers a reading course, administers a competency exam, or facilitates the administration of an American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Reading Proficiency Test (ACTFL RPT). In all cases, the choice of languages offered must be relevant to the student’s field of study and must have the approval of the candidate's adviser. Any substitution of a language other than one for which Stanford offers a competency exam must also be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies.

Other requirements

All candidates for the Ph.D. must satisfactorily complete the following:

• 135 units, at least 70 of which (normally 14 courses) must be graded course work
• Qualifying examination, based on a reading guide of approximately 70-90 works, to be taken orally at the end of the summer after the first year of graduate work.
• University oral examination covering the field of concentration taken no later than the winter quarter of the third year of study.
• Submission of the dissertation prospectus
• First chapter review with the dissertation advisor and the members of the dissertation reading committee.
• Dissertation, which should be an original work of literary criticism demonstrating the student's ability to participate fully as a scholar and literary critic in the profession.
• Closing colloquium designed to look forward toward the next steps; identify the major accomplishments of the dissertation and the major questions/issues/problems that remain; consider possibilities for revision, book or article publication, etc.

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The 6 Best Types of PhD Programs for English Majors

If you’re reading this, you’re probably exploring your options for advancing your undergraduate degree. Could a PhD be the ticket to realizing your academic goals and dreams? The decision to return to graduate school for a PhD is a significant one. However, a PhD is worthwhile — essential, even — if you want to conduct original research or if you desire a career in academia or another specialized field. Some know exactly the subject in which they’ll earn their doctorate. For others, the decision is more ambiguous. The question then becomes: how can you create the most synergy between your bachelor’s in English and your PhD? It starts with narrowing your field of focus. So, go ahead and rule out those graduate programs in biochemistry and start exploring a PhD in the humanities .

What do we mean by “the humanities?”

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Best phd programs for english majors.

If your undergraduate degree is in English, pursuing a PhD in the same discipline is an obvious path — but it’s not the only one. Depending on the kinds of classes you took and your interests within the field of humanities, you may be qualified to pursue a PhD in other disciplines. However, you should keep in mind that if you choose to pursue a new field of study, you may need to take additional prerequisite courses in addition to the courses you took to earn your bachelor’s degree.

1. PhD in Religious Studies

As an English major, you’ve most likely read a few religious texts, and you understand their significance regardless of your affiliation (if any). Truthfully, a PhD in Religious Studies doesn’t require you to be religious. Studying religion is studying ethics, beliefs, communities, and people. A PhD in Religious Studies will foster a greater understanding of the role of religion in the contemporary world and throughout history. You’ll examine the world’s religious traditions as social, cultural, and historical phenomena.

2. PhD in Linguistics*

Have you ever marveled at the perfect word choice in your favorite play? Or, while reading a line of dialogue in a piece of literary fiction, heard the dialect clear as a bell? There is no literature without language. The study of language is called linguistics, and it encompasses every aspect of language and the methods of studying and modeling them. Linguistics has traditional areas of analysis like phonetics, morphology, and syntax, the latter of which studies the rules and constraints that govern how speakers of a language can organize words into sentences. There are also linguistic sub-disciplines like historical linguistics, which is the study of language change, particularly in relation to a specific language or group of languages. For lovers of the written word, loving words themselves and the science behind them is the next logical step.

3. PhD in History

History, of course, is the study of the past. At the same, history helps us understand change and how the society we currently live in came to be.

History and English are inextricably intertwined. After all, many of the novels, poems, and essays you read as an English major made history in their own right. Both history and English make use of a very similar set of skills. Do you enjoy studying literary theories and analyzing texts through a specific critical lens? History has a comparable approach. It’s much more than reciting the names of influential people and the dates of important events; historians must understand it all within the context of the time.

Part of being a student of history is gaining the skill to sort through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Your undergraduate degree in English will have set you up for success.

4. PhD in Media Studies*

Like all forms of art, the creations of writers give us direct access to what it means to be human in all its complexity and mystery. If you found that your favorite part about being an English major was the art you encountered and the stories you were exposed to, you might want to consider a PhD in something like Media Studies. Media Studies will allow you to study story, culture, and contextual theory across various technical modes of production and reproduction, including print, photography, cinema, video, television, radio, etc.

5. PhD in Political Science*

At first, Political Science and English may seem like strange bedfellows. But you’ve already built a strong foundation in critical reading and thinking, approaching literary analysis through multiple lenses and finding the influences of culture, politics, and social issues peppered throughout a work during your undergraduate study. Political and economic factors — and the relations between them — figure into many great works. Studying political science allows you to understand the origins and underpinnings of political values from a historical and philosophical perspective. Think about it this way: if you find your favorite written works tend to have larger political meaning this might be the right route for you.

6. PhD in English

Unsurprisingly, a major in English prepares you incredibly well for a PhD in English. From the first flowerings of poetry in Old English to the most recent creative work being published, a PhD in English gives students the comprehensive knowledge of literary criticism they need to join faculties across the world. Depending on your specialization, you’ll study anything from medieval literature to African-American literature to literature in the age of revolutions. Your bachelor’s degree in English gave you a broad overview, whereas your PhD will help you identify a specialty and drill down to become a subject matter expert.

Explore the Humanities at Southern Methodist University

It’s not just what you study, but where. SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences can offer you a world-class education in the heart of Dallas, Texas.

Read our guide

“ Reanalyzing Our World: Humanities PhDs at SMU ” to learn more about the faculty, research, and opportunities available to you here.

*Graduate programs in these fields are not offered at SMU.

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PhD Program in English Language and Literature

The department enrolls an average of ten PhD students each year. Our small size allows us to offer a generous financial support package. We also offer a large and diverse graduate faculty with competence in a wide range of literary, theoretical and cultural fields. Each student chooses a special committee that works closely along side the student to design a course of study within the very broad framework established by the department. The program is extremely flexible in regard to course selection, the design of examinations and the election of minor subjects of concentration outside the department. English PhD students pursuing interdisciplinary research may include on their special committees faculty members from related fields such as comparative literature, medieval studies, Romance studies, German studies, history, classics, women’s studies, linguistics, theatre and performing arts, government, philosophy, and film and video studies.

The PhD candidate is normally expected to complete six or seven one-semester courses for credit in the first year of residence and a total of six or seven more in the second and third years. The program of any doctoral candidate’s formal and informal study, whatever his or her particular interests, should be comprehensive enough to ensure familiarity with:

• The authors and works that have been the most influential in determining the course of English, American, and related literatures
• The theory and criticism of literature, and the relations between literature and other disciplines
• Concerns and tools of literary and cultural history such as textual criticism, study of genre, source, and influence as well as wider issues of cultural production and historical and social contexts that bear on literature

Areas in which students may have major or minor concentrations include African-American literature, American literature to 1865, American literature after 1865, American studies (a joint program with the field of history), colonial and postcolonial literatures, cultural studies, dramatic literature, English poetry, the English Renaissance to 1660, lesbian, bisexual and gay literary studies, literary criticism and theory, the nineteenth century, Old and Middle English, prose fiction, the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the twentieth century, and women's literature.

By the time a doctoral candidate enters the fourth semester of graduate study, the special committee must decide whether he or she is qualified to proceed toward the PhD. Students are required to pass their Advancement to Candidacy Examination before their fourth year of study, prior to the dissertation.

PhD Program specifics can be viewed here: PhD Timeline PhD Procedural Guide

Special Committee

Every graduate student selects a special committee of faculty advisors who work intensively with the student in selecting courses and preparing and revising the dissertation. The committee is comprised of at least three Cornell faculty members: a chair, and typically two minor members usually from the English department, but very often representing an interdisciplinary field. The university system of special committees allows students to design their own courses of study within a broad framework established by the department, and it encourages a close working relationship between professors and students, promoting freedom and flexibility in the pursuit of the graduate degree. The special committee for each student guides and supervises all academic work and assesses progress in a series of meetings with the students.

At Cornell, teaching is considered an integral part of training in academia. The field requires a carefully supervised teaching experience of at least one year for every doctoral candidate as part of the program requirements. The Department of English, in conjunction with the  John S. Knight Institute for Writing  in the Disciplines, offers excellent training for beginning teachers and varied and interesting teaching in the university-wide First-Year Writing Program. The courses are writing-intensive and may fall under such general rubrics as “Portraits of the Self,” “American Literature and Culture,” “Shakespeare,” and “Cultural Studies,” among others. A graduate student may also serve as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate lecture course taught by a member of the Department of English faculty.

Language Requirements

Each student and special committee will decide what work in foreign language is most appropriate for a student’s graduate program and scholarly interests. Some students’ doctoral programs require extensive knowledge of a single foreign language and literature; others require reading ability in two or more foreign languages. A student may be asked to demonstrate competence in foreign languages by presenting the undergraduate record, taking additional courses in foreign languages and literature, or translating and discussing documents related to the student’s work. Students are also normally expected to provide evidence of having studied the English language through courses in Old English, the history of the English language, grammatical analysis or the application of linguistic study to metrics or to literary criticism. Several departments at Cornell offer pertinent courses in such subjects as descriptive linguistics, psycholinguistics and the philosophy of language.

All PhD degree candidates are guaranteed five years of funding (including a stipend , a full tuition fellowship and student health insurance):

• A first-year non-teaching fellowship
• Two years of teaching assistantships
• A fourth-year non-teaching fellowship for the dissertation writing year
• A fifth-year teaching assistantship
• Summer support for four years, including a first-year summer teaching assistantship, linked to a teachers’ training program at the Knight Institute. Summer residency in Ithaca is required.

Students have also successfully competed for Buttrick-Crippen Fellowship, Society for the Humanities Fellowships, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Shin Yong-Jin Graduate Fellowships, Provost’s Diversity Fellowships, fellowships in recognition of excellence in teaching, and grants from the Graduate School to help with the cost of travel to scholarly conferences and research collections.

Admission & Application Procedures

The application for Fall 2024 admission will open on September 15, 2023 and close at 11:59pm EST on December 1, 2023.

Our application process reflects the field’s commitment to considering the whole person and their potential to contribute to our scholarly community.  Applicants will be evaluated on the basis of academic preparation (e.g., performance in relevant courses, completion of substantive, independent research project). An applicant’s critical and creative potential will be considered: applicants should demonstrate interest in extensive research and writing and include a writing sample that reveals a capacity to argue persuasively, demonstrate the ability to synthesize a broad range of materials, as well as offer fresh insights into a problem or text. The committee will also consider whether an applicant demonstrates a commitment to inclusion, equity, and diversity and offers a substantive explanation for why study at Cornell is especially compelling (e.g., a discussion of faculty research and foci). Admissions committees will consider the entire application carefully, including statements and critical writing, as well as transcripts, letters of recommendation, and a resume/cv (if provided). Please view the requirements and procedures listed below, if you are interested in being considered for our PhD in English Language and Literature program.

Eligibility: Applicants must currently have, or expect to have, at least a BA or BS (or the equivalent) in any field before matriculation. International students, please verify degree equivalency here . Applicants are not required to meet a specified GPA minimum.

To Apply: All applications and supplemental materials must be submitted online through the Graduate School application system . While completing your application, you may save and edit your data. Once you click submit, your application will be closed for changes. Please proofread your materials carefully. Once you pay and click submit, you will not be able to make any changes or revisions.

Deadline: December 1st, 11:59pm EST.  This deadline is firm. No applications, additional materials, or revisions will be accepted after the deadline.

PhD Program Application Requirements Checklist

• Academic Statement of Purpose Please describe (within 1000 words) in detail the substantive research questions you are interested in pursuing during your graduate studies and why they are significant. Additionally, make sure to include information about any training or research experience that you believe has prepared you for our program. You should also identify specific faculty members whose research interests align with your own specific questions.  Note that the identification of faculty is important; you would be well advised to read selected faculty’s recent scholarship so that you can explain why you wish to study with them. Do not rely on the courses they teach.  Please refrain from contacting individual faculty prior to receiving an offer of admission.
• Personal Statement Please describe (within 1000 words) how your personal background and experiences influenced your decision to pursue a graduate degree and the research you wish to conduct.  Explain, for example the meaning and purpose of the PhD in the context of your personal history and future aspirations.  Please note that we will pay additional attention to candidates who identify substantial reasons to obtain a PhD beyond the pursuit of an academic position. Additionally, provide insight into your potential to contribute to a community of inclusion, belonging, and respect where scholars representing diverse backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences can learn (productively and positively) together.
• Critical Writing Sample Your academic writing sample must be between 3,000 and 7,500 words (12-30 pages), typed and double-spaced. We accept excerpts from longer works, or a combination of shorter works.
• Three Letters of Recommendation We require 3 letters of recommendation.  At the time of application, you will be allowed to enter up to 4 recommenders in the system.  Your application will be considered “Complete” when we have received at least 3 letters of recommendation.   Letters of recommendation are due December 1 . Please select three people who best know you and your work. Submitting additional letters will not enhance your application. In the recommendation section of the application, you must include the email address of each recommender. After you save the information (and before you pay/submit), the application system will automatically generate a recommendation request email to your recommender with instructions for submitting the letter electronically. If your letters are stored with a credential service such as Interfolio, please use their Online Application Delivery feature and input the email address assigned to your stored document, rather than that of your recommender’s. The electronic files will be attached to your application when they are received and will not require the letter of recommendation cover page.
• Transcripts Scan transcripts from each institution you have attended, or are currently attending, and upload into the academic information section of the application. Be sure to remove your social security number from all documents prior to scanning. Please do not send paper copies of your transcripts. If you are subsequently admitted and accept, the Graduate School will require an official paper transcript from your degree-awarding institution prior to matriculation.
• English Language Proficiency Requirement All applicants must provide proof of English language proficiency. For more information, please view the  Graduate School’s English Language Requirement .
• GRE General Test and GRE Subject Test are NO LONGER REQUIRED, effective starting with the 2019 application In March 2019, the faculty of English voted overwhelmingly to eliminate all GRE requirements (both general and subject test) for application to the PhD program in English. GRE scores are not good predictors of success or failure in a PhD program in English, and the uncertain predictive value of the GRE exam is far outweighed by the toll it takes on student diversity. For many applicants the cost of preparing for and taking the exam is prohibitively expensive, and the exam is not globally accessible. Requiring the exam narrows our applicant pool at precisely the moment we should be creating bigger pipelines into higher education. We need the strength of a diverse community in order to pursue the English Department’s larger mission: to direct the force of language toward large and small acts of learning, alliance, imagination, and justice.

General Information for All Applicants

Application Fee: Visit the Graduate School for information regarding application fees, payment options, and fee waivers .

Document Identification: Please do not put your social security number on any documents.

Status Inquiries:  Once you submit your application, you will receive a confirmation email. You will also be able to check the completion status of your application in your account. If vital sections of your application are missing, we will notify you via email after the Dec. 1 deadline and allow you ample time to provide the missing materials. Please do not inquire about the status of your application.

Credential/Application Assessments:  The Admission Review Committee members are unable to review application materials or applicant credentials prior to official application submission. Once the committee has reviewed applications and made admissions decisions, they will not discuss the results or make any recommendations for improving the strength of an applicant’s credentials. Applicants looking for feedback are advised to consult with their undergraduate advisor or someone else who knows them and their work.

Review Process:  Application review begins after the submission deadline. Notification of admissions decisions will be made by email by the end of February.

Connecting with Faculty and/or Students: Unfortunately, due to the volume of inquiries we receive, faculty and current students are not available to correspond with potential applicants prior to an offer of admission. Applicants who are offered admission will have the opportunity to meet faculty and students to have their questions answered prior to accepting. Staff and faculty are also not able to pre-assess potential applicant’s work outside of the formal application process. Please email [email protected] instead, if you have questions.

Visiting: The department does not offer pre-admission visits or interviews. Admitted applicants will be invited to visit the department, attend graduate seminars and meet with faculty and students before making the decision to enroll.

Transfer Credits:  Students matriculating with an MA degree may, at the discretion of the Director of Graduate Studies, receive credit for up to two courses once they begin our program.

For Further Information

Contact [email protected]

Ph.D. Program

Click  here for the Handbook for Graduate Study in English .  This document includes departmental policies and procedures concerned with graduate study.

The Berkeley English Department offers a wide-ranging Ph.D. program, engaging in all historical periods of British and American literature, Anglophone literature, and critical and cultural theory. The program aims to assure that students gain a broad knowledge of literature in English as well as the highly-developed skills in scholarship and criticism necessary to do solid and innovative work in their chosen specialized fields.

Please note that the department does not offer a Master’s Degree program or a degree program in Creative Writing. Students can, however, petition for an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing upon completion of the Ph.D. course requirements (one of which must be a graduate writing workshop) and submission of a body of creative work.

Students interested in combining a Ph.D. in English with studies in another discipline may pursue Designated Emphases or Concurrent Degrees in a number of different fields

Normative time to complete the program is six years. The first two years are devoted to fulfilling the course and language requirements. The third year is spent preparing for and taking the Ph.D. oral qualifying examination. The fourth through sixth years are devoted to researching and writing the prospectus and dissertation.

The general goal of the first two years is to assure that the students have a broad and varied knowledge of the fields of British and American literature in their historical dimensions, and are also familiar with a wide range of literary forms, critical approaches, and scholarly methods. Students will complete twelve courses distributed as follows:

• 1) English 200, “Problems in the Study of Literature”
• 2) Medieval through 16 th -Century
• 3) 17 th - through 18 th -Century
• 4) 19 th -Century
• 5) 20 th -Century
• 6) a course organized in terms other than chronological coverage.
• 7-12) Elective courses.

(A thirteenth required course in pedagogy can be taken later.) Students who have done prior graduate course work may transfer up to three courses for credit toward the 12-course requirement. Up to five of the 12 courses may be taken in other departments.

Students must demonstrate either proficiency in two foreign languages or advanced knowledge in one foreign language before the qualifying examination. There are no "canonical languages" in the department. Rather, each specifies which languages are to count, how they relate to the student's intellectual interests, and on which level knowledge is to be demonstrated. "Proficiency" is understood as the ability to translate (with a dictionary) a passage of about 300 words into idiomatic English prose in ninety minutes. The proficiency requirement may also be satisfied by completing one upper-division or graduate literature course in a foreign language. The advanced knowledge requirement is satisfied by completing two or three literature courses in the language with a grade of "B" or better.

At the end of the second year each student’s record is reviewed in its entirety to determine whether or not he or she is able and ready to proceed to the qualifying exam and the more specialized phase of the program.

The Qualifying Examination

Students are expected to take the qualifying examination within one year after completing course and language requirements. The qualifying exam is oral and is conducted by a committee of five faculty members. The exam lasts approximately two hours and consists of three parts: two comprehensive historical fields and a third field which explores a topic in preparation for the dissertation. The exam is meant both as a culmination of course work and as a test of readiness for the dissertation.

The Prospectus and Dissertation

The prospectus consists of an essay and bibliography setting forth the nature of the research project, its relation to existing scholarship and criticism on the subject, and its anticipated value. Each candidate must have a prospectus conference with the members of their committee and the Graduate Chair to discuss the issues outlined in the proposal and to give final approval to the project. The prospectus should be approved within one or two semesters following the qualifying exam.

The dissertation is the culmination of the student's graduate career and is expected to be a substantial and original work of scholarship or criticism. Students within normative time complete the dissertation in their fourth through sixth years.

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Ph.D. Literature

Ph.d. in literature.

The Ph.D. degree offers the opportunity for advanced and concentrated research to students who hold an M.A. degree in English or a related field, from KU or elsewhere. With faculty guidance, students admitted to the Ph.D. program may tailor their programs to their research and teaching interests.

Opportunities

A GTA appointment includes a tuition waiver for ten semesters plus a competitive stipend. In the first year, GTA appointees teach English 101 (first year composition) and English 102 (a required reading and writing course). Graduate students may have the opportunity to teach an introductory course in their field after passing the doctoral examination, and opportunities are available for a limited number of advanced GTAs to teach in the summer.

Graduate Corner

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Requirements

• At least 24 hours of credit in appropriate formal graduate courses beyond the M.A. or M.F.A. At least 15 hours (in addition to ENGL 800 if not taken for the M.A.) of this course work must be taken from among courses offered by the Department of English at the 700-level and above. English 997 and 999 credits cannot be included among the 24 hours. Students may petition to take up to 6 hours outside the Department.
• ENGL 800: Methods, Theory, and Professionalism (counts toward the 24 required credit hours).
• The ENGL 801/ENGL 802 pedagogy sequence (counts toward the 24 required credit hours).
• Two seminars (courses numbered 900 or above) offered by the Department of English at the University of Kansas, beyond the M.A. or M.F.A. ENGL 998 does not fulfill this requirement.
• ENGL 999, Dissertation (at least 12 hours).

If the M.A. or M.F.A. was completed in KU’s Department of English, a doctoral student may petition the DGS to have up to 12 hours of the coursework taken in the English Department reduced toward the Ph.D.        

For Doctoral students,  the university requires completion of a course in responsible scholarship . For the English department, this would be ENGL 800, 780, or the equivalent). In addition, the Department requires reading knowledge of one approved foreign language: Old English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. Upon successful petition, a candidate may substitute reading knowledge of another language or research skill that is studied at the University or is demonstrably appropriate to the candidate’s program of study.

Doctoral students must fulfill the requirement  before  they take their doctoral examination, or be enrolled in a reading course the same semester as the exam. Students are permitted three attempts at passing each foreign language or research skill. Three methods of demonstrating reading knowledge for all approved languages except Old English are acceptable:

• Presenting 16 hours, four semesters, or the equivalent of undergraduate credit, earned with an average of C or better.
• Passing a graduate reading course at the University of Kansas or peer institution (e.g., French 100, German 100, etc.) with a grade of C or higher. In the past, some of these reading courses have been given by correspondence; check with the Division of Continuing Education for availability.
• Passing a translation examination given by a designated member of the English Department faculty or by the appropriate foreign language department at KU. The exam is graded pass/fail and requires the student to translate as much as possible of a representative text in the foreign language in a one-hour period, using a bilingual dictionary.
• Passing a translation examination given by the appropriate foreign language department at the M.A.-granting institution. Successful completion must be reflected either on the M.A. transcript or by a letter from the degree-granting department.

To fulfill the language requirement using Old English, students must successfully complete ENGL 710 (Introduction to Old English) and ENGL 712 (Beowulf).

Post-Coursework Ph.D. students must submit, with their committee chair(s), an annual review form to the DGS and Graduate Committee.

Doctoral students must take their doctoral examination within three semesters (excluding summers) of the end of the semester in which they took their final required course. If a student has an Incomplete, the timeline is not postponed until the Incomplete is resolved. For example, a student completing doctoral course work in Spring 2018 will need to schedule their doctoral exam no later than the end of Fall semester 2019. Delays may be granted by petition to the Graduate Director in highly unusual circumstances. Failure to take the exam within this time limit without an approved delay will result in the student’s falling out of good standing. For details on the consequences of falling out of good standing, see “Falling Out of Good Standing,” in General Department Policies and Best Practices.

A student may not take their doctoral exam until the university’s Research Skills and Responsible Scholarship requirement is fulfilled (ENGL 800 or equivalent and reading knowledge of one foreign language or equivalent).

Doctoral Exam Requirements

Reading Lists

All students are required to submit three reading lists, based on the requirements below, to their committee for approval. The doctoral exam will be held on a date at least twelve weeks after the approval from the whole committee is received. To facilitate quick committee approval, students may copy the graduate program coordinator on the email to the committee that contains the final version of the lists. Committee members may then respond to the email in lieu of signing a printed copy. Students should work with their committee chair and graduate program coordinator to schedule the exam at the same time as they finalize the lists.

During the two-hour oral examination (plus an additional 15-30 minutes for a break and committee deliberation), a student will be tested on their comprehension of a literary period or movement, including multiple genres and groups of authors within that period or movement. In addition, the student will be tested on two of the following six areas of study:

• An adjacent or parallel literary period or movement,
• An author or group of related authors,
• Criticism and literary theory,
• Composition theory, and
• English language.

No title from any field list may appear on either of the other two lists. See Best Practices section for more details on these six areas. See below for a description of the Review of the Dissertation Proposal (RDP), which the candidate takes the semester after passing the doctoral exam.

While many students confer with the DGS as they  begin  the process of developing their lists, they are also required to submit a copy of their  final  exam list to the DGS. Most lists will be left intact, but the DGS might request that overly long lists be condensed, or extremely short lists be expanded.

Review of Literature

The purpose of the Review of Literature is to develop and demonstrate an advanced awareness of the critical landscape for each list. The student will write an overview of the defining attributes of the field, identifying two or three broad questions that animate scholarly discussion, while using specific noteworthy texts from their list ( but not all texts on the list ) as examples.

The review also must accomplish the following:

• consider the historical context of major issues, debates, and trends that factor into the emergence of the field
• offer a historical overview of scholarship in the field that connects the present to the past
• note recent trends and emergent lines of inquiry
• propose questions about (develop critiques of, and/or identify gaps in) the field and how they might be pursued in future study (but not actually proposing or referencing a dissertation project)

For example, for a literary period, the student might include an overview of primary formal and thematic elements, of the relationship between literary and social/historical developments, of prominent movements, (etc.), as well as of recent critical debates and topics.

For a genre list, the Review of Literature might include major theories of its constitution and significance, while outlining the evolution of these theories over time.

For a Rhetoric and Composition list, the review would give an overview of major historical developments, research, theories, methods, debates, and trends of scholarship in the field.

For an English Language Studies (ELS) list, the review would give an overview of the subfields that make up ELS, the various methodological approaches to language study, the type of sources used, and major aims and goals of ELS. The review also usually involves a focus on one subfield of particular interest to the student (such as stylistics, sociolinguistics, or World/Postcolonial Englishes).

Students are encouraged to divide reviews into smaller sections that enhance clarity and organization. Students are not expected to interact with every text on their lists.

The review of literature might be used to prepare students for identifying the most important texts in the field, along with why those texts are important to the field, for the oral exam. It is recommended for students to have completed reading the bulk of (if not all) texts on their lists before writing the ROL.

The Reviews of Literature will not be produced in an exam context, but in the manner of papers that are researched and developed in consultation with all advisors/committee members,  with final drafts being distributed within a reasonable time for all members to review and approve in advance of the 3-week deadline . While the Review of Literature generally is not the focus of the oral examination, it is frequently used as a point of departure for questions and discussion during the oral examination.

Doctoral Exam Committee

Exam committees typically consist of 3 faculty members from the department—one of whom serves as the Committee Chair—plus a Graduate Studies Representative. University policy dictates the composition of exam committees. Students may petition for an exception for several committee member situations, with the exception of  the Graduate Studies Representative .

If a student wants to have as a committee member a person outside the university, or a person who is not in a full-time tenure-track professorship at KU, the student must contact the Graduate Secretary as early as possible. Applications for special graduate faculty status must be reviewed by the College and Graduate Studies. Requests for exam/defense approval will not be approved unless all committee members currently hold either regular or special graduate faculty status.

Remote participation of committee members via technology

Students with committee members who plan to attend the defense via remote technology must be aware of  college policy on teleconferencing/remote participation of committee members .

The recommended time between completion of coursework and the doctoral examination is two semesters.

Final exam lists need to be approved and signed by the committee at least 12 weeks prior to the prospective exam date and submitted to the Graduate Program Coordinator. Reviews of Literature need to be approved and signed by the committee at least 3 weeks prior to the exam date. Failure to meet this deadline will result in rescheduling the exam. No further changes to lists or Reviews of Literature will be allowed after official approval. The three-week deadline is the faculty deadline--the last date for them to confirm receipt of the ROLs and confer approval--not necessarily the student deadline for submitting the documents to the faculty. Please keep that timing in mind and allow your committee adequate time to review the materials and provide feedback.

Students taking the Doctoral Exam are allowed to bring their text lists, the approved Reviews of Literature, scratch paper, a writing utensil, and notes/writing for an approximately 5-minute introductory statement to the exam. (This statement does not need to lay out ideas or any aspect of the dissertation project.)

Each portion of the oral examination must be deemed passing before the student can proceed to the Review of the Dissertation Proposal. If a majority of the committee judges that the student has not answered adequately on one of the three areas of the exam, the student must repeat that portion in a separate oral exam of one hour, to be taken as expeditiously as possible.  Failure in two areas constitutes failure of the exam and requires a retake of the whole.  The doctoral examining committee will render a judgment of Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory on the entire examination. A student who fails the exam twice may, upon successful petition to the Graduate Committee, take it a third and final time.

Students cannot bring snacks, drinks, treats, or gifts for committee members to the exam. Professors should avoid the appearance of favoritism that may occur if they bring treats to some student exams but not others.

Purposes of the Doctoral Exam

• To establish goals, tone, and direction for the pursuit of the Ph.D. in English for the Department and for individual programs of study;
• To make clear the kinds of knowledge and skills that, in the opinion of the Department, all well-prepared holders of the degree should have attained;
• To provide a means for the Department to assess each candidate’s control of such knowledge and skills in order to certify that the candidate is prepared to write a significant dissertation and enter the profession; and
• To enable the Department to recommend to the candidate areas of strength or weakness that should be addressed.

In consultation with the Graduate Director, a student will ask a member of the Department’s graduate faculty (preferably their advisor) to be the chairperson of the examining committee. The choice of examination committee chair is very important, for that person’s role is to assist the candidate in designing the examination structure, preparing the Review of Literature (see below), negotiating reading lists and clarifying their purposes, and generally following procedures here outlined. The other three English Department members of the committee will be chosen in consultation with the committee chair. (At some point an additional examiner from outside the Department, who serves as the Graduate School representative, will be invited to join the committee). Any unresolved problems in negotiation between a candidate and their committee should be brought to the attention of the Graduate Director, who may choose to involve the Graduate Committee. A student may request a substitution in, or a faculty member may ask to be dismissed from, the membership of the examining committee. Such requests must be approved, in writing, by the faculty member leaving the committee and by the Graduate Director.

Copies of some approved reading lists and Reviews of Literature are available from the Graduate Secretary and can be found on the U: drive if you are using a computer on campus. Despite the goal of fairness and equity, some unavoidable unevenness and disparity will appear in the length of these lists. It remains, however, the responsibility of the examining committee, and especially the student’s chair, to aim toward consonance with the most rigorous standards and expectations and to insure that areas of study are not unduly narrow.

To facilitate quick committee approval, students may copy the graduate secretary on the email to the committee that contains the final version of the lists and reviews of literature. Committee members may then respond to the email in lieu of signing a printed copy.

Criteria for Reading Lists

Comprehension of a literary period (e.g., British literature of the 18th century; Romanticism; US literature of the 19th century; Modernism) entails sufficient intellectual grasp of both the important primary works of and secondary works on the period or movement to indicate a student’s ability to teach the period or movement and undertake respectable scholarship on it.

Comprehension of an author or group of related authors (e.g., Donne, the Brontës, the Bloomsbury Group, the Black Mountain Poets) entails knowledge, both primary and secondary, of a figure or figures whose writing has generated a significant body of interrelated biographical, historical, and critical scholarship.

Comprehension of one of several genres (the short story, the lyric poem, the epistolary novel). To demonstrate comprehension of a genre, a student should possess sufficient depth and breadth of knowledge, both primary and secondary, of the genre to explain its formal characteristics and account for its historical development.

Comprehension of criticism and literary theory entails a grasp of fundamental conceptual problems inherent in a major school of literary study (e.g., historicist, psychoanalytic, feminist, poststructuralist, etc.). To demonstrate comprehension of that school of criticism and literary theory, a student should be able to discuss changes in its conventions and standards of interpretation and evaluation of literature from its beginning to the present. Students will be expected to possess sufficient depth and breadth of theoretical knowledge to bring appropriate texts and issues to bear on questions of literary study.

Comprehension of composition theory entails an intellectual grasp of fundamental concepts, issues, and theories pertaining to the study of writing. To demonstrate comprehension of composition theory, students should be able to discuss traditional and current issues from a variety of perspectives, as well as the field’s historical development from classical rhetoric to the present.

Comprehension of the broad field of English language studies entails a grasp of the field’s theoretical concepts and current issues, as well as a familiarity with significant works within given subareas. Such subareas will normally involve formal structures (syntax, etc.) and history of the English language, along with other subareas such as social linguistics, discourse analysis, lexicography, etc. Areas of emphasis and specific sets of topics will be arranged through consultation with relevant faculty.

Ph.D. candidates must be continuously enrolled in Dissertation hours each Fall and Spring semester from the time they pass the doctoral examination until successful completion of the final oral examination (defense of dissertation).

• Students enroll for a minimum of 6 hours each Fall and Spring semester until the total of post-doctoral exam Dissertation hours is 18. One hour each semester must be ENGL 999. In order to more quickly reach the 18-hour minimum, and to be sooner eligible for GRAships, it is highly recommended that students enroll in 9 hours of Dissertation in the Spring and Fall semesters. 
• Once a student has accumulated 18 post-doctoral exam  hours, each subsequent enrollment will be for a number of hours agreed upon as appropriate between the student and their advisor, the minimal enrollment each semester being 1 hour of ENGL 999.
• A student must be enrolled in at least one hour of credit at KU during the semester they graduate. Although doctoral students must be enrolled in ENGL 999 while working on their dissertations, per current CLAS regulations, there is no absolute minimum number of ENGL 999 hours required for graduation.
• Students who live and work outside the Lawrence area may, under current University regulations, have their fees assessed at the Field Work rate, which is somewhat lower than the on-campus rate. Students must petition the College Office of Graduate Affairs before campus fees will be waived.

Please also refer to  the COGA policy on post-exam enrollment  or the  Graduate School’s policy .

As soon as possible following successful completion of the doctoral exam, the candidate should establish their three-person core dissertation committee, and then expeditiously proceed to the preparation of a dissertation proposal.  Within the semester following completion of the doctoral exam , the student will present to their core dissertation committee a written narrative of approximately  10-15 pages , not including bibliography, of the dissertation proposal. While the exam schedule is always contingent on student progress, in the first two weeks of the semester in which they intend to take the review , students will work with their committee chair and the graduate program coordinator to schedule the 90-minute RDP. Copies of this proposal must be submitted to the members of the dissertation committee no later than  three weeks prior  to the scheduled examination date.

In the proposal, students will be expected to define: the guiding question or set of questions; a basic thesis (or hypothesis); how the works to be studied or the creative writing produced relate to that (hypo)thesis; the theoretical/methodological model to be followed; the overall formal divisions of the dissertation; and how the study will be situated in the context of prior scholarship (i.e., its importance to the field). The narrative section should be followed by a bibliography demonstrating that the candidate is conversant with the basic theoretical and critical works pertinent to the study. For creative writing students, the proposal may serve as a draft of the critical introduction to the creative dissertation. Students are expected to consult with their projected dissertation committee concerning the preparation of the proposal.

The review will focus on the proposal, although it could also entail determining whether or not the candidate’s knowledge of the field is adequate to begin the composition process. The examination will be graded pass/fail. If it is failed, the committee will suggest areas of weakness to be addressed by the candidate, who will rewrite the proposal and retake the review  by the end of the following semester . If the candidate abandons the entire dissertation project for another, a new RDP will be taken. (For such a step to be taken, the change would need to be drastic, such as a move to a new field or topic. A change in thesis or the addition or subtraction of one or even several works to be examined would not necessitate a new proposal and defense.)  If the student fails to complete the Review of the Dissertation Proposal within a year of the completion of the doctoral exams, they will have fallen out of departmental good standing.  For details on the consequences of falling out of good standing, see “Falling Out of Good Standing,” in General Department Policies and Best Practices.

After passing the Review of the Dissertation Proposal, the student should forward one signed copy of the proposal to the Graduate Program Coordinator. The RDP may last no longer than 90 minutes.

Students cannot bring snacks, drinks, treats, or gifts for committee members to the review. Professors should avoid the appearance of favoritism that may occur if they bring treats to some student exams but not others.

The Graduate Catalog states that the doctoral candidate “must present a dissertation showing the planning, conduct and results of original research, and scholarly creativity.”

The dissertation committee will consist of at least four members—two “core” English faculty members, a third faculty member (usually from English), and one faculty member from a different department who serves as the Graduate Studies representative. The committee may include (with the Graduate Director’s approval) members from other departments and, with the approval of the University’s Graduate Council, members from outside the University. If a student wants to have a committee member from outside the university, or a person who is not in a full-time tenure-track professorship at KU, the student must contact the Graduate Program Coordinator as early as possible. Applications for special graduate faculty status must be reviewed by the College and the Office of Graduate Studies. Requests for defense approval will not be approved unless all committee members currently hold either regular or special graduate faculty status.

The candidate’s preferences as to the membership of the dissertation committee will be carefully considered; the final decision, however, rests with the Department and with the Office of Graduate Studies. All dissertation committees must get approval from the Director of Graduate Studies before scheduling the final oral exam (defense). Furthermore, any changes in the make-up of the dissertation committee from the Review of the Dissertation Proposal committee must be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies.

Once the dissertation proposal has passed and the writing of the dissertation begins, membership of the dissertation committee should remain constant. However, under extraordinary circumstances, a student may request a substitution in, or a faculty member may ask to be dismissed from, the membership of the dissertation committee. Such requests must be approved, in writing, by the faculty member leaving the committee and by the Graduate Director.

If a student does not make progress during the dissertation-writing stage, and accumulates more than one “Limited Progress” and/or “No Progress” grade on their transcript, they will fall out of good standing in the department. For details on the consequences of falling out of good standing, see “Falling Out of Good Standing,” in General Department Policies and Best Practices.            

When the dissertation has been tentatively accepted by the dissertation committee (not including the Graduate Studies Representative), the final oral examination will be held, on the recommendation of the Department. While the exam schedule is always contingent on student progress, in the first two weeks of the semester in which they intend to defend the dissertation, students should work with their committee chair and graduate program coordinator to schedule it.

Although the dissertation committee is responsible for certification of the candidate, any member of the graduate faculty may be present at the examination and participate in the questioning, and one examiner—the Graduate Studies Representative—must be from outside the Department. The Graduate Secretary can help students locate an appropriate Grad Studies Rep. The examination normally lasts no more than two hours. It is the obligation of the candidate to advise the Graduate Director that they plan to take the oral examination; this must be done at least one month before the date proposed for the examination.

At least three calendar weeks prior to the defense date, the student will submit the final draft of the dissertation to all the committee members (including the GSR) and the Graduate Program Coordinator. Failure to meet this deadline will necessitate rescheduling the defense.  

The final oral examination for the Ph.D. in English is, essentially, a defense of the dissertation. When it is passed, the dissertation itself is graded by the dissertation director, in consultation with the student’s committee; the student’s performance in the final examination (defense) is graded by the entire five-person committee.

Students cannot bring snacks, drinks, treats, or gifts for committee members to the defense. Professors should avoid the appearance of favoritism that may occur if they bring treats to some student defenses but not others.

These sets of attributes are adapted from the Graduate Learner Outcomes that are a part of our Assessment portfolio. “Honors” should only be given to dissertations that are rated “Outstanding” in all or most of the following categories:

• Introduction/Statement of the Problem/Focus/Thesis is significant and innovative; the introduction clearly places the problem/focus/thesis in context.
• The doctoral candidate demonstrates a full and up-to-date grounding in existing literature; the writer also engages in an extensive critique of the literature, not just a summary of it.
• The doctoral candidate thoroughly understands methodology/approach/theory. Their application of methodology/approach/theory is innovative and convincing.
• Summary of materials under examination is clear, concise, and insightful.
• Detailed discussion of the implications of the research and future directions for research.
• The dissertation demonstrates original and sophisticated analysis. Novel, important conclusions are drawn, and the results are thoroughly contextualized.

After much discussion about whether the “honors” designation assigned after the dissertation defense should be for the written product only, for the defense/discussion only, for both together, weighted equally, or eradicated altogether, the department voted to accept the Graduate Committee recommendation that “honors” only apply to the written dissertation. "Honors" will be given to dissertations that are rated "Outstanding" in all or most of the categories on the dissertation rubric.

Normally, the dissertation will present the results of the writer’s own research, carried on under the direction of the dissertation committee. This means that the candidate should be in regular contact with all members of the committee during the dissertation research and writing process, providing multiple drafts of chapters, or sections of chapters, according to the arrangements made between the student and each faculty member. Though accepted primarily for its scholarly merit rather than for its rhetorical qualities, the dissertation must be stylistically competent. The Department has accepted the MLA Handbook as the authority in matters of style. The writer may wish to consult also  the Chicago Manual of Style  and Kate L. Turabian’s  A Manual for Writers of Dissertations, Theses, and Term Papers .

Naturally, both the student and the dissertation committee have responsibilities and obligations to each other concerning the submitting and returning of materials. The student should plan on working steadily on the dissertation; if they do so, they should expect from the dissertation committee a reasonably quick reading and assessment of material submitted.

Students preparing their dissertation should be showing chapters to their committee members as they go along, for feedback and revision suggestions. They should also meet periodically with committee members to assess their progress. Prior to scheduling a defense, the student is encouraged to ask committee members whether they feel that the student is ready to defend the dissertation. Ideally, the student should hold the defense only when they have consulted with committee members sufficiently to feel confident that they have revised the dissertation successfully to meet the expectations of all committee members.

Students should expect that they will need to revise each chapter at least once. This means that all chapters (including introduction and conclusion) are shown to committee members once, revised, then shown to committee members again in revised form to assess whether further revisions are needed, prior to the submitting of the final dissertation as a whole. It is not unusual for further revisions to be required and necessary after the second draft of a chapter; students should not therefore simply assume that a second draft is necessarily “final” and passing work.

If a substantial amount of work still needs to be completed or revised at the point that the dissertation defense is scheduled, such a defense date should be regarded as tentative, pending the successful completion, revision, and receipt of feedback on all work. Several weeks prior to the defense, students should consult closely with their dissertation director and committee members about whether the dissertation as a whole is in a final and defensible stage. A project is ready for defense when it is coherent, cohesive, well researched, engages in sophisticated analysis (in its entirety or in the critical introduction of creative dissertations), and makes a significant contribution to the field. In other words, it passes each of the categories laid out in the Dissertation Rubric.

If the dissertation has not clearly reached a final stage, the student and dissertation director are advised to reschedule the defense.

Prior Publication of the Doctoral Dissertation

Portions of the material written by the doctoral candidate may appear in article form before completion of the dissertation. Prior publication does not ensure the acceptance of the dissertation by the dissertation committee. Final acceptance of the dissertation is subject to the approval of the dissertation committee. Previously published material by other authors included in the dissertation must be properly documented.

Each student beyond the master’s degree should confer regularly with the Graduate Director regarding their progress toward the doctoral examination and the doctorate.

Doctoral students may take graduate courses outside the English Department if, in their opinion and that of the Graduate Director, acting on behalf of the Graduate Committee, those courses will be of value to them. Their taking such courses will not, of course, absolve them of the responsibility for meeting all the normal departmental and Graduate School requirements.

Doctoral students in creative writing are strongly encouraged to take formal literature classes in addition to forms classes. Formal literature classes, by providing training in literary analysis, theory, and/or literary history, will help to prepare students for doctoral exams (and future teaching at the college level).

FALL SEMESTER            

• GTAs take 2 courses (801 + one), teach 2 courses; GRAs take 3 courses.
• Visit assigned advisor once a month to update on progress & perceptions. 1st-year advisors can assist with selecting classes for the Spring semester, solidifying and articulating a field of specialization, advice about publishing, conferences, professionalization issues, etc.

SPRING SEMESTER

• GTAs take 2 courses (780/800/880 + one), teach 2 courses. GTAs also take ENGL 802 for 1 credit hour. GRAs take 3 courses.
• Visit assigned advisor or DGS once during the semester; discuss best advisor choices for Year 2.

SUMMER SEMESTER

• Enroll in Summer Institute if topic and/or methodology matches interests.
• Consider conferences suited to your field and schedule; choose a local one for attendance in Year 2 and draft an Abstract for a conference paper (preferably with ideas/materials/ writing drawn from a seminar paper).  Even if abstract is not accepted, you can attend the conference without the pressure of presenting.
• Attend at least one conference to familiarize yourself with procedure, network with other grad students and scholars in your field, AND/OR present a paper.

FALL SEMESTER

• Take 2 courses, teach 2 courses.
• Visit advisor in person at least once during the semester.

WINTER BREAK

• Begin revising one of your seminar papers/independent study projects/creative pieces for submission to a journal; research the journals most suited to placement of your piece.
• Begin thinking about fields and texts for comprehensive examinations.
• Choose an advisor to supervise you through the doctoral examination process.
• Visit assigned 1st-year advisor in person at least once during the semester (at least to formally request doctoral exam supervision OR to notify that you are changing advisors).
• Summer teaching, if eligible.
• Continue revising paper/creative writing for submission to a journal.
• Begin reading for comprehensive exams.
• Attend one conference and present a paper. Apply for one-time funding for out-of-state travel  from Graduate Studies .
• Teach 2 courses; take 997 (exam prep).
• Finalize comps list by end of September; begin drafting rationales.
• Circulate the draft of your article/creative piece to your advisor, other faculty in the field, and/or advanced grad students in the field for suggestions.
• Revise article/creative piece with feedback from readers.
• Teach 2 courses; take 997 or 999 (dissertation hours). Enroll in 999 if you plan to take your comps this semester, even if you don’t take them until the last day of classes.
• Take comps sometime between January and May.
• Summer teaching, if available.
• Submit article/creative work for publication.
• Continuous enrollment after completing doctoral exam (full policy on p. 20)
• Research deadlines for grant applications—note deadlines come early in the year.
• Attend one conference and present a paper.
• Teach 2 courses, take 999.
• Compose dissertation proposal by November.
• Schedule Review of Dissertation Proposal (RDP—formerly DPR).
• Apply for at least one grant or fellowship, such as a departmental-level GRAship or dissertation fellowship. (Winning a full-year, non-teaching fellowship can cut down your years-to-degree to 5 ½, or even 5 years.)
• Conduct research for and draft at least 1 dissertation chapter.
• Conduct research and complete a draft of at least 1 dissertation chapter.
• Revise & resubmit journal article, if necessary.
• Attend 1st round of job market meetings with Job Placement Advisor (JPA) to start drafting materials and thinking about the process.
• Research and complete a draft of at least 1 dissertation chapter, if teaching (1-2 chapters if not).
• Visit dissertation chair  and  committee members in person at least once during the semester.
• Research and complete a draft of at least 1 dissertation chapter (1-2 chapters if not teaching).
• Apply for a departmental grant or fellowship, or, if already held, try applying for one from outside the department, such as those offered by KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities or the Office of Graduate Studies. For  a monthly list of funding opportunities , visit the Graduate Studies website.
• Research and complete a draft of at least 1 dissertation chapter.
• Attend job market meetings with JPA in earnest.
• Apply for external grants, research fellowships, postdoctoral positions with fall deadlines (previous fellowship applications, your dissertation proposal, and subsequent writing should provide a frame so that much of the application can be filled out with the “cut & paste” function).
• Research and complete a draft of at least 1 dissertation chapter (1-2 if not teaching).
• Visit dissertation chair and committee members in person at least once during the semester.
• Polish dissertation chapters.
• Apply for grants and fellowships with spring deadlines.
• Defend dissertation.

Graduate Contacts

• Associate Professor
• Director of Graduate Studies

• Graduate Program Coordinator

Graduate Student Handbook

Department of English

Doctoral program.

• Graduate Studies

Brown's doctoral program in English offers professional training in literary criticism, critical theory, intellectual history, and all aspects of research and pedagogy in the humanities.

We promote the analysis of imaginative forms, cultural logics, and literary and visual rhetorics across the Anglophone world.  Our students are encouraged to think outside traditional conceptions of the discipline of literary studies, and often work with a diverse range of faculty, departments, and centers at Brown. Partner units include the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, the Pembroke Center, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Center for Contemporary South Asia, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, and the Departments of Modern Culture and Media, Comparative Literature, History, American Studies, Africana Studies, Literary Arts, French Studies, German Studies, Hispanic Studies, Brazilian and Portuguese Studies, the History of Art and Architecture, and Music.

The first two years of the doctoral program are devoted to course work and the fulfillment of the foreign language requirement. We expect graduate students to take the Qualifying Examination by the end of the third year. Their remaining time in the program is given to the writing of the dissertation. We expect this project to involve research and to demonstrate the potential to become a book or series of articles during the early years of the student’s career as a college or university professor.

Brown’s doctoral program trains graduate students to become teachers as well as researchers. Thus we require that, with some exceptions, our students teach for three years as assistants to members of the English Department faculty and as instructors of sections of ENGL0900 ( formerly ENGL0110 ) Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay, and ENGL0200 Seminars in Writing, Literatures, and Cultures. This teaching begins in the second year of the program. As part of their course work all students are required to take ENGL2950 Seminar in Pedagogy and Composition Theory. To help develop their teaching skills, we assign students to a variety of teaching positions, from assistant in a large course to instructor of a virtually autonomous workshop. We are convinced that the intellectual relationship between teaching and research is one that stands a college or university teacher in good stead for the duration of his or her career, and we try to establish this relationship early on by assigning graduate students, whenever possible, to teach courses related to their general area of research, and to work with faculty who may serve as appropriate mentors.

Course Requirements

Thirteen courses.

Candidates for the Ph.D. are required to take a minimum of thirteen courses. These courses are typically distributed as follows:

• Six courses in the first year (one of which is the required Proseminar*)
• Five in the second year. ENGL2950 Seminar in Pedagogy and Composition Theory is taken by all students during their second year of graduate studies.
• Two in the third year. The two courses taken in the third year can be independent studies designed to help students prepare for the qualifying exam.

Among the thirteen courses, students must take one in each of the following areas:

• Medieval and Early Modern Literatures and Cultures
• Enlightenment and the Rise of National Literatures and Cultures
• Modern and Contemporary Literatures and Cultures

Graduate students are also required to take one course during their first year of study that focuses on race and empire, which can also satisfy one of the three area requirements listed above.

*First-year graduate students are required to take ENGL2210. This Proseminar aims to familiarize students with contemporary critical debates and stances in the wider discipline, engage with current methodologies, theories, and analytical tensions and address issues of professionalization as they relate to the first years of graduate work.

Foreign Language

Foreign language competence and courses in particular areas of specialization are required.

Ph.D. candidates can satisfy the language requirement by demonstrating an ability to use a foreign language in their scholarly and critical work. The department offers its own language exams. Students may ordinarily choose any language  appropriate to their research interests, but some fields within English and American literature have specific requirements.

Professionalization Seminars

Throughout the year, the Department plans a series of seminars that address a variety of timely academic topics that are meant to enhance the students' professional development , as well as expose them to important elements of an academic career. The seminars are usually led by faculty members, and the topics are determined each year by the Graduate Committee. Students in all years are strongly recommended to attend the professionalization seminars since they are a constitutive part of graduate formation.

Learn about Professional Development

Masters from Another Institution

In their second year at Brown, students who already have an A.M. (or M.A.) in English or graduate credit from another institution may transfer up to one year’s coursework toward the requirements for the Ph.D. at the discretion of the department.

Qualifying Examination

The purpose of the Qualifying Examination is to certify your mastery of the scholarly field in which you have chosen to specialize. It consists of two components:

• Written Component—an essay of approximately 20 pages representing your best scholarly work to date and submitted to your committee by September 15 of your third year, and
• Oral Examination—the oral exam is given by a committee of three faculty members chosen by the candidate; it lasts approximately two hours. The exam is taken by April 15 of the third year. The foreign language requirement must be completed in order to take the exam. See the Graduate Student Handbook for detailed guidelines.

Dissertation

The dissertation is a substantial work of criticism and scholarship that makes a contribution to professionally recognized areas of literary study. The dissertation process begins when the candidate’s proposal and first chapter are approved by a committee in his or her field and accepted by the Director of Graduate Studies. It concludes when the completed dissertation is presented to a committee of three faculty members, including the dissertation director, and successfully defended in discussion with the committee and other interested members of the department.

See Past Dissertation Topics

Financial Assistance

The University offers incoming graduate students six years of guaranteed financial support, including a stipend, tuition remission, a health services fee, and a health insurance subsidy. Students are supported by a fellowship in the first year. In years two, three, five, and six, students are supported by a teaching assistantship, and in year four by a dissertation fellowship. Financial support is contingent upon students remaining in good standing in the program and making good progress toward the doctoral degree.

Applications & Deadlines

Applications must be submitted electronically via the  Graduate School's website .

• The deadline for applications is  December 15, 2023 .
• The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) general and subject tests are not required.
• Application materials should not be sent directly to the English Department.

Department of English and Related Literature

PhD in English and Related Literature

Work in an intellectually invigorating environment and be supported by supervisors who are experts in their field.

Be inspired to reach your research ambitions in an intellectual and supportive community at the forefront of English research.

Your research

The diversity of our staff’s research interests means that we are well-positioned to supervise research in any field of literature, from the Middle Ages to the present day, including literature in languages other than English, and literary works in translation.

We also have distinctive expertise in practice-led teaching and research, including archival work and printing. The PhD in English and Related Literature is available on a full-time or part-time basis.

Under the guidance of your supervisor, you'll complete a thesis of up to 80,000 words. A typical semester will involve a great deal of independent research, punctuated by meetings with your supervisor who will be able to suggest direction and address concerns throughout the writing process. You'll be encouraged to undertake periods of research at archives and potentially internationally, depending on your research thesis.

Throughout your degree, you'll have the opportunity to attend a wide range of research training sessions in order to learn archival and research skills, and a range of research seminars organised by the research schools, which bring speakers from around the world for research talks and networking. There is also internal funding available if you wish to propose research events and symposia/conferences.

[email protected] +44 (0) 1904 323366

Related links

• How to apply
• Research degree funding
• Accommodation
• International students
• Life at York

You also have the option of enrolling in a PhD in English by distance learning, where you will have the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world. You will attend the Research Training Programme online in your first year and have supervision and progression meetings online.

You must attend a five-day induction programme in York at the beginning of your first year. You will also visit York in your second and third years (every other year for part-time students).

Apply for PhD in English and Related Literature (distance learning)

Top ten department

We're a top ten research department according to the Times Higher Education’s ranking of the latest REF results (2021).

35th in the world

for English Language and Literature in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2023.

Athena Swan Bronze

We're proud to hold an Athena Swan Bronze award in recognition of the work we do to support gender equality in English.

Explore funding for postgraduate researchers in the Department of English and Related Literature.

Supervision

Explore the expertise of our staff and identify a potential supervisor.

Research training

You'll receive training in research methods and skills appropriate to the stage you've reached and the nature of your work. In addition to regular supervisory meetings to discuss planning, researching and writing the thesis, we offer sessions on bibliographic and archival resources (digital, print and manuscript). You'll receive guidance in applying to and presenting at professional conferences, preparing and submitting material for publication and applying for jobs. We meet other training needs in handling research data, various modern languages, palaeography and bibliography. Classical and medieval Latin are also available.

We also offer training in teaching skills for students who wish to pursue teaching posts following their degree. This includes sessions on the delivery and content of seminars and workshops to undergraduates, a structured shadowing programme, teaching inductions and comprehensive guidance and resources for our graduate teaching assistants. Our teacher training is directed by a dedicated staff member.

You'll also benefit from the rich array of research and training sessions at the Humanities Research Centre .

Course location

This course is run by the Department of English and Related Literature.

You'll be based on  Campus West , though your research may take you further afield.

We also have a distance learning option available for this course.

Entry requirements

For doctoral research, applicants should hold or be predicted to achieve a first-class or high upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours (or equivalent international qualification) and a Masters degree with distinction. 

The undergraduate and Masters degrees should be in literature, or in a related subject that is closely tied to the proposed research project. 

Other relevant experience and expertise may also be considered:

• Evidence of training in research techniques may be an advantage.
• It is expected that postgraduate applicants would be familiar with the recent published work of their proposed supervisor.
• Publications are not required and we don't expect applicants to have been published before they start their research degrees.

Supervisors interview prospective research students to ensure good supervisory match and to help with funding applications.

The core deciding factor for admission is the quality of the research proposal, though your whole academic profile will be taken into account. We are committed to ensuring that no prospective or existing student is treated less favourably. See our admissions policy for more information.

Apply for the PhD in English and Related Literature

Have a look at the supporting documents you may need for your application.

Before applying, we advise you to identify potential supervisors in the department. Preliminary enquiries are welcomed and should be made as early as possible. However, a scattershot approach – emailing all staff members regardless of the relationship between their research interests and yours – is unlikely to produce positive results. 

If it's not clear which member of staff is appropriate, you should email the Graduate Chair .

Students embarking on a PhD programme are initially enrolled provisionally for that qualification. Confirmation of PhD registration is dependent upon the submission of a satisfactory proposal that meets the standards required for the degree, usually in the second year of study.

Find out more about how to apply .

English language requirements

You'll need to provide evidence of your proficiency in English if it's not your first language.

Check your English language requirements

Research proposals

In order to apply for a PhD, we ask that you submit a research proposal as part of your application.

When making your application, you're advised to make your research proposals as specific and clear as possible. Please indicate the member(s) of staff that you'd wish to work with.

Your research proposal should:

• Identify the precise topic of your topic and communicate the main aim of your research.
• Provide a rigorous and thorough description of your proposed research, including the contributions you will make to current scholarly conversations and debates.
• Describe any previous work you have done in this area, with reference to relevant literature you have read so far.
• Communicate the central sources that the project will address and engage.
• Offer an outline of the argument’s main claims and contributions. Give a clear indication of the authors and texts that your project will address.
• Include the academic factors, such as university facilities, libraries resources, centres, other resources, and / or staff, which have specifically led you to apply to York.

What we look for:

• How you place your topic in conversation with the scholarly landscape: what has been accomplished and what you plan to achieve. This is your chance to show that you have a good understanding of the relevant work on your topic and that you have identified a new way or research question to approach the topic.
• Your voice as a scholar and critical thinker. In clean, clear prose, show those who will assess your application how your proposal demonstrates your original thinking and the potential of your research.
• Your fit with York, including the reasons for working with your supervisor and relevant research schools and centres.
• Above all, remember that there isn’t one uniform way to structure and arrange your research proposal, and that your approach will necessarily reflect your chosen topic.

Careers and skills

• You'll receive support in applying to and presenting at professional conferences, preparing and submitting material for publication and applying for jobs.
• You'll benefit from training in handling research data, various modern languages, palaeography and bibliography. Classical and medieval Latin are also available. The   Humanities Research Centre   also offers a rich array of valuable training sessions.
• We also offer training in teaching skills if you wish to pursue a teaching post following your degree. This includes sessions on the delivery and content of seminars and workshops to undergraduates, a structured shadowing programme, teaching inductions and comprehensive guidance and resources for our graduate teaching assistants.
• You'll have the opportunity to further your training by taking courses accredited by Advance HE:   York Learning and Teaching Award (YLTA)   and the   York Professional and Academic Development scheme (YPAD) .

Find out more about careers

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• Schools & departments

English Literature PhD

Awards: PhD

Study modes: Part-time

Funding opportunities

Programme website: English Literature

Upcoming Introduction to Postgraduate Study and Research events

Join us online on the 19th June or 26th June to learn more about studying and researching at Edinburgh.

Choose your event and register

Research profile

Doctorate-level study is an opportunity to expand upon your interests and expertise in a community that really values research; and to make an original, positive contribution to learning in literature and related fields.

As the oldest department of English Literature in the UK, based in one of the largest and most diverse Schools in the University of Edinburgh, we are the ideal place for PhD study.

Our interdisciplinary environment brings together specialists in all periods and genres of literature and literary analysis.

Research excellence

Based on our performance in the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF), over 90 per cent of our research and impact is classed as world-leading and internationally excellent by Research Professional. 69 per cent is graded at the world-leading level – the highest of REF’s four categories.

In Times Higher Education's REF analysis, English at Edinburgh is ranked fifth in the UK (out of more than 90 institutions) for:

• the overall quality of our publications and other outputs
• the impact of our research on people’s lives
• our supportive research environment

Given the breadth and depth of our expertise, we are able to support students wishing to develop research projects in any field of Anglophone literary studies. These include American studies, literary and critical theory, the history of the book, gender and sexuality studies, and global Anglophone literatures - where our specialisms include Pacific, African, South Asian, and African-American writing.

We have particular strengths in each of the main periods of English and Scottish Literature:

• Renaissance/early modern
• Enlightenment
• 21st century
• Contemporary

Emergent research themes in the department include the digital humanities, the economic humanities, the environmental humanities and literature and medicine.

• Explore our range of research centres, networks and projects in English and Scottish Literature

Working with colleagues elsewhere in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, and across the wider University, we are able to support PhD theses crossing boundaries between disciplines and/or languages.

• Be inspired by the range of PhD research in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Over the course of your PhD, you’ll be expected to complete an original body of work under the expert guidance of your supervisors leading to a dissertation of usually between 80,000 and 100,000 words.

You will be awarded your doctorate if your thesis is judged to be of an appropriate standard, and your research makes a definite contribution to knowledge.

• Read our pre-application guidance on writing a PhD research proposal

Go beyond the books

Beyond the Books is a podcast from the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at research and the people who make it happen.

Listen to a mix of PhD, early career and established researchers talk about their journey to and through academia and about their current and recent research.

• Browse Beyond the Books episodes and hear our research community talk about their work

Training and support

Between the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC), the Careers Service, and the Institute for Academic Development (IAD), you’ll find a range of programmes and resources to help you develop your postgraduate skills.

You will also have access to the University’s fantastic libraries, collections and worldwide strategic partnerships.

Part of a community

As part of our research community, you will be immersed in a world of knowledge exchange, with lots of opportunities to share ideas, learning and creative work.

Activities range from talks by visiting speakers and work-in-progress seminars, to reading groups, conferences, workshops, performances, online journals and forums, many of which are led by PhD candidates.

Highlights include student reading for the James Tait Black Prizes, Britain's oldest literary awards which typically involve reading submissions across fiction and biography and advising the judges on the shortlists.

• Read an interview with 2022 James Tait Black reader, Céleste Callen

Our graduates tell us that they value the friendliness of the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC), the connections they make here and the in-depth guidance they receive from our staff, who are published experts in their field.

A UNESCO World City of Literature, Edinburgh is a remarkable place to study, write, publish, discuss and perform prose, poetry and drama.

Take a PhD with us and you will be based in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) in the historic centre of this world-leading festival city.

You will have access to the University’s many literary treasures. These include the libraries of:

• William Drummond
• Lewis Grassic Gibbon
• Hugh MacDiarmid
• Norman MacCaig

The Centre for Research Collections holds the W.H. Auden collection; the Corson Collection of works by and about Sir Walter Scott; and the Ramage collection of poetry pamphlets.

It also holds a truly exceptional collection of early Shakespeare quartos and other early modern printed plays put together by the 19th century Shakespearean James Halliwell-Phillipps, the correspondence of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (the focus of one of the major editorial projects in Victorian studies of the last half-century), and the extensive Laing collection of medieval and early modern manuscripts, as well as letters and papers by - and relating to - authors including:

• Christopher Isherwood
• Rudyard Kipling
• John Middleton Murry
• Walter de la Mare
• George Mackay Brown
• Compton Mackenzie

Many of the University's Special Collections are digitised and available online from our excellent Resource Centre, Computing Labs, and dedicated PhD study space in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC).

Look inside the PhD study space in LLC

In the city

Our buildings are close to the National Library of Scotland (where collections include the Bute Collection of early modern English drama and the John Murray Archive), Edinburgh Central Library, Scottish Poetry Library, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Writers’ Museum and a fantastic range of publishing houses, bookshops, and theatres.

We have strong links with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which annually welcomes around 1,000 authors to our literary city.

Entry requirements

These entry requirements are for the 2024/25 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2025/26 academic year will be published on 1 Oct 2024.

A UK masters, or its international equivalent, with a mark of at least 65% in your English literature dissertation of at least 10,000 words.

If your masters programme did not include a dissertation or included a dissertation that was unmarked or less than 10,000 words, you will be expected to produce an exceptional research proposal and personal statement to show your ability to undertake research at the level required by this programme.

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country
• English language requirements

Regardless of your nationality or country of residence, you must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 7.0 with at least 6.5 in each component. We do not accept IELTS One Skill Retake to meet our English language requirements.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 with at least 23 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced ( CAE ) / C2 Proficiency ( CPE ): total 185 with at least 176 in each component.
• Trinity ISE : ISE III with passes in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 70 with at least 62 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS , TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE , in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old* at the beginning of your programme of study. (*Revised 05 March 2024 to extend degree validity to five years.)

Find out more about our language requirements:

Fees and costs

Scholarships and funding, featured funding.

There are a number of scholarship schemes available to eligible candidates on this PhD programme, including awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Please be advised that many scholarships have more than one application stage, and early deadlines.

• Find out more about scholarships in literatures, languages and cultures

Other funding opportunities

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding

Further information

• Phone: +44 (0)131 650 4086
• Contact: [email protected]
• School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures
• 50 George Square
• Central Campus
• Programme: English Literature
• School: Literatures, Languages & Cultures
• College: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

Select your programme and preferred start date to begin your application.

PhD English Literature - 6 Years (Part-time)

Application deadlines.

Due to high demand, the school operates a number of selection deadlines. We will make a small number of offers to the most outstanding candidates on an ongoing basis, but hold the majority of applications until the next published selection deadline when we will offer a proportion of the places available to applicants selected through a competitive process.

Deadlines for applicants applying to study in 2024/25:

• How to apply

You must submit two references with your application.

The online application process involves the completion of a web form and the submission of supporting documents.

For a PhD programme, you should include:

• a sample of written work of about 3,000 words (this can be a previous piece of work from an undergraduate or masters degree)
• a research proposal - a detailed description of what you hope to achieve and how
• Pre-application guidance

Before you formally apply for this PhD, you should look at the pre-application information and guidance on the programme website.

This will help you decide if this programme is right for you, and help us gain a clearer picture of what you hope to achieve.

The guidance will also give you practical advice for writing your research proposal – one of the most important parts of your application.

Find out more about the general application process for postgraduate programmes:

2024-25 Academic Catalog

Doctor of philosophy in english.

The Ph.D. degree offers the opportunity for advanced and concentrated research to students who hold an M.A. degree in English or a related field, from KU or elsewhere.

Our Literature and Literary Theory program has special strengths in ecocriticism and posthuman studies, African American & African diaspora literatures, nineteenth-century U.S. literature, science and technology studies, and Victorian literature.

Our Rhetoric & Composition program has special strengths in genre and language theory, public and professional discourses, multimodality and digital rhetorics, translingualism, writing pedagogy, and global writing research.

Our Creative Writing program has special strengths in the novel, environmental writing, drama, mixed-genre work, and short story collections.

All of our programs boast distinguished and award-winning faculty with notable research publications and a deep foundation in their areas of specialization.

Admission to Graduate Studies

An applicant seeking to pursue graduate study in the College may be admitted as either a degree-seeking or non-degree seeking student. Policies and procedures of Graduate Studies govern the process of Graduate admission. These may be found in the Graduate Studies section of the online catalog.

Please consult the Departments & Programs section of the online catalog for information regarding program-specific admissions criteria and requirements. Special admissions requirements pertain to Interdisciplinary Studies degrees, which may be found in the Graduate Studies section of the online catalog.

Graduate Admission

To be admitted to any of the department’s graduate degree tracks, a student must have a strong undergraduate record, particularly in the humanities. Applicants are expected to have some familiarity with British and American literary history and the work of the major writers in English. Most importantly, applicants for graduate work in literary studies and rhetoric-composition studies should be able to demonstrate, with writing samples, their ability to produce advanced analytical and interpretive scholarly writing. Similarly, creative writing applicants need to submit writing samples that demonstrate an advanced level of writing skills in their respective genres. For complete admission information, see the English department website .

All applicants must submit their graduate application online . All supplemental materials (transcripts, writing samples, letters of recommendation, etc.) may be attached electronically and submitted with the online application. Those who cannot submit supplemental materials electronically may mail them to the department:

The University of Kansas Department of English Graduate Applications 1445 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 3001 Lawrence, KS 66045

Ph.D. in English Degree Requirements

Students entering the program with the B.A. have, while being continuously enrolled, 10 years to complete the M.A. and Ph.D. combined. Students entering with the M.A. have 7 years to complete the Ph.D.; however, the expected time to degree is 6-7 years for the M.A. plus Ph.D., and 4-5 years for the Ph.D.

Ph.D. Requirements: Literature and Creative Writing

• At least 24 hours of credit in appropriate formal graduate courses beyond the M.A. or M.F.A. At least 15 hours (in addition to introduction to  ENGL 800 if not taken for the M.A.) of this course work must be taken from among courses offered by the Department of English at the 700 level and above. ENGL 997 and ENGL 999 credits cannot be included among the 24 hours. Students may petition to take up to 6 hours outside the department.
• Required courses: ENGL 800 and 2 seminars (courses numbered 900 or above) offered by the Department of English at KU beyond the M.A. ENGL 998 does not fulfill this requirement. Students with master’s degrees earned elsewhere may be required by the director of graduate studies, acting on behalf of the graduate committee, to take additional course work.
• A reading knowledge of 1 of the following languages: French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Old English, or Spanish, and completion of the Responsible Scholarship and Research Skills requirement (usually fulfilled with ENGL 800 ).
• ENGL 999 , Dissertation (at least 12 hours).
• A comprehensive examination, to be completed after satisfaction of formal course requirements. This examination, which has both written and oral components, consists of 3 areas of study.
• In the semester following the comprehensive examination, a 90-minute review of the dissertation proposal, which is to provide formal direction for the dissertation.
• At least 1 year of supervised quarter-time teaching for qualified candidates except for those who do not plan to undertake teaching careers or who have already had extensive teaching experience.
• A dissertation of substantial merit.
• Final oral examination and defense of the dissertation.

Note: Contact your department or program for more information about research skills and responsible scholarship, and the current requirements for doctoral students. Current policies on Doctoral Research Skills and Responsible Scholarship are listed in the KU Policy Library.

Ph.D. Requirements: Composition and Rhetoric, M.A. to Ph.D., standard track

• An introduction to the field: either ENGL 800 or ENGL 780 .
• 2 seminars (courses numbered 900 or above) offered by the Department of English at KU beyond the M.A., at least one of which should be in Rhetoric and Composition. ENGL 998 does not fulfill this requirement.
• A comprehensive examination, to be completed after satisfaction of formal course requirements. This examination, which has both written and oral components, consists of three areas of study.

Ph.D. Requirements: Composition and Rhetoric, B.A. to Ph.D. accelerated track

Each student admitted to the Ph.D. program in composition and rhetoric is assigned a graduate advisor from among the faculty in composition and rhetoric, who will help the student plan an initial course of study. After the first semester, students may ask other faculty members in the field to serve as their graduate advisors, depending on availability. The students and their graduate advisors together design and monitor a coherent program of study, individualized to serve each student’s goals within current expectations for a Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric. As an interdisciplinary field, study in composition and rhetoric might involve work in other departments, programs, or schools as well as English, including, for example, communication studies, linguistics, education, psychology, American studies, women’s studies, or history.

Each student’s individualized program of study must meet the minimum requirements detailed below.

• At least 36 hours of credit in appropriate formal graduate courses beyond the B.A. At least 30 hours of this course work must be taken from among courses offered at the 700 level and above. ENGL 997 and ENGL 999 credit hours cannot be included among the 36 hours.
• Students in this specialization may take up to 12 hours outside the department without petition, with written approval by the students’ graduate advisors. Students may petition to take more hours outside the department, with the approval of their graduate advisors, and provided they can demonstrate how the courses fit within their programs of study.
• A course on methods, theory, and professionalism: Either ENGL 800 Introduction to Graduate Study in English or ENGL 780 Composition Studies
• A reading knowledge of one of the following languages: French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Old English, or Spanish, and completion of the Responsible Scholarship and Research Skills requirement (usually fulfilled with ENGL 800 ).
• At least 3 seminars (numbered 900 or above) offered by the Department of English at the University of Kansas, at least 2 of which should be in composition and rhetoric. ENGL 998 does not fulfill this requirement.
• ENGL 999 Dissertation (at least 12 hours).

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Course closed:

English is no longer accepting new applications.

Cambridge is an outstanding place to work on Anglophone literature. Students and scholars benefit from world-class libraries, and from each other. The PhD cohort is diverse and large in number. No particular area or approach is preferred. Faculty members who act as supervisors and advisors for doctoral theses work on a great variety of topics and in varied ways. Proposals of all kinds are therefore welcome: on little-known as well as canonical authors; from innovative and interdisciplinary as well as from more traditional thematic, theoretical, cultural and literary-historical perspectives. Regular postgraduate training sessions offer guidance at every stage of the process - from first-year assessment to learning to teach to applying for jobs. In addition to the formal training, there are excellent opportunities for the sorts of enriching conversations and collaborations that emerge informally, between fellow PhDs, MPhils and Faculty members. Some of these take place under the auspices of the student-run Graduate Research Forum.  Regular Research Seminars focus on particular periods and fields (for instance, Medieval, Nineteenth Century, Postcolonial and Related Literatures); these combine internal and invited speakers, and encourage discussions and relationships between the entire research community.  The Faculty also puts on occasional conferences on all manner of topics; like the research seminars, many of the most successful and exciting ones are conceived of and run by PhD students.

The Postgraduate Virtual Open Day usually takes place at the end of October. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions to admissions staff and academics, explore the Colleges virtually, and to find out more about courses, the application process and funding opportunities. Visit the  Postgraduate Open Day  page for more details.

See further the  Postgraduate Admissions Events  pages for other events relating to Postgraduate study, including study fairs, visits and international events.

Key Information

3-4 years full-time, 4-7 years part-time, study mode : research, doctor of philosophy, faculty of english, course - related enquiries, application - related enquiries, course on department website, dates and deadlines:, michaelmas 2024 (closed).

Some courses can close early. See the Deadlines page for guidance on when to apply.

Lent 2025 (Closed)

Easter 2025 (closed), funding deadlines.

These deadlines apply to applications for courses starting in Michaelmas 2024, Lent 2025 and Easter 2025.

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• English Studies MPhil
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• European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures by Advanced Study MPhil
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• Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Japanese Studies) MPhil

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Qualification, university name, phd degrees in english language.

63 degrees at 51 universities in the UK.

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English PhD

Queen's university belfast.

English offers pathways in Literary Studies, Creative Writing or Language and Linguistics. Proposals are welcomed in all areas from Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,712 per year (UK)

PhD English

Aberystwyth university.

PhD English Literature The English Department provides an excellent environment for postgraduate study, research, and creative work. The Read more...

MPhil/PhD English

University of chester.

The Department of English is well respected, having a proven record in developing and maintaining a vibrant research culture. Numerous Read more...

• 4 years Part time degree: £2,356 per year (UK)

University of Hull

About our programmes English at Hull is friendly, inclusive and supportive, and characterised by the internationally excellent research Read more...

• 5 years Part time degree: £2,356 per year (UK)

Sheffield Hallam University

Course summary We offer research opportunities in creative writing eighteenth-century and romantic writing linguistics the Read more...

• 4 years Full time degree: £4,712 per year (UK)
• 7 years Part time degree: £2,356 per year (UK)

PhD/MPhil English

City, university of london.

Our English PhD/MPhil programme allows you to study in a vibrant academic environment in London where you can emerge as an independent Read more...

• 2 years Full time degree: £5,110 per year (UK)
• 4 years Part time degree: £2,560 per year (UK)

English Literature and Language MPhil/PhD

University of worcester.

We welcome applications to undertake research towards MPhil and PhD degrees in English Literature and Language. Research at Worcester has Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,950 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £2,475 per year (UK)

Bangor University

The MPhil is awarded for a dissertation of not more than 60,000 words and the PhD for a dissertation normally of not more than 100,000 Read more...

• 6 years Part time degree: £2,356 per year (UK)

English Literature PhD

University of surrey.

Why choose this programme We perform innovative and world-leading research across literature, writing and linguistics. We’re part of the Read more...

• 8 years Part time degree: £2,356 per year (UK)

Royal Holloway, University of London

About us The Department of English at Royal Holloway offers expertise across the full chronological and specialist range of English Read more...

• 4 years Full time degree: £4,786 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £2,393 per year (UK)

Integrated PhD English Language Teaching

University of essex.

Our four-year integrated PhD English Language Teaching follows the MA Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages programme for year 1 Read more...

• 5 years Full time degree

English Language and Linguistics PhD

University of glasgow.

Our research engages with English Language and Linguistics, focusing on written and spoken English language from medieval times to the Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,596 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £2,298 per year (UK)

English PhD,MPhil - Literature and War

University of leicester.

English at Leicester All research areas within English are offered as Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) - campus based full-time and Read more...

• 4 years Distance without attendance degree: £5,913 per year (UK)
• 3 years Full time degree: £4,786 per year (UK)
• 6 years Part time degree: £2,393 per year (UK)

Linguistics and English Language Integrated PhD

Newcastle university.

Develop your knowledge and expertise with our Linguistics and English Language Integrated PhD. You'll also gain experience in research Read more...

• 48 months Full time degree

University of Nottingham

Develop original research into literature and language, from the medieval period to the present day, guided by our expert staff. Our Read more...

• 48 months Online/Distance degree: £5,100 per year (UK)
• 96 months Online/Distance degree

University of Plymouth

We offer a rich and warm postgraduate culture in English and creative writing at the University of Plymouth, based in fellowship and Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,500 per year (UK)
• 4 years Part time degree: £3,030 per year (UK)

PhD/ MPhil/ MRes English

University of strathclyde.

We offer MRes, MPhil and PhD degrees in English. You can study an MPhil or an MRes over the course of one year or a PhD over three Read more...

English - PhD

University of kent.

Staff supervise research in most areas of English and associated studies, and have expertise in the following areas theory, modernism and Read more...

Brunel University London

Research profile English at Brunel has gone from strength to strength over the last decade to the point where it is now regularly ranked Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree
• 6 years Part time degree

MPhil/PhD (English)

University of south wales.

A PhD is a doctoral degree based on a significant and original individual research project which culminates in an in-depth thesis (or Read more...

• 3 years Full time degree: £4,716 per year (UK)
• 5 years Part time degree: £2,358 per year (UK)

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Home  >  News & Articles  >  PhD in English: Courses, Fees, Syllabus, Eligibility, Top Colleges, Scope & Salary 2023

Abhishek Dogra

Updated on 18th August, 2023 , 10 min read

PhD in English: Courses, Fees, Syllabus, Eligibility, Top Colleges, Scope & Salary 2023

A PhD in English is a three to six-year doctorate program that focuses on technical writing in prose, poetry, theater, and fiction as well as translations, international literature, and ancient literature. There are several job prospects for English PhD candidates in India and overseas in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. Graduates can begin their careers as a lecturer, professors, school teachers, private tutors, education consultants, vice principals, program managers, English teachers, language trainers, proofreaders, or customer support associates, among other positions.

PhD in English students must have earned their Masters's degrees in order to enroll in a PhD English course. Before applying for admission to a PhD in English, an M.A. in English or an M.Phil. is required. They should receive at least 50% of the possible points in their exams. Additionally, several colleges and universities accept job applications for English research positions. These roles are typically referred to as research fellows. This may serve as yet another entry point for a PhD English course. There are PhD entry exams at some universities.

PhD in English: Course Highlights

Why pursue phd in english   .

A PhD in English literature is a fantastic way to advance your abilities in critical thinking, cooperation, communication, independent research, and many other areas and discover more about your areas of interest, and get the skills you need to advance particular study topics significantly. 

Who should pursue PhD in English?

It's important to note that pursuing a PhD in English is a significant commitment, often requiring several years of research, academic writing, and critical analysis. Prospective PhD candidates should be passionate about their chosen area of study, dedicated to research, and have a strong desire to contribute to the academic and intellectual discourse within the field of English language and literature.

PhD in English: Duration

PhD in English is a three-year program. It deals to impart students with the required theoretical background and research skills where students research and comprehension of works published in the English language in various historical periods, from prehistoric times to the post-modern era.

PhD in English: Fees

Some of the top Colleges/Universities offering Ph.D , location, along with their fees are given below: 

PhD in English: Eligibility

The minimum eligibility for PhD English Literature is a master's degree in the English language with a minimum of 55% aggregate in the discipline passed from a recognized university.

PhD in English Admission Process

The completion of a Masters-level degree is the primary qualification for admission to PhD English programs. An M.A. in the arts or an M.Phil. Students who are taking final exams may also apply to take the entrance test. Such students should be ready for the State Level Eligibility Tests (SLETs), the CSIR-NET, or the GATE entrance exams.

It's critical to keep in mind that passing results on these tests are a criterion for admission. Additionally, keep in mind that SLET results are only important for the state. However, GATE and CSIR-NET exam results are accepted at all Indian universities. Only a few Indian universities accept GATE scores, but all Indian institutes accept CSIR-NET scores.

PhD in English Entrance Examinations

There are several routes for a deserving student to gain admission to a PhD in English. In addition to the admission tests mentioned above, the relevant universities also hold university-level exams. Merit-based admissions are used by several universities.

PhD English: Important dates of Entrance Exams

Written below are the important dates for PhD in English entrance exam :

PhD in English: Syllabus

Deep reflection and social awareness are key components of a PhD in English course. The following domains make up the learning experiences for PhD students, though the names of the subjects may vary from university to university.

A detailed syllabus for the PhD The English course is provided in the table below. The presentation is thorough in the syllabus. Depending on the situation, individual universities may add additional sections.

PhD in English: Colleges in India

Phd in english: colleges in delhi, phd in english: college comparison.

PhD in English at Loyal College vs PhD in English at Chandigarh University

PhD in English: Salary

A PhD holder's pay will vary depending on their subject and job. PhD in English jobs in India are available in both the public and private sectors.  The typical pay for new hires is between INR 3.5 and 5 LPA. Depending on your qualifications and expertise, it might rise to INR 6–12 LPA. The work scope will expand with experience and expertise. Additionally, government universities will pay professors INR 6 LPA in salaries.

Given below are the PhD in English jobs along with their respective salaries:

PhD in English: Job 

After earning a PhD in English, jobs in the creative and educating industries are available. Schools and colleges are the first significant locations where PhD in English-qualified scholars may apply for jobs because they are where English is taught the most. They have the option of beginning as Teacher Assistants and moving up to Department Head. Critics may work in the creative field if they have a PhD in cinematography or broadcast media certification. Like articles moderators, and critics. Publisher houses that check and edit books before they are eventually published may also have critics.

The types of work profiles that research scholars completing Ph.Ds in English you obtain are listed below. At this point, it's crucial to keep in mind that a PhD graduate may begin at entry-level or even nominal levels. The prospect doesn't become qualified for higher positions until after a few years of work experience. However, compared to graduates and postgraduates with master's degrees, this frequently happens more quickly.

Listed below is a table that shows a few of the job profiles after completion of the PhD in English.

PhD in English: Future Scope

PhD English has very promising potential. Despite having a majority of Hindi speakers, English is used in nearly every industry. The most popular career options in India right now are working as a critic, penning publications, and reviewing books and movies.

1. PhD in Religious Studies

In this students probably read a few religious texts as an English major, and regardless of your affiliation (if any), you comprehend their significance. Actually, you don't have to be religious to pursue a PhD in religious studies. Studying religion entails studying ethics, convictions, societies, and individuals.

2. PhD in Linguistics

Language studies, also known as linguistics, cover all facets of language as well as the techniques used to study and model them. When reading a line of dialogue in literary fiction, did you notice how clear the dialect was

3.  PhD in History

Record, of course, is the study of the past. At the same, background helps us understand change and how the community we now live in came to be.

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again".– Maya Angelou.

A component of being a student of history is gaining the ability to sort through varied, usually conflicting interpretations. Your bachelor's degree in English will set you up for success.

4.  PhD in Media Studies

The works of writers give us direct access to what it means to be human in all its complexity and mystery, just like all other forms of art do. If you discovered that your favorite aspect of majoring in English was the art and literature you encountered, you might want to think about pursuing a PhD in something like Media Studies.

5.  PhD in Political Science

Political science and English may at first seem like odd bedfellows. But during your undergraduate studies, you already developed a solid foundation in critical reading and thinking, approached literary analysis through a variety of lenses, and identified the influences of culture, politics, and social issues scattered throughout a work.

Many great works contain references to political, economic, and their interactions. Understanding the historical and philosophical roots of political values is possible through the study of political science.

6. PhD in English

Predictably, a significant in English greatly aids in your preparation for an English Ph.D

A PhD in English provides students with the in-depth understanding of literary criticism they need to meet faculties around the world, from the earliest poetic developments in Old English to the most recent creative work currently being published. You can research literature from the Middle Ages, African American literature, or literature written during the American Revolution, depending on your area of expertise.

Your English bachelor's degree provided you with a large overview, but your PhD will enable you to focus on one area of expertise and develop it further.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does a doctorate in english entail.

After earning a PhD in English, there are numerous career options. Writing, training, authorship, and public relations officers can all pursue careers that allow them to interact with people.

What is the average salary for a PhD in English?

The average salary for a Ph. D in an English career in India for the doctorates is around INR 7LPA.

What is the eligibility for PhD in English from IGNOU?

Students must have finished their Master's Degree from a University recognized by UGC.

How useful is a PhD in English?

A PhD in English Literature offers a great opportunity to gain valuable skills in critical analysis, communication, independent research, collaboration, and many more.

Is a Doctorate entrance exam required?

Entrance exams are the main factor in determining PhD admittance in 2023, but some universities also accept merit-based applications.

Can someone do PhD without a Master's?

The chances of being accepted into a PhD program are slim to none if candidate don't have the appropriate educational background in the field.

What is the duration of PhD in english course?

The duration of PhD course is between 3 to 5 years.

Does IGNOU offer PhD in English?

Yes, IGNOU offers PhD in English.

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Ph.D English: Course Details, Admission, Fees, Eligibility

Ph.D in English is a three to six-year doctorate course that deals with the main areas of translations, world literature, ancient literature, and technical writing composed of prose, poetry, drama, and fiction. The students pursuing a Ph.D. in English have many job opportunities in India and abroad in various arts, sociology, humanities, and psychology. Some of the job roles that the graduates can start with include Lecturer, Professor, School Teacher, Private Tutor, Education, Consultant, Vice Principal, Program Manager, English Teacher, Language Trainer, Proofreader, Customer Support Associate.

Ph.D English Course Details

About ph.d in english.

Keystone Ph.D. defines Ph.D. in English, "An English doctorate program allows students to do an in-depth study of the language. Students may have the opportunity to specialize in specific dialects, like British or American. Specializations are also typically offered. These may include literature, history, media, performance, or technology. Many programs may focus mainly on literature and how it has developed, changed, and impacted English-speaking cultures throughout history. Students will likely have to complete an in-depth research or study project and present a dissertation to complete a program. Program lengths vary because they are generally led by the student and the amount of research undertaken." The specialization falls under the umbrella of  Ph.D. 

Table of Contents

• Ph.D. in English Eligibility Criteria
• Ph.D. in English Admission Process
• Popular Ph.D. in English Entrance Exams
• Top Ph.D. in English Colleges
• Why Choose Ph.D. in English?
• Ph.D. in English Fees Structure
• Ph.D. in English Syllabus and Subjects
• Preparation Tips for Ph.D. in English
• Scope of Higher Education for Ph.D. in English
• Ph.D. in English Salary
• Ph.D. in English Career Options
• Skills to Excel

Eligibility Criteria for Ph.D in English

Ph.D. in English course admission in India requires the aspirants to complete their postgraduate degree corresponding to any degree related to Ph.D. in English. Additionally, students must have cleared the standard entrance examination with good scores. There is no specific age limit or criteria for getting a Ph.D. in English admission.

Admission Process for Ph.D in English

The admission process for the Ph.D. in English in India is carried out either from the college premises directly or can be done online. The admission process for the course is undertaken strictly based on the scores for master's degree courses corresponding to that of art courses and the scores obtained in the entrance exams.

Listed below are the various procedures to get admission for the Ph.D. in English course:

How to Apply?

The aspirants eager to study Ph.D. in English can either apply online or offline for the course. The aspirants can apply for the Ph.D. in English course by downloading an admission form available at the university or on the college website. 

Selection Process

The course's selection process is based on the entrance exam score. After the university or college conducts a written test, personal interview, counseling, and group discussion, the aspirants are allocated seats based on various Ph.D. in English criteria fulfilled by the aspirants proposed by the college/university officials.

Popular Entrance Exams for Ph.D in English

There are many entrance exams for the Ph.D. in English course for which the students can attend. Appearing for entrance exams is an essential criterion and a good merit score from the doctorate course. The graduates can grab a seat for the course in a reputed college or university. Some of the popular and mandatory Ph.D. in English entrance exams are:

Quick Glance At the Ph.D in English Entrance Exams

The entrance examinations conducted for the Ph.D. in English degree course include various questions related to English proficiency, problem-solving, decision-making skills, reasoning, general knowledge, and some topics from bachelors to analyze the aspirants' knowledge abilities regarding the course as a whole. The test includes:

• Multiple choice questions without any negative marking system.
• The entrance exam is conducted in both English and Hindi languages, and the total time to complete the exam is 1.5 hours.
• Three hundred fifty marks are allotted to the entrance exam.
• Most of the questions in the entrance exams are merely related to current affairs and general knowledge, logical reasoning, and some topics related to English, social studies, and economics.

Top 10 Ph.D in English Colleges in India

Top Ph.D. in English colleges in India and abroad offer Ph.D. in English post-graduation degree courses to students interested in Arts, Humanities, and Social Science. Some of the very best colleges for Ph.D. in English colleges in India are as follows:

Fee Structure for Ph.D in English

Ph.D. in English fees structure ranges from INR 5,000 - 3 LPA. The fee for the course may vary depending upon the facilities and amenities provided at the college/university and the level of education provided.

Syllabus and Subjects for Ph.D in English

The syllabus and subjects for the Ph.D. in English course are structured in such a way so that the students get a better understanding of different subjects of the course, which are necessary for them to emphasize their knowledge in various domains. There are both core and elective subjects part of the syllabus. Some of the important subjects of Ph.D. in English course is:

• Language acquisition and language learning
• Computer-aided language learning

Read More   About   Ph.D in English Subjects and Syllabus

Why Choose Ph.D in English?

Ph.D. in English Doctorates are in high demand in drama, politics, theatre, media, teaching, research, artists, law firms, management, counseling, etc. A PhD in English can lead to a variety of new and intriguing opportunities. Therefore, a Ph.D. in English doctorate course has always been popular, which is reasonably significant.

What is Ph.D in English All About?

A Ph.D. in English duration is a three-six-year-long Doctorate course that focuses on developing skills and techniques in the English language. This course offers subjects related to Post - Colonial Literature, Australian Literature, Canadian Literature, and British Literature, and Literary Criticism, and a comprehensive study of ancient and modern English works of prose, poetry, drama, etc. Ph.D. in English is a discipline that focuses on studying English languages in-depth, and a degree in the field can lead to a range of jobs.

What Does a Ph.D. in English Post Graduate Do?

Ph.D. in English doctorate holds a doctorate in the literature field, a good career option in India and abroad. Here are some qualities which a Ph.D. in English does.

English Professor: An English professor is a college or university teacher who teaches students about the English language. Their talents of research, logical reasoning and critical analysis help the students learn about the topic in great depth. 

Reasons Why Ph.D. in English Can Fetch You a Rewarding Career

A degree in Ph.D. in English is one of the most popular study programs in the world. Suppose the students are passionate about presenting their creativity, knowledge, and skills with current updates.

Demand: A ph.D in English is necessary as they explore all the subjects in-depth. They have ample opportunities in jobs and globally to any area of talent.

Career Growth:   A job in Ph.D. in English allows you to think critically, create and analyze the subject's knowledge. A Ph.D. in English degree focuses on developing an individual's personality, and a degree in the field can lead to a range of jobs.

Read More   About   Ph.D in English Jobs

Preparation Tips For Ph.D in English

Ph.D. in English students can prepare themselves by learning the language, general knowledge, liability tests, and math formulas. Most Ph.D. in English entrance exams include skill-based, logical reasoning questions. Here are the tips to prepare very well before applying.

Read And Practice More: The aspirants should go over the entire Ph.D. in English syllabus again, focusing on the most critical areas. For example, review the literature books, grammar, research projects, and aptitude. 

Mock Tests: Attempting mock tests, revising thesis, and may include other forms of syllabus revision.

Salary Of a Phd in English Graduate

Ph.D. in English salary varies according to an aspirant's knowledge and skills. Another factor that changes the average salary package is the company and post you are working for. The Ph.D. in English's average salary, which is offered, ranges from INR 4 - 10 LPA [Source: PayScale].

Read More   About   Ph.D in English Salary

Career Options After Ph.D in English Education

After completing a Ph.D. in English, you are eligible for junior-level posts in private and government jobs in India and abroad. Ph.D. in English aspirants have excellent scope in the future and vast job opportunities. Ph.D. in English jobs are found in the government fields:

• Public Relations

Skills That Make You The Best Ph.D. in English Doctorates

Ph.D. in English aspirants should possess problem-solving and decision-making skills. Listed below are skills that make an aspirant suitable for a Ph.D. in English are:

• Problem Solving Skills
• Management Skills
• Goal-Oriented
• Inquisitive
• Technical Skills
• Writing & Oral Communication

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PhD subject areas

As a postgraduate researcher at the University of Stirling, you’ll be part of a vibrant and supportive research community that has a reputation for turning insight into impact.

Explore the subject areas below to see the wide range of disciplines you can conduct your research in, and learn more about the types of research degrees on offer to decide whether a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Master of Philosophy (MPhil) or Professional Doctorate is right for you.

Postgraduate research subject areas A–Z

Accounting and finance, applied social research, aquaculture, biological and environmental sciences, communications, media and culture.

• Computing Science
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Dementia and Ageing

Family Therapy

Health sciences, literature and languages, management, work and organisation.

• Mathematics

Marketing and Retail

Social work.

• Sociology and Social Policy

Substance Use

Can’t see your subject area.

The subject areas listed on this page represent broad topics we offer supervision in. If you don’t see a subject area that is an exact match for your interests – or if you want to conduct interdisciplinary research – you should apply for the area that seems most relevant to your research proposal. Our experts supervise PhD students in a huge range of topics, and we can reallocate applications to the most suitable subject area after you apply. 

If you’d like to ask as a question about PhD study at Stirling, please get in touch . To find out more about interdisciplinary research at Stirling, view our Research themes and programmes .

Accounting and Finance PhD

Our Accounting and Finance research is recognised as being academically excellent, policy relevant, and of benefit to society. 

The Accounting and Finance Division at Stirling offers a stimulating environment in which to study towards a PhD. Students come onto this pathway from a variety of backgrounds, including disciplines allied with accounting and finance such as economics. There is a national shortage of researchers in this area and the need to increase the number of PhD students to address this shortage has been highlighted in independent reports. As such, students who complete the PhD Accounting and Finance programme have excellent career prospects and will be in high demand in both academia and industry. Students graduating from this programme have found faculty positions in top universities across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as in leading financial institutions.

The PhD Accounting and Finance programme is accredited by the ESRC and affiliated by the Accounting and Finance pathway of the Scottish Graduate School, which is supported by the British Accounting Association (BAA) and its regional Scottish Accounting Group (SAG) (active for over 20 years) as well as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS). Whether your career aim involves a research or teaching lead academic career, or working in a leading financial institution, the PhD in Accounting and Finance can help you achieve your goals.

• Apply for PhD Accountancy and Finance
• Apply for MPhil Accountancy and Finance

Doctor of Applied Social Research

Our Doctor of Applied Social Research is designed to transform the way you think as a professional and ensure you can make a powerful impact in your field.

If you’re an experienced professional who wants to advance your expertise and broaden your career opportunities, this course is an ideal match. From the outset, you’ll gain high-quality research skills that can be immediately applied in the workplace and refined through access to seminars and advanced training opportunities. You’ll also benefit from the guidance of our expert staff and your interaction with fellow professionals and executives from a range of social science backgrounds.

The course is highly flexible, and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You can also fine-tune your Doctorate in Applied Social Research based on your profession by choosing one of the following pathways:

• social work
• dementia studies
• substance use
• criminal justice
• social research
• family therapy

You'll acquire skills that bring you up to date with the latest ideas, findings and research methods in your field, all of which you can feed back into optimising the workplace and taking decisive actions that improve services and advance your career.

• Find out more about our Doctor of Applied Social Research and apply online

Aquaculture PhD

The University of Stirling is a global leader in aquaculture research and teaching, supporting the development of aquaculture worldwide. Our expert staff, facilities and networks – including the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre hosted at Stirling – make us the first choice for research partners from across the globe. Our research looks at reproduction, genetics, aquatic animal health and welfare, nutrition, production systems, environments, markets, and social and economic impacts – with the overarching goal of providing insights and solutions that will help meet the global challenges of feeding the world in a sustainable manner. We welcome applications from prospective postgraduate researchers who are passionate about making a contribution to the research activities undertaken by the Institute.

• Apply for PhD Aquaculture
• Apply for MPhil Aquaculture

Aquatic Veterinary Studies PhD

• Apply for PhD Aquatic Veterinary Studies
• Apply for MPhil Aquatic Veterinary Studies

Biology PhD

Our Faculty of Natural Sciences is internationally renowned for research exploring the relationship between human behaviour, technology and the environment. We offer PhDs supervised by expert staff, and are proud of the key contributions made by research students to our achievements.

PhD students in Biology will join a vibrant research environment in which we seek to understand the fundamental processes driving the evolution and maintenance of biodiversity, from the molecular to the ecosystem level. We look at how environments and ecosystems have changed over annual to millennial timescales to predict and mitigate the future impacts of anthropogenic change and natural hazards. We consistently attract major research grant support from the Natural Environment Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, charitable trusts and industrial sponsors.

You can find out more about our PhD opportunities in Biological and Environmental Sciences .

Conduct your postgraduate research with us and you’ll join a friendly community where teaching, employability, internationalisation, facilities and inclusiveness are all five-star rated (QS Stars University Ratings 2020).

• Apply for PhD Biology
• Apply for PhD Biology with placement
• Apply for MPhil Biology

Ecology PhD

PhD students in Ecology will join a vibrant research environment in which we seek to understand the fundamental processes driving the evolution and maintenance of biodiversity, from the molecular to the ecosystem level. We look at how environments and ecosystems have changed over annual to millennial timescales to predict and mitigate the future impacts of anthropogenic change and natural hazards. We consistently attract major research grant support from the Natural Environment Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, charitable trusts and industrial sponsors.

You can find out more about our  PhD opportunities in Biological and Environmental Sciences .

• Apply for PhD Ecology
• Apply for PhD Ecology with placement
• Apply for MPhil Ecology

Environmental Science PhD

PhD students in Environmental Science will join a vibrant research environment in which we seek to understand the fundamental processes driving the evolution and maintenance of biodiversity, from the molecular to the ecosystem level. We look at how environments and ecosystems have changed over annual to millennial timescales to predict and mitigate the future impacts of anthropogenic change and natural hazards. We consistently attract major research grant support from the Natural Environment Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, charitable trusts and industrial sponsors.

• Apply for PhD Enviromental Science
• Apply for PhD Environmental Science with placement
• Apply for MPhil Environmental Science

English Studies and Film, Media and Journalism PhD

The University of Stirling has a long-standing reputation for excellence in Communications, Media and Culture research. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework assessment, 100% of our research environment in English was rated world-leading or internationally excellent.

Our work encompasses research into screen and print media, digital media and social media, public communication and promotional culture, heritage and archives. We have research specialists in journalism and public relations in addition to researchers working on many aspects of media representation, media institutions, media and communications policy, and also on numerous relationships between media, culture and society.

As a PhD researcher in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, you’ll be provided with access to dedicated research facilities as well as an opportunity to attend a range of research seminars and workshops within specialist research centres and collaboratively across multi-disciplinary subjects. You’ll also have access to a number of training opportunities, at University, Faculty and Divisional levels, including subject specialist training within postgraduate research seminars and other forums.

• Apply for PhD English Studies and Film, Media and Journalism
• Apply for MPhil English Studies and Film, Media and Journalism

Film and Media Studies PhD

Communications and media research at Stirling has played an important role in the development of the research field both in the UK and internationally from the foundation of the original department in 1978. Of our research in Communications, Media and Culture, 70 per cent was rated as either ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ in the most recent Research Excellence Framework. As a PhD student researching film and media studies at Stirling, you’ll benefit from all this expertise – and play a key part in contributing to it in a supportive, vibrant research environment.

• Apply for PhD Film and Media Studies
• Apply for MPhil Film and Media Studies

Public Relations PhD

Communications, Media and Culture at the University of Stirling had 70 percent of its research rated as either ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ in the most recent Research Excellence Framework. Our expertise in Public Relations has helped us build strong links with industry, giving PhD students the chance to both learn from and contribute to the latest thinking in the arena. We host regular visits from guest speakers and work closely with a range of international research partners – further contributing to a vibrant research environment that values your contribution as a Postgraduate researcher and supports you in your ambitions.

• Apply for PhD Public Relations
• Apply for MPhil Public Relations

Computing Science and Mathematics

Professional doctorate data science.

Our Professional Doctorate Data Science is the first industrial doctorate of its kind, and is supported by The Data Lab.

We build on Stirling’s highly successful taught MSc Data Science to equip you with a range of cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research and practical skills and tools, that will lead to an academic or  industry job in the area of Data Science, with possible applications to sectors including, e.g., life-sciences, finance, engineering, computing, healthcare, fintech, business.

In addition to enhancing students’ employability through work-based learning, the doctorate prepares you to undertake interdisciplinary Data Science research, jointly supervised by world-leading  Stirling academics and Data Science industry experts.

The research programme is conducted in collaboration with an industrial partner around industry-relevant research questions. Students should be employees or have established a collaboration with an industrial partner. If an industrial partner has not been identified yet, interested applicants may either check with relevant academic staff if opportunities are available (typically, active staff in the topic of interest), or enrol in one of the available MSc programs (you may want to get in touch with the program director), which can then grant access to the second year of the Professional Doctorate Data Science, should an industrial collaboration be identified meanwhile.

• Find out more about our Professional Doctorate Data Science and apply online

Computing Science PhD

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, 95% of our Computing Science and Mathematics research was rated world-leading or internationally excellent. As a PhD student researching Computing Science at Stirling, you’ll benefit from the support and expertise of leading academics who encourage you to think outside the box and tackle real problems affecting industry and society. The contributions of our postgraduate researchers play a vital role in our work, and we welcome applications from anyone who shares our passion for making a positive impact through Computing Science research.

Find out more about our PhD opportunities in Computing Science and Mathematics .

• Apply for PhD Computing Science
• Apply for MPhil Computing Science

Mathematics PhD

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, 95% of our Computing Science and Mathematics research was rated world-leading or internationally excellent. As a PhD student researching Mathematics at Stirling, you’ll benefit from the support and expertise of leading academics who encourage you to think outside the box and tackle real problems affecting industry and society. The contributions of our postgraduate researchers play a vital role in our work, and we welcome applications from anyone who shares our passion for making a positive impact through Mathematics research.

Find out more about our  PhD opportunities in Computing Science and Mathematics .

• Apply for PhD Mathematics
• Apply for MPhil Mathematics

Dementia and Ageing

Doctor of applied social research (dementia studies).

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways that include Dementia Studies. 

Ultimately, you’ll acquire skills that bring you up-to-date with the latest ideas, findings and research methods in your field, all of which you can feed back into optimising the workplace and taking decisive actions that improve services and advance your career. 

• Find out more about our Doctor of Applied Social Research (Dementia Studies) and apply online

Dementia and Ageing PhD

Dementia research at the University of Stirling is multidisciplinary, relevant to policy and practice, and places a particular emphasis on people with dementia and those who support and care for them. Our research spans from healthcare – looking at the outcomes of people with cognitive impairment and dementia in the hospital setting – through to end of life care, decision making for care provision, the roles of community based care professionals in particular community pharmacists, and the importance of the dementia friendly neighbourhood. This large spectrum of research is made possible by the vast skill mix of the team: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologist, economists, social workers, social scientists, musicians, carers and people with dementia. The Research Group works with researchers, clinicians and social care practitioners from many disciplines across the University and with national and international colleagues in Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia. The University of Stirling is also home to the Dementia Services Development Centre – an international centre of knowledge and expertise. We welcome applications from prospective PhD students who are interested in joining us in our work.  

• Apply for PhD Dementia Studies
• Apply for MPhil Dementia Studies

Economics PhD

The aim of the PhD Economics programme is the development of students who (a) develop a very high degree of technical ability in economic theory and methods, to allow advanced career progression in the field, and (b) are supported to make an original research contribution to knowledge through high level peer-reviewed publication.

The PhD programme is affiliated with the prestigious Scottish Graduate Programme in Economics and is accredited by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The division is a vibrant and friendly place in which to be based, with a weekly seminar series providing contact with leading external researchers, as well as opportunities to network with academic staff from the division. Whether your career aim involves a research or teaching lead academic career, working in an environmental charity or NGO, or a having a professional economist position in a financial institution, a PhD in Economics can help you achieve your goals.

• Apply for PhD Economics
• Apply for MPhil Economics

Education EdD

Our Doctor in Education is an ideal development opportunity if you’re a senior education professional seeking to enhance and use your research expertise. Whatever your area of education – from schools, colleges and universities to professional, work-based and lifelong learning, or policy development – earning an EdD will position you as a leader in your field. Our Doctor in Education is tailored to the needs of busy professionals and combines an excellent grounding in research methods and educational theory with the opportunity to put your research to work in improving professional policy and practice. You’ll work towards your EdD either full or part time under the guidance of expert teachers who have helped to secure the University’s reputation as the 3rd in Scotland and one of the top 10 in the UK for Education (The Complete University Guide 2023).

• Find out more about our Doctor in Education and apply online

Education PhD

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF), 100% of our research impact and environment in Education is classed as world leading or internationally excellent.

Our early years education research has influenced education provision and practice in the UK, Ireland, Australia and the USA, and our research on the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is influencing government policy around CfE and developing key tools for teachers to use in schools to improve education.

As a PhD student, you’ll benefit from all our expertise and conduct your research in a supportive, vibrant environment that helps to develop your research skills and provide a collaborative research environment, so you can make a difference to wider society.

• Apply for PhD Education

PhD TESOL Research

A PhD in TESOL Research will mark you out as an expert researcher in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages, and will equip you with new skills in understanding complex matters and increase your confidence as a researcher. We’ll support you throughout your research, and you’ll benefit from the knowledge of our Education experts. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF), 100% of our Education research submissions were judged world leading or internationally excellent in terms of the quality of the research environment and their impact – highlighting the vibrant, world-leading research environment you’ll be part of.

• Find out more about our PhD TESOL Research and apply online

Doctorate of Applied Social Research (Family Therapy)

Our Doctorate of Applied Social Research is designed to transform the way you think as a professional and ensure you can make a powerful impact in your field.

If you’re an experienced professional who wants to advance your expertise and broaden your career opportunities, this course is an ideal match. From the outset, you’ll gain high-quality research skills that can be immediately applied in the workplace and refined through access to seminars and advanced training opportunities. You’ll also benefit from the guidance of our expert staff and your interaction with other doctoral students from a range of social science backgrounds. The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career.

Ultimately, you’ll acquire skills that bring you up-to-date with the latest ideas, findings and research methods in your field, all of which you can feed back into optimising the workplace and taking decisive actions that improve services and advance your career.

• Find out more about our Doctorate of Applied Social Research and apply online

Clinical Doctorates

Our Clinical Doctorate is the only one of its kind in Scotland, tailored to the needs of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. The course is practice-focused and has been designed to prepare you for leadership roles in the healthcare sector.

If you’re passionate about improving patient care, whilst retaining a clinical focus, this course is designed for you. You’ll join professionals from a range of disciplines for on-campus and online study, benefitting not only from the extensive knowledge of the Clinical Doctorate team, but also from each other’s experiences. As a qualified Doctor of Nursing, Midwifery or Professional Health Studies you’ll have the highest level of academic qualification available within your specialism – placing you at the forefront of your profession as a recognised, highly employable expert.

Healthcare professionals on the course could include: nurses, midwives, dieticians, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, paramedics, speech and language therapists, podiatrists, sport psychologists and genetic counsellors.

• Find out more about our Clinical Doctorates and apply online

Health Sciences PhD

Study for a Health Sciences PhD or MPhil at the University of Stirling and you’ll join a friendly postgraduate health science community, where teaching, employability, internationalisation, facilities and inclusiveness are all five-star rated (QS Stars University Ratings 2018).

We’re proud of the key contributions made by our research students to our achievements and our PhD students are supervised and supported by leading academics who have outstanding multidisciplinary research records. These include specialists in public health, epidemiology, statistics, social marketing, health psychology, nursing, health services research and evaluation. They have expertise in a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. We’re committed to making a difference to world needs in health, wellbeing and society. If you share our passion, the University of Stirling is the perfect place to conduct postgraduate research in Health Sciences.

• Apply for PhD Health Sciences
• Apply for MPhil Health Sciences

Nursing and Midwifery PhD

Study for a Nursing and Midwifery PhD or MPhil at the University of Stirling and you’ll join a friendly postgraduate health science community, where teaching, employability, internationalisation, facilities and inclusiveness are all five-star rated (QS Stars University Ratings 2018).

We’re proud of the key contributions made by our research students to our achievements and our PhD students are supervised and supported by leading academics who have outstanding multidisciplinary research records. These include registered nurses, midwives and other allied health care professionals, who have interests across the fields of practice and work in research teams in self-care, cancer care, evaluation and public health. We’re committed to making a difference to world needs in health, wellbeing and society. If you share our passion, the University of Stirling is the perfect place to conduct postgraduate research in Nursing.

• Apply for PhD Nursing and Midwifery
• Apply for MPhil Nursing and Midwifery

History, Heritage and Politics

Doctor of diplomacy ddipl.

This course brings together best practice in academic learning and professional expertise. A unique feature of the face-to-face and practical aspect of the course is weekend seminars, which maximise your opportunities for discussion of key issues and flexible delivery. The suite of modules includes diplomatic simulations and negotiation exercises, which can also be taken à la carte. The DDipl consists of two parts. Full-time students can expect to complete the degree in three to four years. The taught part of the course will last for two academic years if you’re a full-time student. In your final year (with the option of applying for a one-year extension), PhD candidates will complete a thesis within about one year. This thesis will enable you to reflect on pertinent issues of diplomacy in light of the theory and conceptual knowledge you have gained over the course of your degree – as well as through your independent research. Most working professionals are likely to choose part-time study for this degree. If you choose the part-time degree pathway, the completion of the DDipl will take proportionately longer.

• Find out more about our DDipl Doctor of Diplomacy and apply online  

Heritage PhD

Study for a PhD or MPhil in Heritage at the University of Stirling and you’ll be part of a vibrant research culture, supervised by academic staff who are international leaders in their fields. You will join a dynamic cohort of early career researchers who benefit from a cutting-edge interdisciplinary research environment. Students benefit from the University’s Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy and the Interdisciplinary Research Programme in Cultural Heritage , as well as our institutional partnerships with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage and the National Trust for Scotland.

Our research makes a tangible impact on heritage policy and practice and improves the quality of life of the communities that we engage with. We examine how ideas of a shared past are created and contested through diverse forms of tangible and intangible heritage, which we see as fundamentally interrelated. We also explore the ways in which heritage intersects with some of the most significant challenges of our time, including issues of nationalism, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, decolonisation, climate change, and disasters. Collaborating with heritage professionals, communities and civil society we explore fundamental issues underpinning the field, including authenticity, memory, identity, and place, alongside practice-led lines of inquiry in areas such as conservation, significance assessment, social value, museology, replication, reconstruction and community participatory practices.

Students have access to dedicated research facilities, as well as the opportunity to participate in a range of research seminars and workshops. The University of Stirling’s Institute for Advanced Studies delivers an excellent research training and career development programme, and students also participate in the training offered by the Scottish Graduate School in Arts and Humanities (SGSAH). We have a strong track record of supporting our students to gain funding and value cross-disciplinary supervision, working with colleagues in the Faculties of Social Sciences, Natural Sciences and Stirling Management School, as well as other disciplines in Arts and Humanities.

When you click the apply link below, you will be directed to an application form titled "PhD History”. Please be assured that this is the correct form to use for Heritage, because PhD History and PhD Heritage share an admissions code.

• Apply for PhD Heritage
• Apply for MPhil Heritage

History PhD

Study for a PhD or MPhil in History at the University of Stirling and you’ll be part of a dynamic culture where collaboration is key, international links abound and the desire to make a meaningful contribution to society is always at the forefront of our minds.

Research students can draw on the expertise of our academic staff, all of whom have national and international reputations in their respective fields. We value the opportunity to work with new research talent and have put in place a supportive environment for you to develop your skills and pursue your specialist field of research.

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has a vibrant postgraduate research community working across its four Divisions. Students are provided with access to dedicated research facilities as well as an opportunity to attend a range of research seminars and workshops within specialist research centres and collaboratively across multi-disciplinary subjects. Research students have access to a number of training opportunities, at University, Faculty and Divisional levels, including subject specialist training within postgraduate research seminars and other forums.

• Apply for PhD History
• Apply for MPhil History

Politics PhD

Study for a PhD or MPhil in Politics at the University of Stirling and you’ll be part of a dynamic culture where collaboration is key, international links abound and the desire to make a meaningful contribution to society is always at the forefront of our minds.

• Apply for PhD Politics
• Apply for MPhil Politics

Doctor of Applied Social Research (Housing)

Our Doctor of Applied Social Research is designed to transform the way you think as a professional and ensure you can make a powerful impact in your field.

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways that include Housing. 

• Find out more about our Doctor of Applied Social Research (Housing) and apply online

Housing PhD

Study for a PhD in Housing Studies at the University of Stirling and you’ll be part of a research environment with an outstanding international reputation. In the Faculty of Social Sciences we engage with communities around the world and produce research that makes a positive difference to society. As a postgraduate researcher, you’ll receive expert support and encouragement as you conduct your research and pursue your ambitions.

Our Housing Studies staff are on the cutting-edge of housing research, with specialist expertise in policy analysis, homelessness and housing rights, social theory, housing and land market analysis. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework – a UK-wide assessment of universities’ research output – we ranked 3rd in Scotland and top 25 in the UK in the Social Work and Social Policy unit of assessment – with 100% of our research environment and 88% of our research deemed world leading or internationally excellent.

• Apply for PhD Housing
• Apply for MPhil housing

Law and Philosophy

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, 100% of our research impact and 82% of our overall research in Law was classed as world leading or internationally excellent. Research is centred around a number of clusters, reflecting staff expertise. These include Private Law, Environmental and Energy Law, Public Law, Competition Law, Intellectual Property and Legal Philosophy. Our Law staff are involved in a number of research networks and groups – from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Implementation Project, to the University Association for Contemporary European Studies. Postgraduate students undertaking a PhD or MPhil in Law at the University benefit directly from our vibrant, interdisciplinary research environment, and play a key role in furthering the division’s knowledge.

• Apply for PhD Law
• Apply for MPhil Law

Philosophy PhD

The University of Stirling offers a range of postgraduate research opportunities in Philosophy through our collaboration with the University of St Andrews. The St Andrews and Stirling Graduate programme in Philosophy (SASP) is taught by the Philosophy departments at the University of St Andrews and the University of Stirling, which together form Scotland’s premier centre for Philosophy and one of the top Philosophy programmes in the United Kingdom. The philosophical ambience is rigorous, friendly and co-operative.

We offer graduate teaching at a level that matches the best graduate programmes elsewhere in the world, across many areas of Philosophy. Our students are active participants in both the Arché Philosophical Research Centre and the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs. In addition, the department hosts the Institute for Gender Studies.

• Find out more about Philosophy PhD and MPhil opportunities

Learn more about our Philosophy research

English Studies PhD (including Creative Writing)

English Studies at Stirling encompasses the study of global literatures written in English, English language (including Global Englishes), and Anglophone cultures from the medieval period to the present day. It also encompasses creative practice. We offer expert supervision in all these areas. Our key research strengths include:

• Book History (from the medieval to the present day)
• Scottish Studies
• Gothic Studies
• Medieval, Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies
• Creative Writing
• English Language and Linguistics
• Postcolonial Studies
• Translation Studies

You may wish to contact us about projects in any of these areas. We also offer supervision in other areas of English Studies and supervise doctoral students from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and indeed the rest of the University. Notably we co-supervise projects with colleagues in History, Social Sciences, and Law.

We have excellent national and international connections, with links to universities across Europe, North America, and Asia. We also hold leadership roles in learned societies, lead major international research projects, organise conferences, and are active members of editorial boards of the leading journals in the field, which will help you create connections as you complete your research with us. You will also be able to take advantage of our long-established links with libraries, archives, and museums across the UK. Recent collaborations with external partners include the British Library, the National Trust for Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, NHS Scotland, and many others. In terms of additional sources of funding, we would point you to the Carnegie Trust PhD Scholarships: we have had a successful track record with these in recent years.

In addition to the outstanding support within English Studies, you will join a large group of doctoral students within the Division of Literature and Languages. The Faculty of Arts and Humanities will provide access to dedicated research facilities, including working spaces. We also dedicate financial resources towards supporting doctoral candidates to access archives, carry out fieldwork, and attend conferences. There are excellent training opportunities in place at University, Faculty and Divisional levels, including subject specialist training within postgraduate research seminars and other forums, a Divisional Writing Group which organises weekly Writing Hours and Writing Retreats, and the opportunity to get involved with conference organisation. PhD students in English Studies become valued members of our research community, and trusted colleagues in our teaching endeavours.

• Apply for PhD English Studies
• Apply for MPhil English Studies

French at Stirling makes a vital contribution to the rich disciplinary and interdisciplinary research environment of the Division of Literature and Languages. As a PhD student, you will be welcomed into a thriving, inclusive community of researchers. We encourage and support our PhD students to build confidence by taking part in staff-student research seminars and public engagement events, organising postgraduate conferences and publications and joining subject-association committees. You well also benefit from University’s Institute for Advanced Studies professional training and support. Enjoy access to our state-of-the art facilities, including our renowned inspirational campus grounds. As a student in French, you will be supported by a team whose internationally-recognised, award-winning research foregrounds the diversity of the French-speaking world and emphasises French as a global language. Many of our research staff in French also hold key roles in subject associations and are involved as editors or editorial board members of leading journals in their fields.

French at Stirling is internationally recognised for a research culture that has long underpinned transformative, decolonising approaches to curriculum development. We have led the way in (re)-shaping disciplinary understandings and prioritised a forward-thinking, inclusive research ethos that responds to a changing world and the place of French-speaking cultures within it. A small, supportive team with a strong collaborative work ethos, French at Stirling welcomes enquiries and applications from strong PhD candidates working across the full range of our areas of expertise

Established research strengths in French include: visual cultures (especially cinema), postcolonial literatures and decolonising methodologies, museum studies, poetry, histories of migration, gender and sexualities, queer studies, environmental humanities, translation studies.

• Apply for PhD French
• Apply for MPhil French

Languages, Cultures and Religions PhD

As a PhD student in Languages, Cultures and Religions you’ll contribute to a research culture that cuts across the disciplinary units of English (including English Language, Literature, Creative Writing and Publishing Studies), Modern Languages, Translation Studies, and Religion, and foregrounds their intersections. We work within a shared set of research groups, bringing together outstanding researchers to develop their fields. Our wide-ranging expertise comprises creative practice and the study of global literatures, cinema, languages and cultures from the medieval period to the present day. We work with a diverse range of theoretical frameworks and welcome students who are interested in engaging with the latest work in Translation and Interpreting, Gender and Sexuality, Postcolonial Studies,

Research students in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities are provided with access to dedicated research facilities as well as an opportunity to attend a range of research seminars and workshops within specialist research centres and collaboratively across multi-disciplinary subjects. Research students have access to a number of training opportunities, at University, Faculty and Divisional levels, including subject specialist training within postgraduate research seminars and other forums.

• Apply for PhD Languages, Cultures and Religions
• Apply for MPhil Languages, Cultures and Religions

Publishing Studies PhD

The Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication is a world-leading centre for postgraduate publishing studies, offering expertise in contemporary and historical publishing. The Centre celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2022 as one of the first UK centres for research and postgraduate education in publishing studies. Scotland is a particularly exciting place to study publishing, with a rich literary culture and a distinctive publishing ecosystem, characterised by dynamic independent publishers.

As a PhD researcher, you will join a supportive and collegial research community and benefit from the Centre’s close relationships with publishing companies and literary organisations, as well as other universities. Our research expertise is wide-ranging, including digital publishing, global publishing, scholarly communications and open access, publishing and the visual arts, small press publishing and contemporary literary culture including book prizes and festivals. We are part of the Division for Literature and Languages, which offers adjacent expertise in literature, creative writing, translation and book history, hosting The Pathfoot Press, a centre for letterpress publishing. There are paths for interdisciplinary research and supervision.

Research students in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities have access to dedicated facilities for research and opportunities to participate in a wide range of research seminars and workshops, within specialist research centres and collaboratively in multi-disciplinary forums.

Our PhD community incorporates researchers from professional publishing backgrounds, publishing postgraduates, and graduates from other backgrounds. We welcome enquiries about potential PhDs and can advise on sources of funding. Previous students have obtained AHRC funding via the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities (SGSAH), and Carnegie Caledonian PhD scholarships.

• Apply for PhD Publishing Studies

Religious Studies PhD

As a postgraduate researcher in Religion at Stirling, you’ll work with a range of scholars at the cutting edge of critical and interdisciplinary engagement, exploring the way religion intersects with politics, gender, philosophy, postcolonial studies, theology, economics, literature, music, and the arts, sociology and more.

Under the banner of Critical Religion, our research seeks to interrogate how we have come to think about the historical construction and category of “religion” itself, and to ask positive but searching questions about the place of religious discourse and practice in contemporary societies. We see this as a necessarily interdisciplinary enterprise, and encourage doctoral projects that combine theoretical ideas (such as from philosophy, theology, feminism, or critical theory) with more embodied expressions within society and culture (such as from literature and the arts, material culture, economic activity, or political formations). Our expertise in Continental Philosophy, Non-Western Scholarly Traditions, Caribbean culture, Postcolonial Literature and theory, Gender, Hermeneutics, Middle East Politics, China, Translation, Economics, Literature and the Arts (including music), Sociology of Religion and Cultural Studies are just some of the principal lenses through which we wish to pursue what it means to “be” religious in a globalising world.

We have a vibrant research environment that welcomes, values and supports interdisciplinary doctoral researchers. The Faculty of Arts and Humanities provide access to dedicated research facilities, study space, and training opportunities at multiple levels. Pursing a PhD in Religion in this context at Stirling will then offer unique opportunities to work collaboratively across disciplinary subjects, as you engage in research seminars, workshops and forums both with broad connections and within specialist research centres that involve Religion.

• Apply for PhD Religious Studies
• Apply for MPhil Religious Studies

Spanish PhD

Studying for a PhD in Spanish, you’ll benefit from our international partnerships and broad expertise in film and visual cultures, literary writing and theory, postcolonial studies and more.

• Apply for PhD Spanish
• Apply for MPhil Spanish

Management, Work and Organisation PhD

Conducting a PhD in Management, Work and Organisation at the University of Stirling will put you at the heart of a vibrant environment which facilitates the development of world-class research. Research in the Division covers a range of business and management topics and supports knowledge exchange, research impact, as well as the development of young scholars.

The Management, Work and Organisation Division is comprised of two Groups – Business and Strategy, and Working Lives. Staff in these Groups have international reputations for the quality of their research, which is published in leading journals such as the Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics and more.

As a PhD researcher, you’ll benefit from all of our expertise and make your own key contributions in a supportive, collaborative environment.  

• Apply for PhD Management and Organisation
• Apply for MPhil Management and Organisation

Marketing and Retail PhD

The PhD in Marketing and Retail enables students to undertake research in a broad range of topics. Students often conduct their research in collaboration with industry, charities, and governmental bodies with a view to using the findings of their research to improve some aspect of the organisation’s operation. The PhD programme is accredited by the Economic and Social Research Council and is affiliated with the prestigious Business and Management Pathway of the Scottish Graduate School. The Marketing and Retail division has particular strengths in consumer culture and society and retail studies, as well as brands and branding, corporate social responsibility, and marketing in the small and medium sized enterprise. Whether your career aim involves a research or teaching orientated academic career, working in a charity or NGO, or a career in business, the PhD in Marketing can help you achieve your goals.

• Apply for PhD Marketing
• Apply for MPhil Marketing

Professional Doctorate Health Psychology

Our Professional Doctorate Health Psychology will train you to develop scientific and practitioner skills in Health Psychology, and to be eligible to become a health psychologist. It is based on real-world placement learning, and includes brief periods of teaching and workshops. 

You'll acquire specific competencies as defined by the British Psychological Society. You'll also gain competence in carrying out a piece of high quality empirical research to a standard publishable in peer review journals.

Supervision is provided by the experienced and enthusiastic health team in Psychology. We have an excellent international reputation in the field of Health Psychology with a record of high quality research into health and health behaviour.

The Professional Doctorate award is also available for study via a two year part-time top-up research doctorate route. Applicants who already hold a doctoral level (practitioner) qualification in Health Psychology via the British Psychological Society (QHP), and are eligible for registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) as a ‘Health Psychologist’ will be eligible to complete the research module for award of the Professional Doctorate degree.

Students following this route will be required to complete the 240 credit ‘Applied Research in Health Psychology’ module, via one-to-one supervision.

• Find out more about our Professional Doctorate Health Psychology and apply online

Psychology PhD

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, 100% of our research impact and environment, and 87% of our overall research in Psychology is classed as world leading or internationally excellent. From the neuropsychology of perception and action to influences of smell on mate choice, we have a diverse range of research interests, and our staff are highly collaborative, with an extensive network of international research partners. Many of our academic staff and students conduct interdisciplinary research while working closely with public services and industry. Our research is organised in three overarching research groups: Cognition in Complex Environments, Behaviour & Evolution and Health and Behaviour Change. We have a collegiate working environment that provides excellent support and mentoring to early career researchers, making Stirling the perfect place to study for a PhD or MPhil in Psychology.

• Apply for PhD Psychology
• Apply for MPhil Psychology

Doctor of Applied Social Research (Social Work)

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways that include Social Work. 

• Find out more about our Doctor of Applied Social Research (Social Work) and apply online

Social Work PhD

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, 100% of our research environment and 88% of our research in Social Work was deemed world leading or internationally excellent.

As a PhD researcher in Social Work, you’ll benefit from our desire to engage with communities around the world and produce research that makes a positive difference to society. Our staff having outstanding international research records, and you’ll be part of a Faculty that hosts and collaborates with renowned centres and networks such as The Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection, the Dementia Services Development Centre and many more.

Our research influences policy, shapes thinking and improves lives. Postgraduate researchers in Social Work have a key role to play in all that we do, and we offer a supportive, encouraging environment to help you achieve your goals.

• Apply for PhD Social Work
• Apply for MPhil Social Work

Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology

Criminology phd.

The University of Stirling is ranked first in Scotland and Top 5 in the UK for Criminology (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023). Our world-class teaching is underpinned by leading-edge empirical and theoretical research in a vibrant, multi-disciplinary environment which welcomes and supports PhD researchers in achieving their goals.   

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework assessment, Social Work and Social Policy research was ranked 3rd in Scotland and top 25 in the UK – with 100% of our research environment and 88% of our research deemed world leading or internationally excellent.

• Apply for PhD Criminology

Doctor of Applied Social Research (Criminal Justice)

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways that include Criminal Justice.

• Find out more about our Doctor of Applied Social Research (Criminal Justice) and apply online

Doctor of Applied Social Research (Drug and Alcohol Studies)

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways that include Drug and Alcohol Studies.

Doctor of Applied Social Research (Social Research)

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways, including a specialisation in Social Research.

• Find out more about our Doctor of Applied Social Research (Social Research) and apply online

Sociology and Social Policy PhD

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, Stirling ranked 3rd in Scotland and top 25 in the UK for Social Work and Social Policy research – with 100% of our research environment and 88% of our research deemed world leading or internationally excellent.

As a PhD researcher in Sociology and Social Policy, you’ll benefit from our desire to engage with communities around the world and produce research that makes a positive difference to society. Our staff having outstanding international research records, and you’ll be part of a Faculty that hosts and collaborates with renowned centres and networks such as The Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection, the Dementia Services Development Centre and many more.

Our research influences policy, shapes thinking and improves lives. Postgraduate researchers in Sociology and Social Policy have a key role to play in all that we do, and we offer a supportive, encouraging environment to help you achieve your goals.

• Apply for PhD Sociology and Social Policy
• Apply for MPhil Sociology and Social Policy

Sports Studies PhD

As Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence, we pride ourselves on game-changing research. We’re shedding light on the risks posed by heading footballs, informing the conversation around anti-doping and inspiring the next generation to form healthy habits. Sport is in our DNA, and our research reflects our passion to make an impact on the global stage.

Our campus is home to Olympic athletes, national academies for tennis and swimming and unique five-star facilities – creating a dynamic environment where theory and practice are closely interlinked.

PhD studies in Sport and Exercise Science can be undertaken in diverse contexts from high performance sport to population health. Staff specialisms include genetics and molecular biology, nutrition and hydration, neuro-muscular function and physical activity. Doctoral students join a dynamic, internationally recognised academic community carrying out innovative studies that improve human health and performance and address global challenges.

Meanwhile, our expertise in Sport and Social Sciences allows doctoral students to conduct original studies across diverse sub-disciplines including sport coaching, sport psychology, sport policy, sociology of sport, and sport management, governance and economics. Our strong connections across the sport, health and exercise sectors allow students to address key issues in sport including anti-doping policy, coach education, sport for social change, sport and identity, and sport mega events. Our expertise includes the role of sport in contributing to health and wellbeing, including active lifestyles and workplace health.

• Apply for PhD Sports Studies
• Apply for MPhil Sports Studies

Doctorate of Applied Social Research (Substance Use)

If you’re an experienced professional who wants to advance your expertise and broaden your career opportunities, this course is an ideal match. From the outset, you’ll gain high-quality research skills that can be immediately applied in the workplace and refined through access to seminars and advanced training opportunities. You’ll also benefit from the guidance of our expert staff and your interaction with other doctoral students from a range of social science backgrounds.

The course is highly flexible and attendance is kept to a minimum to ensure you can fit your studies around your career. You’ll also have the opportunity to fine-tune your Doctorate based on your profession – choosing one of six pathways that include Substance Use. 

• Find out more about our Doctorate of Applied Social Research (Substance Use) and apply online

Return to:  3220 Department of English    

The Ph.D. degree programs prepare students to write, to teach on the college and university levels, and to conduct scholarly research. At the end of their Ph.D. coursework, students will have acquired a productive general knowledge of the various fields of literary study in English and will have developed a concentrated preparation in their areas of specialization.

Applicants should be aware that admission is competitive and that meeting the minimum admission requirements does not guarantee admission to the Ph.D. program. Before entering the Ph.D. program, students are generally expected to have completed a master’s degree in English or a closely related discipline from an accredited college or university. The Department of English admits students to its doctoral programs only in the fall semester of the academic year. The Director of Graduate Studies in English will consider only complete admission files. Applicants are responsible for seeing that their admission files are complete by the deadlines for admission published in this catalog.

All applicants must submit the following materials:

• Transcripts of all previous college or university work. Students should upload unofficial transcripts from every post-secondary institution directly to the application. Any student offered admission will need to have official transcripts sent to the Office of Graduate Services.
• Three letters of recommendation sent directly from persons who testify to the applicant’s ability to do graduate work. Applicants from the M.A. program in English at Georgia State must submit new letters of recommendation, preferably from English department faculty;
• An essay composed by the applicant stating goals and career objectives; and
• A 10-20 page critical writing sample.
• For Creative Writing applicants only: a portfolio consisting of a minimum of 10 poems; or three works of fiction totaling no fewer than 30 and no more than 50 pages. One of the three fiction samples may be an excerpt of a longer work (novel, novella, etc.), and fiction samples may include short-short stories/flash fiction, but we ask that the applicant send at least one complete, stand-alone example of short fiction of 15 pages or more. The first page of the creative portfolio should list the student’s name, email address, phone number, and program the student is applying to (Ph.D. Fiction, Ph.D. Poetry.)

The Director of Graduate Studies will serve as the student’s initial faculty advisor, whom the student should consult regularly. However, very early in the program, the student should begin to design a course of study leading toward an area of specialization. The student will be tested on this specialization (the doctoral examination and the coursework required for taking it are described below). Optimally in the first semester of the doctoral program, but certainly before the end of the second semester, the student should form a  three-member faculty advisory committee  composed of at least two faculty members in the area of specialization. Working with this committee, the student will define and develop the area of specialization and determine the courses that can be used to satisfy the specialization requirements.

Doctoral Degree Plans

Students may choose to follow one of three plans. Plan 1 focuses on literary studies. Plan 2 emphasizes rhetoric and advanced writing courses. Plan 3 emphasizes creative writing.

Basic Coursework and Residency Requirements

Depending on the plan chosen by a student, the total credit hours required vary from a minimum of 50 to 59 beyond the M.A. (30-39 hours of coursework plus at least 20 hours of dissertation research). To fulfill the residency requirement for the Ph.D. degree, students must enroll for a minimum of 6 hours per term for 4 semesters. Two of these semesters must be consecutive. Each plan has further particular coursework requirements which are specified below. Please note, graduate assistants are required to enroll for a minimum of 12 credit hours each for the fall/spring semesters and 9 credit hours for the summer semester. These credit hours will consist of courses required for the prescribed program of study, as well as additional hours of thesis research and non-thesis individual research.

Doctoral Examinations

After completing coursework and the graduate research skill requirement (see above), students in all concentrations must pass the examination specific to their concentrations.

In the Creative Writing concentration, the doctoral examination in poetry is a two-day, online exam. Each examination period is four hours. The examination on Day 1 includes a section of identifications and either two or three essays dealing with the works and authors pre-1900 drawn from the Ph.D. reading list. The examination administered on Day 2 is comprised of three or four essays about the works and authors post-1900 drawn from the Ph.D. reading list. The examination director will decide on the final format for the examination.

In the Creative Writing concentration, the doctoral comprehensive examination in fiction is a two-day, online exam. Each day a four-hour examination is administered. The examination on Day 1 includes a section of identifications and either two or three essays dealing with works and authors pre-1900 drawn from the Ph.D. reading list. The examination director will decide on the final format for the examination.

In the Rhetoric and Composition concentration, the doctoral examination is a seven-day, take-home examination. The examination draws on both a primary field of specialization and a research focus within that field. Further information on the format of the doctoral examination in Rhetoric and Composition is available at sites.gsu.edu/rhetcomp/.

In the Literary Studies concentration, the doctoral examination will be in the area in which the student plans to write the dissertation. The examination consists of three parts: a two and a half hour identification section written take-home, closed-book; a seventy-two hour take-home, open-book written; and a ninety-minute oral. As described in the list of required courses below, in order to take the examination, the student must have completed 12 credit hours (4 courses) in or strongly related to that area, and met the foreign language/research skills requirement. The exam itself will be based on a reading list composed of no fewer than forty texts, devised by the student in consultation with the faculty advisor who will be the primary reader of the exam. The examination reading list must be composed, and approved by the faculty advisor, at least one semester prior to the semester in which the student will take the exam. The examination questions must be approved by the Director and Associate Director of Graduate Studies.

Examinations are not offered in the summer. Students must give the Director of Graduate Studies in English written notification of their intention to take the primary examination by the departmental deadline. Each doctoral examination will be graded by at least three faculty members. A student must pass the examination on either the first or second try in order to remain in the Ph.D. program. Examples of past examination questions and of successful answers are available to students preparing for the examination.

Dissertation

Doctoral students must submit a dissertation acceptable to the Department of English and to the Office of Graduate Services of the College of Arts and Sciences. Stages in the preparation of the dissertation include the following: choosing a dissertation director and dissertation committee, submitting a dissertation proposal, defending the dissertation proposal, writing the dissertation, defending the dissertation.

Soon after completing the doctoral examination, a doctoral student must submit to the dissertation committee a written dissertation proposal that should include the following:

• A description of the subject, including a statement of the way the proposed approach to the subject differs from, contributes to, or modifies the existing scholarship on the subject;
• A description of the proposed method of treatment and an account of the research necessary to complete it; and
• A preliminary bibliography, including a discussion of the availability of materials.

After consulting informally with the dissertation director and the other members of the student’s dissertation committee, the student must defend the proposal orally in a meeting with the committee. If the committee judges the student’s proposal to be acceptable, the student will be given permission to proceed with the project. While writing the dissertation, the student must register for at least 20 hours of ENGL 8999 - Thesis Research.

Each student must pass a public oral defense of the dissertation open to all interested faculty and students. The structure of this defense will be determined by the student’s dissertation committee. After reserving a room for the defense at a time agreeable to all members of the committee, the student must notify the graduate director and submit the completed dissertation to committee members at least two (2) weeks before the defense date (or earlier if required by the committee). The date, time, and location of the defense will be publicized by the graduate director. The student will bring to the defense a properly formatted Dissertation Title Page/ Signature Sheet. In the event of a successful defense, all committee members as well as the Department Chair must sign the Dissertation Title Page. It is the student’s responsibility ensure that the proper signatures are obtained and that the title page and dissertation are uploaded to the Office of Graduate Services before the graduation deadline.

Work on the doctorate must be completed within ten years of admission to the program.

Degree Requirements

Concentrations.

• English, Ph.D., Creative Writing Concentration    
• English, Ph.D., Literary Studies Concentration    
• English, Ph.D., Rhetoric and Composition Concentration    

The Multiple Subject Bilingual 2042 Credential (Elementary K-6 Education) is available to students interested in teaching in a bilingual Spanish, Arabic, Filipino, Japanese, or Mandarin elementary school classroom. This credential authorizes the holder to teach in any self-contained bilingual or regular classroom in which one teacher is responsible for all the subjects commonly taught in the elementary schools. Because courses on methods of teaching subject areas are taught in Spanish, Arabic, Filipino, Japanese, or Mandarin, as well as English, candidates must meet the respective language of emphasis proficiency requirements as outlined below.

Candidates who will pursue this credential need to specify “ Multiple Subject Credential - Bilingual ” in the application for graduate admission to SDSU (Code: 00200). Students applying for admission should electronically submit the university application available at http://www.calstate.edu/apply along with the application fee.

All applicants must submit admissions materials separately to SDSU Graduate Admissions and to the Dual Language and English Learner Education Department.

Graduate Admissions

The following materials should be submitted electronically or as a complete package directly to:

Graduate Admissions Enrollment Services San Diego State University San Diego, CA 92182-7416

• Official transcripts (in sealed envelopes) from all postsecondary institutions attended; NOTE:
• Students who attended SDSU need only submit transcripts for work completed since last attendance.
• Students with international coursework must submit both the official transcript and proof of degree. If documents are in a language other than English, they must be accompanied by a certified English translation.
• TOEFL score, if medium of instruction was in a language other than English ( http://www.ets.org , SDSU institution code 4682).

Dual Language and English Learner Education Department

• Complete department application at http://go.sdsu.edu/education/apply-now.aspx ;
• California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) scores;
• Arabic: Copy of CSET LOTE subtests II and V for language of emphasis;
• Filipino: Copy of CSET LOTE subtests II and V (test codes 191 and 255 respectively) for language of emphasis;
• Japanese: Copy of CSET LOTE subtests III and V (test codes 159 and 260 respectively) for language of emphasis;
• Mandarin: Copy of CSET LOTE subtests III and V for language of emphasis;
• Spanish: Completion of DLE 416    with a grade of C (2.0) or better or copies of CSET LOTE subtests III and V for language of emphasis;
• World Languages: Copy of CSET LOTE subtest IV (test code 250) for language of emphasis;
• TB test results;
• Two letters of recommendation, one of which must be from an elementary teacher if multiple subject or from a secondary teacher if single subject;
• Verification of early field experience (30 hours for multiple subject) or completion of DLE 416L   ;
• Certificate of clearance (live scan);
• CPR that includes infant/child/adult;
• Autobiography/Goals and Philosophy. Candidates must complete a 1-1/2 page essay of their goals and philosophy in education and a 1-1/2 page autobiography. One should be written in the language of emphasis and the other in English;
•  California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET) scores.

Standards for Admission

Students must pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test prior to admission to the bilingual credential program. This examination is required by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Booklets containing registration forms and test information are available at http://www.cbest.nesinc.com .

Subject Matter Competency

Students must verify completion of subject matter competency in diversified subjects commonly taught in self-contained classrooms prior to admission to the bilingual credential program. To be admitted to the bilingual credential program, a candidate shall have achieved a passing score on the California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET) that is required for the credential sought. Registration information and materials for the CSET are available at http://www.ctcexams.nesinc.com .

Prerequisite Courses

The following courses must be completed with a grade of C (2.0) or better prior to admission to the program, but may be in progress at the time of application or taken in the term immediately prior to the program start date.

Liberal Studies Majors

• DLE 515 - Multilingual Education: Theory and Practice for Biliteracy Teachers Units: 3
• ED 451 - Introduction to Multicultural Education Units: 3
• SPED 450 - Classroom Adaptations for Special Populations Units: 3
• TE 280 - Health Education for Teachers Units: 1

Non-Liberal Studies Majors

(Must take the above and below prerequisite)

• MATH 210 - Number Systems in Elementary Mathematics Units: 3 **

**With approval of the mathematics adviser, any of the following mathematics courses may be substituted for MATH 210   : MATH 124   , MATH 150   , MATH 312   .

Grade Point Average

Candidates must have cumulative grade point averages (GPAs) within the upper one-half of undergraduate students in the candidates’ majors. GPAs vary according to discipline and graduating institution. GPA requirements are available in the Office of Student Services, 619-594-6320, [email protected] . Candidates must have attained a grade point average of at least 2.67 overall or 2.75 in the last 60 semester or 90 quarter units attempted. Candidates are required to submit official transcripts from all colleges and universities attended and unofficial SDSU transcripts for GPA calculations.

Letter of Recommendation

Two professional references and one letter of recommendation must be submitted attesting to the applicants following characteristics: (a) attitude, aptitude and ability to teach children; (b) personality and character; (c) academic ability. At least one letter should be from an elementary school teacher the student has worked with and the others may be from faculty and administrators.

Tuberculin Clearance

Evidence of a negative tuberculosis test (these tests are valid for four years and must be in effect during the time that candidates are enrolled in the credential program). Clearance statements may be secured from Health Services, private physicians or HMOs, or public health agencies.

Early Field Experience

Applicants must provide evidence of a minimum of 30 hours of experience with students in typical elementary classroom settings within the last three years or successful completion of DLE 416L   . Evidence must be documented.

Written Statement of Professional Goals and Philosophy and Interview

In addition to their written statement of goals and philosophy, candidates will have an interview with the admissions and retention committee of the DLE Department.

California Certificate of Clearance

This certificate represents a background clearance and check conducted by the State Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Turnaround time for the clearance can take as long as eight months. Possessors of K-12 California credentials may satisfy this requirement by submitting copies of those certificates. Candidates must submit the application directly to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. A copy of the application must be provided to the DLE Department.

Credential Advising Appointment

Each applicant must attend an advising session at the Office of Student Services. Appointments can be made in 619-594- 6320, [email protected] . Afterward, we recommend applicants visit the Dual Language and English Learner Education (DLE) office or call 619-594-5155 to make an appointment with a faculty adviser.

Language and Culture Proficiency

All candidates must meet Language Proficiency and Cultural Awareness requirements for the language of emphasis to meet their specific Bilingual Authorization through DLE 416    or CSET LOTE examinations III and V.

Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA)

California Education Code Section 44283 requires that candidates for the preliminary or clear credential multiple subject pass this RICA requirement. The purpose of this assessment is to ensure that the candidate possess the knowledge and skills important for the provision of effective reading instruction to students. The RICA requirement applies to candidates who did not complete all credential requirements prior to October 1, 1998. Candidates must have passed the RICA in order to be able to file for the credential.

Appeals Process

Candidates who do not meet all the admission requirements may petition the DLE Department Admissions and Retention Committee for individual consideration; petition letters must be submitted concurrently with the application packets.

Application

Applicants should complete application procedures the semester prior to beginning the credential program. Check the department website for current deadline information: http://go.sdsu.edu/education/dle/bilingual_credential.aspx .

DLE Department Admissions and Retention Committee

In addition to the minimum admissions standards identified above, the DLE Department Admissions and Retention Committee may also consider qualifications such as previous teaching experience and relevant working experience with children. Due to the number of applicants, application to the program does not ensure admission.

After admission, students will meet with the program coordinator to plan an appropriate program.

Multiple Subject Bilingual 2042 Program

• DLE 523 - Psychological Foundations for Biliteracy Teachers in K-6 Classrooms Units: 3
• DLE 532 - Biliteracy Teaching in Language Arts for Elementary Students Units: 3
• DLE 910 - Teaching Mathematics to Bilingual Students Units: 3
• DLE 911 - Teaching Social Studies to Bilingual Students Units: 3
• DLE 912 - Teaching Science to Bilingual Students Units: 3
• DLE 915A - Teaching and Learning in the Content Area: English Language Development/SDAIE: Multiple Subjects Units: 3
• DLE 931 - Skills in Teaching Reading to Bilingual Elementary Students Units: 3
• DLE 954 - Classroom Organization for Democratic Teaching in Bilingual Classrooms Units: 1-4
• DLE 960 - Professional Seminar for Bilingual Teacher Candidates (Cr/NC) Units: 1-4
• DLE 961 - Practicum in Elementary Bilingual Classroom (Cr/NC) Units: 1-12
• DLE 962 - Student Teaching for Elementary Bilingual Students II (Cr/NC) Units: 8
• ED 970 - Teaching Event Assessment (Cr/NC) Units: 3

Preliminary 2042 Credential Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree (or higher) with any major other than education.
• Completion of an approved program of professional education. (See Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education    for further information.)
• Passage of Multiple Subject/CSET.
• Demonstrated knowledge of principles and provisions of United States Constitution through successful completion of three-unit college level course or examination. Courses are listed in General Catalog section on “ Graduation Requirements   ,” IV. American Institutions Requirement.
• Passage of California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST).
• Passage of Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) Test.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the needs of and methods of providing educational opportunities to individuals with exceptional needs: SPED 450   .
• Demonstrated knowledge of computer hardware, software, and applications to educational/classroom use (computer literacy).
• Knowledge of health education in California, including substance abuse and nutrition: TE 280 - Health Education for Teachers    (1 unit) and verification of CPR competency.
• Successful completion of a California Teacher Credentialing approved Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA).

Undergraduate students in their final semester prior to obtaining a baccalaureate degree may sign up for concurrent post-baccalaureate credit as explained in the section of this catalog on “ Admission and Registraion   .”

According to SB 2042 legislation, teachers will be able to earn Professional Clear Credentials upon successful completion of induction programs sponsored by their employers and approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

To be recommended for the bilingual authorization, candidates must meet the language and cultural proficiency requirements.

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2024-2025 Courses

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Note that these courses are for the 2024-2025 academic year . To view courses and descriptions for 2023-2024, please see here .

Note on graduate course numbers and levels: Please note that each course carries, along with the ENGL which identifies it as an English Department course, a three digit number, the first digit of which describes the general level of the course, as follows: 500-level - MA students and U3 undergraduates (usually Honours BAs) 600-level - MA and PhD students only 700-level - MA and PhD students only

Note on maximum and minimum enrolments for graduate seminars: Graduate courses are limited to a maximum enrollment of 12 (for 6/700-level courses) or 15 students (for 500-level courses). 500-level courses with an enrollment of fewer than 7 students, and 600- or 700-level courses with an enrollment of fewer than 4 students, will not be offered except in special circumstances. Note on registration in graduate courses: Courses are open to students in Department of English programs.  Students from outside the Department may enroll if space permits and if they have appropriate preparation for the course. In this case, students must seek the permission of the instructor and the Graduate Program Director to register. 500-level courses are restricted to an enrollment of 15 students and are open to Master's and advanced undergraduate students. B.A. students must receive permission from the instructor before registering for a 500-level course.    As a general rule, M.A. students are permitted to take two courses at the 500-level and Ph.D. students may only exceptionally register for 500-level courses after receiving permission from the Graduate Program Director . But PhD students should certainly not overlook 500-level courses when making their course selections, particularly if the subject matter of a particular course makes a good fit for a PhD student’s research interests. Similarly, an M.A. student who has a good justification for taking a third 500-level seminar should contact the Graduate Program Director to be given permission to register for it. Please click on the “full course description” link below any of the following course titles to find a detailed description of the course goals, the reading list, and the method of evaluation.

ENGL 503 - 18th Century

The villain-hero.

Professor David Hensley​ Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Full course description

Prerequisites: limited to Honours and MA students (see note below)

Description: This course will contextualize the villain-hero of eighteenth-century English literature in a European tradition of philosophical, religious, and political problems, social criticism, and artistic commentary from the Renaissance to Romanticism. Against the background of representations of the desire for knowledge and power in Elizabethan drama, the anthropology of Caroline political theory, Satanic revolt in Milton, and libertine devilry in Rochester and Restoration plays, we will examine the villain-hero as a figure of persistently fascinating evil power – a power subversively critical as well as characteristically satiric, obscene, and cruel in its skepticism, debauchery, and criminality. The readings will focus especially on two examples of this figure, Faust and Don Juan, whose development we will consider from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

Texts: Books ( tentative, to be confirmed in January 2025) will be available at The Word Bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640.

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (Norton, Hackett, or Cambridge recommended)
• Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Hackett, Oxford, or Penguin recommended)
• La Rochefoucauld, Maxims and Reflections (Oxford recommended; or Penguin)
• John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, Selected Poems (Oxford) or Selected Works (Penguin)
• William Wycherley, The Country Wife
• William Congreve, The Way of the World
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Part One (Oxford or Norton)
• Pierre Choderos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Oxford or Penguin)
• Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life (Penguin)
• Lord Byron, Don Juan (Penguin)
• Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (Penguin recommended)

Films: Usually, one film will be shown each week. Viewing the films is a requirement of the course, and attendance at the screenings is an expected form of participation. Most screening sessions will last about two hours in a supplementary period following the seminar; some films will be longer. (The following list of films is provisional.)

• Jan Svankmejer, Don Juan (1970) and Faust (1994)
• Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (Greenwich Theatre, London; Stage on Screen, 2010)
• F. W. Murnau, Faust (1926)
• Hector Berlioz, La Damnation de Faust (dir. Sylvain Cambreling, 1999; and others)
• Charles Gounod, Faust (dir. Antonio Pappano, 2010)
• Alexandr Sokurov, Faust (2011)
• Wycherley, The Country Wife (1992); and Congreve, The Way of the World (1997)
• Stephen Frears, Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
• Mozart, Don Giovanni (dir. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 1996; and others)
• Rupert Edwards, The Real Don Giovanni (1996)
• Benoit Jacquot, Sade (1999)
• Frederico Fellini, Fellini’s Casanova (1976)
• Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin (dir. Daniel Barenboim, 2007; and others)

Evaluation: A substantial amount of careful reading, a class presentation, and a close analysis of texts both in seminar discussion and in a final 20-page paper will constitute the work of the course. Weighting: paper (60%), presentation (20%), general participation (20%). Regular attendance is mandatory.

Format: seminar

Note on enrollment: Permission of the instructor is required. Enrollment is limited to 15 MA and advanced undergraduate students. Honours students in their final year have priority. MA and Honours students may register for this course but must confirm their registration with the instructor. All others must consult the instructor before registering. Students who are interested in taking this seminar but cannot register in Minerva should contact the instructor. (Please bear in mind that electronic registration does not constitute the instructor’s permission.)

ENGL 505 - 20th Century

Listen to this: sound, voice, music, noise.

Professor Allan Hepburn Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: This course concerns sound in different media, mostly fiction, but also sound sculpture, sound diaries, sound-tracks, sound poetry, choruses and refrains, drama, opera, instrumental music, and song. A premise of this course is that literary texts create soundworlds and soundscapes. In some cases, they appeal to music, noise, dialogue, accents, and silences to communicate meaning. In other cases, they use sound effects—rhyme, for example—to widen the acoustic range of the text. What would it mean to interpret literary texts for their sonic dimensions? Is it possible to listen to a novel or a poem rather than read it? Does literature give access to the past, the future, or alternative realities when it appeals to sound? For some writers, literature operates like a recording technology, akin to a gramophone, cassette player, or MP3 file. These recording techniques allow sound to be transmitted to readers in diverse locations in ways that resemble the transmission of literary texts. In order to think about enhanced listening as a critical resource, we will consider acousmatic and non-acousmatic sounds, sounds as clues, sound and affect, sound and ideas, sound editing. We will also discuss prosody, telephony, sound theft, privacy, eavesdropping, eroticism, and racialized voices as acoustic properties within texts. Secondary readings will involve short theoretical pieces by R. Murray Schafer, Michel Chion, Jacques Attali, Walter Murch, and others. Listening exercises will supplement primary texts.

Texts (tentative):

• Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
• Mavis Gallant, “The Concert Party”
• Margeurite Yourcenar, Alexis
• Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues
• Jean Cocteau, The Human Voice
• Robert Chesley, Jerker
• Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet
• Toni Morrison, Jazz
• Russell Smith, Noise
• selected poems by Auden, Bishop, Hughes, Dryden, Ondaatje, Bök, and others
• The Conversation
• Janet Cardiff, “Paradise Institute”

Evaluation: attendance and participation (20%); recitation of a poem (10%); short paper (30%); long paper (50%)

Format: Seminar.

ENGL 512 - Contemp Studies in Lit&Culture / EAST 515 - Seminar: Beyond Orientalism

Literary cultures of east and south asia.

Professor Sandeep Banerjee  (English) Professor Gal Gvili (East Asian Studies) Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: How do literary and cultural texts speak to the experience of modernity in South and East Asia? We seek to illuminate this question by investigating common and diverging literary portrayals of such modern concerns as the making of national languages, the experience of colonialism, and the early formation of feminism, within emerging modern genres and forms such as realism, the short poem, the epic, and the novel. Our goal is to place the specificities of Asian forms of literary modernity and aesthetics in conversation with global theories and scholarship.

Texts : (provisional)

• Epic: The Slaying of Meghnad by M.M. Dutt (selections); Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu (selections)
• Poems by Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Bing Xin, and Xu Zhimo;
• Short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Sadat Hasan Manto, Rasheed Jahan, Mao Dun, Lu Xun, Xu Dishan;
• Novels by Bankim Chatterji, Attia Hossain, Jhumpa Lahiri, Wu Zhuoliu, Ba Jin, Nieh Hualing, and Xiao Hong

This is an indicative list; course texts will be finalized closer to the start of the course.

Evaluation:  Response papers; paper proposal; final essay.

Format:  Seminar.

ENGL 528 - Canadian Literature

Food voices in canadian literature.

Professor Nathalie Cooke Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: Why do authors feed their characters? Yes, it can make fiction seem more realistic, poetry more evocative. But there are other reasons deserving our attention.

In this course we will explore how listening to stories told in Canadian literature’s “food voices” offers readers compelling ways of investigating the shifting boundaries of gender, socio-economic class, community, and culture over time in Canadian society. Class discussions will tackle thorny questions in relation to specific texts and within the analytical frameworks of literary food studies. Readings will include well-known works by Canada’s most lauded writers (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Eden Robinson, and Gabrielle Roy) to explore a range of food voices and how literary texts create meaning through inclusion of non-verbal narratives involving food selection, service, and consumption. We will also discover ways in which sharing food, or the longing for food, is a major theme and vehicle for metaphor in other works by Canadian writers (among them, George Eliott Clarke, Marilyn Dumont, Hiromi Goto, Rabindranath Maharaj, Drew Hayden Taylor, Fred Wah). We will question how food voices support or undermine the dominant trajectory of textual meaning creation. How do food choices serve to define an individual or community in relation to others? What narrative emerges from the food choices made in the text? What do food scenes tell us about gender roles and expectations, the process of migration and cultural adaptation? In what way do food scenes serve to structure the work, signposting notions of time and alternative ways of timekeeping?

Where literary analysis differs from folkloristic or sociological study is the close attention it pays to the form in which food voices speak in literary texts. Consequently the class will pay close attention to literary form, to how authors’ choices of mode, genre, and rhetorical device animate food voices and shape stories they can tell. Secondary readings theorizing the food voice (Lucy Long) and writing the meal (Sandra Gilbert, Diane McGee, and Anna Shapiro) will contextualize our investigations. However, students should be aware that there has been very little written about food scenes in Canadian literature specifically, despite an extraordinary abundance and variety of primary material. Existing bibliographies and studies of food in literature (e.g., Sandra Gilbert 2014, Nicola Humble 2020, Norman Kiell 1995) consistently overlook Canada’s contributions – with the notable exception of Margaret Atwood’s writing. And the few Canadian compilations of food narratives are now very dated: The Canlit Foodbook (1987) and the anthology Kitchen Talk (1992). At one level, then, this course and work developed through it aims to be an important critical intervention.

Texts : A library of online materials will be made available through the McGill Library and MyCourses, consisting of podcasts, radio episodes, commentaries, short stories and poems:

• Rohinton Mistry, “Squatter”
• Alice Munro, “Half a Grapefruit”
• Margaret Atwood, “Age of Lead”
• Madeleine Thien, “Simple Recipes”
• Selection from George Elliott Clarke’s Whylah Falls (1990)
• Dead Dog Café Radio Hour episodes

Full-length texts:

• Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman (1969)
• Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989)
• Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (1996)
• Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach (2000)
• Tomson Highway, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout (2005)
• Michelle Good, Five Little Indians (2020)
• Suzette Mayr, Sleeping Car Porter (2022)

Format: Seminar and discussion.

Evaluation:

• seminar presentation (20%)
• Reading Journal: food metaphor analysis paragraphs, individual entries due throughout the term (40%)
• final research paper (30%)
• active participation, to include sharing with the class insights developed in reading journal entries (10%)

ENGL 533 - Literary Movements

Restoration poetry and culture.

Professor Maggie Kilgour Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Description: In 1649, the English people cut off the head of a king named Charles and established a new revolutionary government. In 1660, that revolution came full circle when they put the crown on the head of another king named Charles and went back to a monarchy, celebrating the “Restoration” of England’s old and true order. However, the revolutionaries had themselves claimed that they were restoring the ancient liberties of the English people which had been undermined by the innovations of the king. Similarly, the Protestant Reformation had been imagined as the return to the original spirit of the Gospels, uncontaminated by Popish institutions. In the seventeenth century everyone seemed mad with nostalgia for some purer, free time they longed to get back to.

In this seminar we will look at a range of literatures written between 1660, the year of the “Restoration,” and 1688, the year of the “Glorious” or “Bloodless Revolution.” We will consider how writers tried to make sense of the trauma of a civil war which had torn apart families and resulted in deaths of more than two hundred thousand people. It is easy to imagine the attraction of looking back from this mess to some fictitious time of ideal peace, and such nostalgia is still embedded in English mythology today. The Restoration order was deeply precarious, shaken by the outbreak of the plague, the great fire of London, war with Holland, unresolved religious and class conflicts, as well as a dissolute and heirless monarch. However, while full of yearning for a mythic past (it’s no coincidence that this is the time of Paradise Lost ), this unstable time released an outbreak of astonishing creativity. It produced revolutionary works of political science (itself emerging as a field), natural science, religious faith, drama, poetry, and prose, and had room for writings as diverse as the raunchy poetry of Rochester and the tight couplets of Dryden, the seminal works of political theory of Hobbes and Locke, the sci-fi of Cavendish, and the intense religious experiences of Bunyan, Traherne, and Hutchison. The government was reimagined, the first scientific society established, and the nation became a global empire conquering through trade, above all a growing slave-driven sugar business. Women performed on stage and began to write in significant numbers. Underneath the myth of return to the past, England was transformed.

Texts: (tentative)

• Rochester, selected (but not censored!) poems
• John Dryden, selected poetry and plays
• Andrew Marvell, selected poetry
• Samuel Butler, selections from Hudibras
• Selections from Locke and Hobbes
• Abraham Cowley, “Ode to the Royal Society”; De Plantis 5-6 (translated Nahum Tate, Aphra Behn)
• Thomas Spratt, selections from History of the Royal Society
• William Davenant (with William Shakespeare), Macbeth
• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko ; The Rover
• Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
• Lucy Hutchison, selections from Order and Disorder
• John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
• Thomas Traherne, selections from the poetry and Centuries of Meditation
• Milton, Samson Agonistes
• Samuel Pepys, selection from the Diary (just for fun)

Evaluation: book review (10%); short (15 minute) presentation (20%); research/interpretive paper (50%); active participation (20%)

Format: seminar discussions; presentations

ENGL 540 - Literary Theory 1

Theories of the archive.

Professor Camille Owens Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description : What is an archive? And what is the place of “the archive” in literary studies? Or in literature? In this seminar, we will approach these questions in theory and method. We will trace the historical and institutional formation of archives, examining the power dynamics they reproduce and the issues of provenance that trouble them. We will investigate methods for the keeping and transmission of knowledge that have existed outside of traditional archives, and the possibilities and perils of impermanency. And we will examine where archives appear in, inform, or form contemporary literary works. Throughout our readings, we will ask the question: what are the formal boundaries of an/the archive? What can, and cannot, be housed in an archive? Readings will include works by: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Brent Edwards, Saidiya Hartman, Ann Cvetkovich, Mishuana Goeman, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Arlette Farge, Carolyn Steedman, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Robin Coste Lewis, Ocean Vuong, Valeria Luiselli, Namwali Serpell, and Jesmyn Ward.

Selected Texts :

• Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past (1995)
• Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” (2008)
• Michel Foucault, “The Lives of Infamous Men,” (1977)
• Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (1995)
• Robin Coste Lewis, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022)
• Namwali Serpell, The Furrows (2021)
• Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (2019)

Evaluation : seminar presentation (15%), short essay (30%), research paper (40%), active participation in every class meeting (15%)

Format : Seminar

ENGL 545 - Topics in Literature & Society

Write, protest, resist: women’s work in the revolutionary age.

Professor Carmen Mathes Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: When Percy Shelley wrote, “Let a great Assembly be / Of the fearless and the free” he was responding to an 1819 massacre of peaceful protesters. The crowd included many women, some carrying banners and flags, some carrying children, and all hoping for change. At stake was expanding voting rights. Not to include women, mind you, but to allow their working-class brothers, husbands, and fathers to have a voice in parliament. In the aftermath of the violence, perpetrated by what we might now call a volunteer police force, Shelley envisions each woman as akin to moral compass who will “point” to the perpetrators to turn them away in shame.

During the Romantic era in Britain, women’s roles in the political life of their community and country, at home and abroad, were debated, characterized and caricatured, and as often as not ignored. Shelley’s “great Assembly” reflects the historical reality of women’s participation and raises larger questions about what women were understood to be able to contribute, and what they did contribute, to social and political movements in the “revolutionary age” of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This is a course about politics and gender in (mostly) British poetry and nonfiction prose. We will read works by a variety of Romantic-era authors including Mary Wollstonecraft, Edmund Burke, Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Smith. Mary Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Anne Yearsley, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Germaine de Staël, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Liddiard, and others. We will explore women’s responses to the revolution in France and the Napoleonic wars; questions of migration and dispossession; fights over labour reform; efforts to improve women’s educations; and activities of abolitionists seeking to end the transatlantic slave trade. Along the way, we will explore historical and contemporary feminism(s) and feminist literary criticism.

• The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Poetry, edited by Joseph Black et al., Broadview, 2016, ISBN 9781554811311

Evaluation: participation (10%); book review (15%); proposal (15%); scholarly literature review (20%); final research essay (40%)

ENGL 566 - Special Studies in Drama 1

The trans eighteenth century.

Professor Fiona Ritchie Winter 2025 Time TBA

Description: This course will examine examples of cross-dressing in the long eighteenth century with the goal of exploring how the period understood sex and gender. Taking as its starting point the shift in representation that occurred in the English theatre from 1660 onwards when women began to play Shakespeare’s cross-dressed heroines (roles that were originally written for boy actors), we will consider actresses who made their name in breeches parts and travesty roles (such as Margaret Woffington and Dorothy Jordan) and examples of men dressing as women in performance (such as David Garrick as Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife and the roles that Samuel Foote wrote for himself). The autobiography of Charlotte Charke, a performer who dressed as a man inside and outside the theatre, will take us beyond the stage and into society. Other examples of real-life cross-dressers will include Hannah Snell (a female soldier), pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Reade, Mary Hamilton (who allegedly duped another woman into marriage by posing as a man), and the Chevalier d’Éon (who infiltrated the court of the Empress of Russia as a woman). Snell and d’Éon return us to the theatre as both performed in stage shows that showcased the unique ways in which they chose to express their gender identity.

Our discussion will be informed by scholarship on cross-dressing (Marjorie Garber, Laurence Senelick, Ula Lukszo Klein) and transgender eighteenth-century studies (Julia Ftacek, Jen Manion). We will consider cross-dressing as a way of expressing gender and/or sexuality, an opportunity for objectification and eroticisation, a practice that generated fears of deception, and a means of liberation. Throughout the course we will interrogate whether contemporary ideas of gender as spectrum rather than binary are in fact new.

Texts (provisional) :

Primary texts may include:

• Shakespeare’s cross-dressing plays (e.g., Twelfth Night ) and adaptations of them
• Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677)
• George Farquhar, The Constant Couple (1700) and The Recruiting Officer (1706)
• Henry Fielding, The Female Husband (1746)
• The Female Soldier; Or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (1750)
• A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke (1755)
• David Garrick, The Male Coquette (1757)

Other readings may include:

• Contextual primary source material (such as performance reviews, actor biographies, pamphlets, newspaper commentary)
• Historical fiction/drama
• Critical essays on primary sources
• Theoretical readings

Evaluation (tentative) : participation (20%) ; research presentation (20%) ; conference abstract and annotated bibliography (10%) ; paper (50%)

Format: Seminars based on group discussion (hence thorough preparation and consistent participation will be crucial)

ENGL 585 - Cultural Studies: Film

Image/sound/text.

Professor Ara Osterweil Fall 2024 Time: TBA. Class Meetings: once weekly, for three hours. Mandatory Weekly Screening: once weekly, for three hours.

Prerequisites: You must be a graduate student OR an undergraduate Honours student to register for this course; in all other cases, you need special permission from the instructor to register.

Expected Student Preparation: Please note that it is both a critical studies seminar AND a creative workshop. Some fluency in critical theory, cultural studies and/or art history is expected. Background in visual art, performance, poetry, dance, or music is encouraged but not required.

Description: This hybrid seminar/workshop is designed to: (1) teach students to respond critically and creatively to experimental art and literature; (2) enable students to create experimental forms of writing and visual media that respond to the texts we study.

Calling all creative misfits who long to engage in forms of critical thinking that expand beyond the traditional scholarly essay! By focusing on multi-media artworks that interrogate and undermine conventional forms of representation through their contrapuntal use of image, sound, and text, we shall explore how meaning in contemporary art is often generated across multiple registers. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to important examples of experimental film and video, poetry, Conceptual art, body art, photography, and installation art from the 1960s to the present. In addition to writing critically about these works, students will be asked to experiment with some of the artistic strategies we study to create their own self-directed artistic, literary, critical, or curatorial projects. In other words, students will not only be expected to discuss, think, and write about the works we study, but to design and execute creative projects that respond meaningfully to them. Occasionally, local and/or international artists will be invited to class to give special seminars and workshops. On other occasions, the class will meet outside of our normal meeting time and place to participate in screenings, exhibitions, and performances.

Films and artworks:

• Christmas on Earth (Barbara Rubin, US, 1963)
• Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, US, 1963)
• Wavelength (Michael Snow, US, 1967)
• T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. (Paul Sharits, US, 1968)
• Fly (Yoko Ono, US, 1971)
• ( nostalgia ) (Hollis Frampton, US, 1971)
• Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, US, 1972)
• Kitch’s Last Meal (Carolee Schneemann, US, 1973-1976)
• News from Home (Chantal Akerman, US/ Belgium, 1977)
• Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, France, 1983)
• The Blind. At Home (Sophie Calle, France, 1986)
• Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, US, 1989)
• Blue (Derek Jarman, UK, 1993)
• From Here I Saw What Happened and Cried (Carrie Mae Weems, 1995-1996)
• Les Goddesses (Moyra Davey, US, 2011)
• Love is the Message, The Message is Death (Arthur Jafa, US, 2016)
• Bird Calls (David Baumflek, Canada, 2018)
• Altiplano (Malena Szlam, Canada, 2018)
• earthearthearth (Daichi Saito, Canada, 2021)
• Quiet as its Kept ( Ja Tovia Gary, United States, 2023)
• Selected films by Sky Hopinka, including Lore (2019), When You’re Lost in the Rain (2018) and I’ll Remember You as You Were Not as What You’ll Become (2016)
• Feral Domestic (Sheilah & Dani Restack, 2022)

Texts: (provisional)

• Chantal Akerman, My Mother Laughs
• Terrance Hayes, American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin
• Fred Moten, All That Beauty
• Yoko Ono, Grapefruit
• Ara Osterweil, Flesh Cinema: The Corporeal Turn in American Avant-Garde Film
• Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
• Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Noopiming

Format: seminar, workshop, student “crit,” and mandatory weekly screening

Evaluation: short form writing; experimental slideshow (text + image); video portrait; final essay, video, manuscript, or installation

ENGL 607 - Middle English Literature

Piers plowman: visions for a just society .

Professor Michael Van Dussen Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: William Langland’s protean allegory Piers Plowman , written and revised over the last quarter of the fourteenth century, would come to inspire protesting labourers in 1381 and any number of religious reformists who found the plowman “Piers” to be a fitting mouthpiece for their critiques of institutional ills throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This embryonic allegorical poem begins in a “fair field full of folk” but quickly explodes into a challenging examination of the causes of injustice, societal division, and a quest to learn—through a process of intense questioning—how best to live in an imperfect world. In the process, Langland explores the workings of the English legal and educational systems; the corrupt exercise of authority; ethical treatment of the poor and the disabled; the workings of the mind, the soul, and the natural world; and virtually every branch and level of medieval society. Though the poem does envision the betterment of society, utopian fantasy is fleeting, quickly undermined in an enormously complex and troubling series of visions that refuse to “arrive” at a static or prescriptive program for living. Its protagonists witness and experience suffering and injustice, even as they imagine alternatives. The series of dreams and waking moments that make up Piers Plowman thus present visions “for,” but not necessarily “of,” a just society, all the while drawing on sophisticated traditions of theological, political, philosophical, and scientific learning.

Topics to be explored in this seminar include, but are not limited to, the just treatment of the poor; labour conditions; excess and material possessions; authority and corruption; education and literacy; law and justice; tyranny and revolt; debt and salvation; sin and mercy; the individual in society; and the faculties of the soul. Students in this seminar will read Piers Plowman and a series of poems in the “Plowman Tradition” in the original Middle English. No prior experience with the language is necessary or assumed; portions of several classes will be spent developing proficiency in Middle English.

Texts (provisional):

• William Langland, Piers Plowman (emphasis on the B-Text, with passages to compare from the A, C, and Z versions)
• Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede
• The Ploughman’s Tale
• The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe
• Mum and the Sothsegger
• Jack Upland , Friar Daw’s Reply , and Upland’s Rejoinder

Evaluation: Short papers (25%); long paper (50%); presentation (10%); participation (15%).

Maximum enrollment: 12 students

ENGL 661 - Seminar of Special Studies

Digital humanities.

Professor Richard So Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: This course provides hands-on training in the use of computers and statistical methods to analyze literature – an approach also known as “literary text mining.” In the past ten years, computational methods to study culture, particularly literary texts, have increasingly moved out of the margins. We’ve seen the publication of a string of important articles in major literary studies journals, and the release of several new monographs. At the same time, we’ve seen an increase in the number of academic positions advertised in the “digital humanities” and “cultural analytics” in English and literature departments. As research in this sub-field expands and improves, the digital humanities and cultural analytics will continue to grow, making larger and more significant interventions into the discipline. This course means to prepare graduate students in English and literature to perform applied research in the digital humanities. In this seminar, students will learn how to write computer code in Python – a standard computing language used in data science – and the rudiments of statistical methods useful for a data-driven analysis of literary texts. By the end of the course, students will be able to perform simple to intermediate computational and statistical analysis on literary corpora, such as collocations analysis, most distinctive words analysis, and topic modeling. Most of the core “shallow” methods for text analysis, like simple counting, as well as several “deeper” methods, like vector semantics, will be introduced in a live context. We will leverage the availability of a number of free online corpora – for example, a large collection of English-language novels from 1800 to 1923 – to build case studies. At the same time, the second half of the class will introduce excellent recent examples of digital humanist and cultural analytics research from scholars such as Ted Underwood, Andrew Piper, Lauren Klein, Michael Gavin, and several others. The purpose of this is two-fold: first, to allow students to be aware of the “cutting edge” in this field – the most interesting work that is currently happening – and have an opportunity to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and second, to allow them to replicate existing examples of DH work from the ground-up. With the instructor’s help, we will often reproduce these arguments to see how they work. Students will thus acquire a useful template to develop their own ideas. There are no prerequisites for this class. All that is required is a healthy dose of curiosity and open-mindedness. The course is aimed at literature students who do not think of themselves as “good at math,” or even imagine themselves as averse to “science.” The class will be challenging to students with no background in quantitative research insofar as it will train them in habits of thought somewhat alien to the humanities, such as mathematical logic and algorithmic thinking. However, the course will entirely be taught through a humanistic lens, meaning that the instructor will introduce all methods and concepts through literary-studies examples and the logic of familiar approaches like close reading. In other words, the course is not a seminar in “computer science”; it is a seminar in humanistic research that ideally will become useful as part of the student’s literary studies toolkit.

• Andrew Piper, Enumerations
• Sarah Allison, Reductive Reading
• Daniel Shore, Cyberformalism
• Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons
• Katherine Bode, A World of Fiction
• Franco Moretti, Distant Reading
• Other texts to be provided on myCourses

Evaluation (provisional) : weekly problem sets (50%); final project (25%); attendance and participation (25%).

Maximum Enrollment: 12 students.

ENGL 662 - Seminar of Special Studies

Modernist reading/reading modernism.

Professor Miranda Hickman Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Description: From the dense allusiveness of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Virginia Woolf’s multi-perspectival free indirect discourse, E.E. Cummings’ typographical antics and Joycean mischief to Gertrude Stein’s experimental “Steinese,” modernist poetry and prose challenged received ways of “how to read”—the phrase is Ezra Pound’s. As Laura Riding and Robert Graves observed in A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927), one of the earliest studies of modernism as a cultural phenomenon, the modernists often occasioned anxiety in the “plain reader,” obliging readers to reimagine their ordinary procedures and acculturate themselves to new ones better adapted to modernist rhythms and idioms. Poet Mina Loy quipped that “one had to go into training” to “get” such work as Stein’s; through both the difficulty of their signaling and often elaborate framing through notes, allusion, or schemata, modernist texts teach us how to read.

Bringing early twentieth-century reception of such modernist work together with current work in attentional studies and debates addressing how our culture reads now (e.g. Lucy Alford, Katherine Hayles, John Guillory, Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best, Rita Felski), this course addressing early twentieth-century experimental work considers how modernist texts demand and repay various modes of “close” reading; what might emerge from engaging them through modes of “distant” and “surface” reading; and how what Shklovsky called the “roughened” language of modernist texts obliges us to enter unfamiliar attentional modes, as well as heightening self-awareness of reading processes. Leading from such work, we also consider how modernist texts feature acts of reading and attention toward their work of observation, critique, and cultural intervention.

• Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
• T.S. Eliot, early poems and The Waste Land
• H.D., HERmione, Asphodel
• James Joyce, excerpts from Ulysses
• Mina Loy, Lost Lunar Baedeker ; Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose
• Marianne Moore, Complete Poems
• Ezra Pound, Cathay and The Cantos
• Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead
• Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
• Melvin Tolson, Rendezvous with America
• Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, The Waves

Evaluation: brief essay (25%), weekly responses (10%), oral presentation (20%), final essay (35%), seminar participation (10%)

ENGL 670 - Topics in Cultural Studies

Contemporary theories and practices of embodiment.

Professor Alanna Thain Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: Twenty-first-century cultural theory is marked by a corporeal turn, reconsidering questions of embodiment, sensation, affect, and materiality in relation to questions of cultural production, identity, and social and political concerns. This class will read broadly across key theories and perspectives on the body of the last decade, including consideration of authors whose work is seen as foundational to these approaches. In parallel we will explore media, performance, and somatics to explore these questions through exceptional and everyday practices. Key areas of inquiry include feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, with a particular emphasis on women-of-colour feminisms, queer theory, and trans studies; affect theory; critical race theory; Indigenous studies; questions of the nonhuman; disability studies; and theories of immaterial and affective labour. Students will develop a semester-long exploration of a practice of embodiment in dialogue with these works.

Texts may include :

• Sophie Lewis, Full Surrogacy Now
• Sadiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
• Edna Bonhomme and Alice Spawls, eds., After Sex
• José Munoz, The Sense of Brown
• Mel Chen, Intoxicated: Race, Disability, and Chemical Intimacy across Empire
• Alexander Weheliye, Feenin: R&B Music and the Materiality of BlackFem Voices and Technology
• Paul Preciado, Dysphoria Mundi and Orlando: My Political Biography
• Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
• Jean Ma, The Edges of Sleep
• Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
• Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor
• Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories
• Donna Haraway, Staying With the Trouble
• Leanne Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance
• Anna Tsing et al , The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
• Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies

Evaluation: practices project 70%; weekly responses 30%

Format: seminar and workshops

ENGL 680 - Canadian Literature

Alice munro.

Professor Robert Lecker Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Description: This course follows the career of an author who has been called “the best fiction writer now working in North America.” It starts by examining Lives of Girls and Women , Alice Munro’s first and only novel (really a collection of linked short stories) about a young female narrator coming of age in a small country town. In that work, Munro found the voice that would propel her toward international fame and a long publishing history connected with The New Yorker magazine. We will study a selection of Munro’s finest stories from a chronological perspective in order to better understand her evolving concerns and the development of her narrative techniques over five decades, culminating in her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 as “master of the contemporary short story.” This trajectory will introduce us to a range of material about modern life, female experience, family intrigue, sexual deviance, erotic awakening. Munro’s stories are deceptively accessible, yet they are the product of deft structuring, compressed symbolism, and subtle narrative design. As W.H. New says, they “embed more than announce, reveal more than parade.” In reading Munro’s short stories we will also consider many of the features that distinguish modern short story writing. Each class will focus on a particular story, but we will also engage in a series of learning exercises designed to broaden the reading experience and to improve interpretive reading methods. We might spend a class looking at how Munro constructs a single paragraph. We might spend another class examining the revisions she made to a particular story and ask what effect those revisions have on our reading of the text. We might have a debate about the credibility of a particular narrator. Is she really who she says she is or is she faking it? The idea is to experience the stories from multiple perspectives and to entertain our reading in the process. Students are expected to read approximately four stories per week. The course will include one film screening (out of scheduled class time), based on an adaptation of one of Munro’s most celebrated stories. In this seminar-style course, weekly contributions to class discussion are essential.

• Lives of Girls and Women
• My Best Stories

Evaluation: seminar presentation (20%); discussion questions prepared in advance (10%); short essay (20%); final essay (30%); attendance and participation in every class (20%).

Format: seminar (presentations and discussion)

ENGL 733 - Victorian Novel

Experimental realism.

Professor Tabitha Sparks Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Description: Victorian novels have long been subject to a historical lens that positions them as the precursors and latent foils to the revisionist, psychologically self-aware modernist novel. This class will examine several Victorian novels that critics have struggled to adapt to a conventional realist and historicist teleology. Rather than treat them as aberrations to the canon, we will approach their experimental design and proto-modern meanings as facets of a Victorian literary history that the dominant Romantic-Victorian-Modern-Postmodern chronology has elided. In addition to the novels, this course will engage with the critical history of the novel to think about how “realism,” broadly conceived, has diluted the narratological sophistication of the Victorian novel.

Novels: (provisional)

• Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1834)
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
• W.M. Thackeray, Lovel the Widower (1860)
• Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm (1883)
• Margaret Harkness, A City Girl: A Realistic Story (1887)
• George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (1889)
• Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle (1903)

Critics : (list subject to grow)

• Virginia Woolf
• Georg Lukacs
• Mikhail Bakhtin
• Patricia Waugh
• George Levine
• Elaine Freedgood
• Audrey Jaffe

Evaluation: class participation (20%); discussion leading (15%); short essay (25%); long essay (40%)

Format: seminar (discussion)

ENGL 770 - Studies in American Literature

Roots of the modern short story: poe, hawthorne, melville.

Professor Peter Gibian Fall Term 2024 Time: TBA

Description: This course will offer intensive study of short prose fictions and critical essays by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, as these foundational authors can be seen to work in dialogue with one another. We will explore aesthetic problems and cultural preoccupations crucial to mid-nineteenth-century America, studying at the same time how these authors break the ground for the emergence of the modern short story – anticipating the fundamental developments in form and theme that would become the bases for self-conscious, experimental short fiction produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

After a quick introductory review of some key works in contemporary short story theory, along with historical studies marking distinctions among the tale, the sketch, the novella and the emerging short story, we will devote about one month to each of the three authors—closely reading several of their lesser-known stories and essays while giving special attention to classic writings exploring a variety of fictional modes, such as: “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Man of the Crowd,” “The Purloined Letter,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Oval Portrait,” “The Birth-mark,” “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” The Scarlet Letter , “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” “Benito Cereno,” and Billy Budd, Sailor .

Expected Student Preparation: Previous course work in American Literature before 1900, or in 19th-century British fiction, or permission of instructor.

Texts: (tentative; editions of collected short fiction TBA):

• Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe
• Hawthorne, Selected Tales and Sketches
• Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
• Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor, and Selected Tales or Great Short Works of Herman Melville

Evaluation: (tentative): participation in seminar discussions, 20%; series of one-page textual analyses, 20%; oral presentation, 20%; final research paper, 40%

ENGL 776 - Film Studies

Film thinks itself.

Professor Ned Schantz Fall 2024 Time: TBA

Description: This course will explore film theory through and against the tradition and current practice of meta-cinema, broadly construed. It is designed to appeal to students of widely ranging film backgrounds—certainly it can provide a substantial introduction to film studies for literary specialists; for more experienced cinema students, it can perhaps defamiliarize typical viewing habits and critical moves. Our themes will be loosely divided into three clusters—Part I (visibility), Part II (time and death) and Part III (production and performance)—though expect and be prepared to seek out connections throughout the course.

Possible films include: Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924), The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933), Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder 1950), Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953), La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963), Samuel Beckett’s Film (Alan Schneider, 1965), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Take One (William Greaves, 1968), Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973), Daughter Rite (Michelle Citron, 1980), Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990), After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda 1998), Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001), The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000), Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003), Caché (Haneke, 2005), Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012), The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012), The Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012), Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2012), Long Day’s Journey into Night (Bi Gan, 2017)

Evaluation: viewing journals 55%, participation 30%, presentation 15%

ENGL 778 - Studies in Visual Culture

The contemporary graphic novel.

Professor Sean Carney Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Description: How do you “read” a graphic novel? Does one “read” pictures, and if so, what does this mean? This course examines the unique formal and aesthetic qualities of the contemporary adult graphic novel, with particular emphasis on visual analysis. Considerable attention will therefore be paid to close reading and to the analysis of stylistic elements that distinguish comics as a unique artistic phenomenon. The course does not provide an historical survey of comics, nor does it examine popular genres such as superhero comics. The emphasis of the course leans towards recent graphic novels by single authors and narratives oriented to the adult reader. The texts will be chosen based not only on historical impact, verifiable influence, or general popularity with readers, but also with an eye to comics that experiment and expand the boundaries of the medium. There will be four thematic groupings: revisionist narratives within the mainstream, memoirs and confessionals, new journalism, and auteur comix.

Texts: writers and artists may include: Kate Beaton, Ebony Flowers, Thi Bui, Nick Drnaso, Ben Passmore, Sarah Glidden, Nora Krug, Adrian Tomine, Guy Delisle, David Mazzuchelli, Debbie Dreschler, James Sturm, Lynda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, Howard Cruse, Eddie Campbell, Art Spiegelman, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Alison Bechdel, David Collier, Ben Katchor, Marjane Satrapi, Rutu Modan, Jason Lutes, Jeff Smith, Joe Sacco, Carla Speed McNeil, David B., Chris Ware, Los Bros. Hernandez, Nick Abadzis, Rick Veitch, Phoebe Gloeckner, Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb, Jack Jackson, Craig Thompson, James Kochalka, Tom Gauld, Ed Piskor, Jeff Lemire, Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, Gene Luen Yang, Faryl Dalrymple, Matt Kindt, Stephen Collins, Will Eisner, Alex Robinson, Scott McCloud

Format : seminar and discussion

Evaluation: seminar presentation with accompanying written component (20%); two 10-page essays (30% each); class participation (20%)

ENGL 785 - Studies in Theory

Bad Mathematics

Professor Amber Rose Johnson Winter 2025 Time: TBA

Description : This seminar explores how the language, concepts, and iconography of mathematics and physics operate in contemporary Black Studies. We will begin with Katherine McKittrick’s seminal essay, “Mathematics Black Life,” which articulates the ways in which Blackness was written into modernity, by way of colonialism and transoceanic chattel slavery, through numerical representation and quantification: weight, price, quantity, age, etc. We will rely heavily on the theoretical guidance of Sylvia Wynter, who explicates precisely how this “knowledge system that mathematizes the dysselected” came to be solidified through interlocking economic and juridical systems. Together we will consider how this “mathematization” continues to operate today through surveillance systems, digital data collection, and other capitalist strategies of documentation. Our first task is to understand how this same knowledge system produces both common understandings of our shared material world and also hierarchical social systems that justify dehumanization and violence. Contemporary Black artists, writers, and thinkers, however, are increasingly mis-using these disciplinary tools against their deadly tendencies. The second half of the course will turn our attention to contemporary Black cultural workers who differently deploy the language and symbols of mathematics and physics in their own work toward radical ends. Our theoretical guides for the second half of the course will include Denise Ferreira da Silva, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and Michelle M. Wright, all of whom exemplify how core assumptions in math and physics discourses have been critically analyzed and repurposed by Black feminist thinkers. Together we will query how these artists and writers are pushing, stretching, and reformulating the language and operations of math and physics in their creative work in order to redefine Blackness and humanness. We will consider how these cultural producers provide different entry points to consider concepts including space, time, measurement, (e)valuation, and entanglement. The course will draw from a range of genres including poetry, film, visual art, live performance, novels, theory, and criticism. Examples include visual artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s 2021 exhibition, “Everyone Will be Saved Through Algebra (A Casual Mathematics),” Camonghne Felix’s experimental memoir Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscaluculation, and Kevin Jerome Everson’s short film, Partial Differential Equations (2020). Students will have the option of producing either a final paper or a creative project with an accompanying critical reflection.

Texts: (Tentative)

• Dear Science and Other Stories by Katherine McKittrick
• Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation by Camonghne Felix
• Physics of Blackness: Beyond Middle Passage Epistemology by Michelle M. Wright
• Toward a Global Idea of Race by Denise Ferreira da Silva
• Long Division by Kiese Laymon
• Visual and performance art by artists including Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Fields Harrington, Kevin Jerome Everson, and others
• Other essays and materials made available from MyCourses and/or McGill Library

Evaluation: seminar presentation (15%), midterm essay (25%), final paper or creative project with critical reflection (30%), active participation / weekly blog (30%)

Department and University Information

Department of english.

• Writer-in-Residence
• Land Acknowledgement

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• Undergraduate study
• 2024 Degree programmes A‑Z
• Software Engineering (Graduate Apprenticeship)

Undergraduate  

Software Engineering (Graduate Apprenticeship) BSc

As a Graduate Apprentice in Software Engineering, you can have it all – a degree, salary, and career at the same time. Achieve a BSc (Hons) in Software Engineering in 4 years, splitting your time between university-based, on-campus study (20%) and workplace learning (80%).

Why be a Graduate Apprentice?

• Enjoy all the benefits of student life – study alongside your peers, access student support services and university resources, and learn from leading experts in their fields.
• Earn a full-time salary, even when undertaking blocks of study.
• No student fees – this programme is fully funded for eligible students by the Scottish Funding Council via the Students Award Agency for Scotland (SAAS).

You can apply directly to our diverse range of partner employers (meaning your UCAS applications are not affected).

• Find out more: Graduate Apprenticeships
• September start
• Session dates
• Software Engineering (Graduate Apprenticeship) BSc (Hons) 4 year degree
• Glasgow: Gilmorehill campus and Your workplace

Register your interest for more information

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Programme structure

The teaching is frontloaded with skills most relevant to the workplace, enabling apprentices to become valuable team members faster. To gain a complete grounding in software engineering, theoretical foundations are taught at a later stage.

Years 1 and 2

University-based learning is delivered to graduate apprentices in intensive 8-week teaching blocks during November to December and March to April. This allows you to spend extended, uninterrupted periods in the workplace outside of these teaching blocks. By delivering university-based teaching in solid blocks, our unique programme structure mitigates the effects of context switching – this has been found to help you learn faster.

Years 3 and 4

University-based learning follows a day-release model and you will take classes alongside Honours students from our traditional degree programmes. You have an opportunity to specialise if you wish and can choose subjects from the University’s full honours catalogue of electives, taught by leading experts in the relevant fields.

Programme alteration or discontinuation The University of Glasgow endeavours to run all programmes as advertised. In exceptional circumstances, however, the University may withdraw or alter a programme. For more information, please see: Student contract .

Entry requirements

For entry in 2024, summary of entry requirements for software engineering (graduate apprenticeship).

All candidates must hold an offer of employment with one of our Partner Employers  and be eligible for SAAS funding , so this course is not suitable for international candidates or normally for candidates from the rest of the UK*.

*Candidates from the rest of the UK may be eligible if they are resident in Scotland from 1 August 2024.

SQA Higher Entry Requirements

• BBBB or above achieved by S6.
• Additional requirements: Higher Mathematics at B or above. Highers should include two Science subjects.

SQA Higher Adjusted Entry Requirements

• No Adjusted Higher Requirements. We do, however, recognise alternative routes to study: see Access Glasgow for eligibility .

A-level Standard Entry Requirements

• Additional requirements: A-level Mathematics.

IB Standard Entry Requirements

• 36 (6,6,5 HL) – 32 (6,5,5 HL)  
• Additional requirements: HL Mathematics (Analysis & Approaches).
• Grade B achieved in Computing, Software Development or Computer Games Development
• All the above MUST include the Maths Calculus Module OR candidates must have Higher Maths at B or above.

Modern Apprentice

• Merit or Distinction achieved in Diploma for Information Technology and Telecommunications
• Professionals SCQF Level 8
• Higher Maths at B or above.

Admissions guidance

• Find out more about entry requirements and alternative qualifications

English language

For applicants whose first language is not English, the University sets a minimum English Language proficiency level.

English language requirements

International english language testing system (ielts) academic module (not general training).

• 6.5 with no sub-test under 6.0.
• Tests must have been taken within 2 years 5 months of start date. Applicants must meet the overall and subtest requirements using a single test.

Common equivalent English language qualifications

All stated English tests are acceptable for admission to this programme:

TOEFL (ib, my best or athome)

• 90 with minimum R 20, L 19, S 19, W 23.
• Tests must have been taken within 2 years 5 months of start date. Combined scores from two tests taken within 6 months of each other can be considered.

PTE (Academic)

• 60 with minimum 59 in all sub-tests.

Glasgow International College English Language (and other foundation providers)

• Tests are accepted for academic year following sitting.

University of Glasgow Pre-sessional courses

Cambridge english qualifications.

• Cambridge Advanced English (CAE): 176 overall, no subtest less than 169
• Cambridge Proficiency in English (CPE): 176 overall, no subtest less than 169

School Qualifications

• iGCSE English or ESOL 0522/0500, grade C
• International Baccalaureate English A SL5 or HL5
• International Baccalaureate English B SL6 or HL5
• SQA National 5 English or ESOL, grade B
• SQA Higher English or ESOL, grade C
• Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education, English Language grade 4
• West African Examination Council, Senior Secondary School Certificate, English grade C6

Alternatives to English Language qualification

• Undergraduate degree from English speaking country (including Canada if taught in English)
• Undergraduate 2+2 degree from English speaking country
• Undergraduate 2+2 TNE degree taught in English in non-English speaking country
• Masters degree from English speaking country
• Masters degree (equivalent on NARIC to UK masters degree) taught in English in non-English speaking country.

For international students, the Home Office has confirmed that the University can choose to use these tests to make its own assessment of English language ability for visa applications to degree level programmes. The University is also able to accept an IELTS test (Academic module) from any of the 1000 IELTS test centres from around the world and we do not require a specific UKVI IELTS test for degree level programmes. We therefore still accept any of the English tests listed for admission to this programme.

Pre-sessional courses

The University of Glasgow accepts evidence of the required language level from the English for Academic Study Unit Pre-sessional courses. We also consider other BALEAP accredited pre-sessional courses:

• School of Modern Languages & Cultures: English for Academic Study
• BALEAP guide to accredited courses

What do I do if...

my language qualifications are below the requirements?

The University's School of Modern Languages and Cultures offers a range of Pre-sessional courses  to bring you up to entry level. The course is accredited by BALEAP, the UK professional association for academic English teaching.

my language qualifications are not listed here?

Please contact  External Relations

If you require a Tier 4 student visa, your qualification must be one of the secure English language tests accepted by UK Border Agency:

• UK Border Agency Tier 4 English Language requirements
• UKBA list of approved English language tests  [pdf]

Visa requirements and proof of English language level

It is a visa requirement to provide information on your level of English based on an internationally recognised and secure English language test. All test reports must be no more than 2 years old . A list of these can be found on the UK Border Agency website . If you have never taken one of these tests before, you can get an initial idea of your level by using the Common European Framework self-assessment grid which gives you a level for each skill (e.g. listening B1/writing B2 etc.) However, please note that this is not a secure English language test and it is not sufficient evidence of your level of English for visa requirements.

Further information about English language:  School of Modern Languages & Cultures: English for Academic Study

Career prospects

In 2023 the first cohort of graduates completed their apprenticeships and 100% are in positive destinations. Many have continued with the employer they studied their apprenticeship with, some have gone onto advanced roles with other employers and others have gone on to advanced studies.

• See  our Employer Partners

Fees and funding

All students applying for a Graduate Apprenticeship also apply to the Students Award Agency for Scotland (SAAS) to have their tuition fees paid. SAAS pays tuition fees for Graduate Apprentices directly to the university in the same way that fees for other Higher Education (HE) courses are managed.

The eligibility requirements for SAAS funding for Graduate Apprenticeships are broader than for other HE courses.

Rather than receiving a student loan or bursary for living expenses from SAAS, you will receive a fulltime salary from Year 1 above the living wage from the employer you are working with. 

How to apply

The application process sits outside UCAS. You apply directly to our employer partners and we will support you through this process.

If you are interested in applying, we recommend that you contact the Graduate Apprenticeship Team who can provide advice on current opportunities with our employer partners as well as support you with your applications to employers. You can also choose apply directly to most of our partner employers.

Visit  Graduate Apprenticeships  for more information on how we can support your application and to view current vacancies.

Employers will advertise vacancies from November to July for the course beginning in October.

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Related programmes

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