Courses of Study

English graduate study leads to the Master of Arts degree and/or the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Students work closely with graduate faculty in small seminars that average eight students, in one-on-one independent and directed readings, and in workshops on writing and teaching. There are no required courses or courses of study. Instead, students choose from among the seminars offered each semester according to their individual interests and particular professional needs. Special interest tutorials often supplement graduate seminars.
M.A. and Ph.D. students are encouraged to work in the full range of subjects defined by our faculty's expertise and by our internationally renowned archival holdings of manuscripts and books in McFarlin Library. Specific clusters of study that carry the advantage of faculty depth and the potential for original research are:

Twentieth-century literature--Modern and Contemporary British, Irish, and American literatures;

Nineteenth-century literature--British and European Romanticism, Victorian literature, ante-bellum and post Civil War American literature;

American studies, cultural and gender studies, African American literature, and women's literature.

The department also offers seminars in Renaissance and Eighteenth-century literature, in ethnic and post-colonial literatures, in critical theory, in the pedagogy of composition, and in the creative writing of fiction and poetry.
Faculty interest in art, architecture, classical culture, history, history of science, intellectual history, law, medicine, philosophy, and social theory provide further selective opportunities for interdisciplinary and comparatist work.
The Master of Arts program is a flexible one requiring 36 credit hours of graduate-level course work that includes a culminating directed research or directed writing project.

There is no thesis or comprehensive examination. M.A. students, in consultation with faculty, can tailor their programs to prepare for careers in creative writing, the media arts, or the teaching of general literature and writing composition in community or small colleges, and at secondary or preparatory schools. M.A. students planning doctoral study can tailor their coursework to support projected fields of study and research and to anticipate professional ambitions as critics, scholars, teachers of a broad range of literature, teachers of college and professional writing, teachers of rhetoric and the pedagogy of composition, scholarly research writers, and professors of specialized areas of literature.
The Doctor of Philosophy program is fully flexible in coursework and focused by student interest in specific clusters of study that carry faculty depth of expertise and library archival resources. Students take 36 credit hours of graduate coursework beyond the master's degree, and an additional 24 hours of directed study, research and writing that culminates in an approved dissertation project and final manuscript. A proven reading knowledge of one foreign language (classical or modern) and the

successful completion of a qualifying examination, taken after the completion of course work, are necessary before students can proceed to formal work on the dissertation. The examination encompasses one primary and two secondary fields chosen by the student in consultation with faculty advisors. The primary field and one secondary field must be in literary historical periods; the third field is frequently critical theory and/or method but it may also be a literary historical period.
Applicants to the M.A. program must hold a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university, usually with at least 18 hours or the equivalent of work in literature and language (exclusive of composition or elementary and intermediate foreign language courses). Acceptable scores on the general tests of the Graduate Record Examination must be presented.
Applicants to the Ph.D. program must hold a master's degree in English or the equivalent from an accredited university, and must submit acceptable scores on the general tests of the Graduate Record Examination.

Most of the images on these pages are photographs of items in McFarlin Library Special Collections. The Special Collections web page is available at www.lib.utulsa.edu/speccoll, and more general information about the library's holdings and services is available at www.lib.utulsa.edu .