Department of English Language and Literature

Graduate students in English work with a distinguished faculty of critics and scholars to develop their own interests over a broad range of traditional and innovative fields of research. The program aims at attaining a wide substantive command of British, American, and other English-language literatures. In addition to specializations in the full range of chronologically defined fields, the program includes generous offerings in colonial and post-colonial studies, African American Studies, gender studies, and cinema and other media studies. Students are also trained in textual studies, editing, literary and cultural history, and a variety of critical theories and methodologies. The interests of both faculty and students often carry through to neighboring disciplines as well—to anthropology, sociology, history, art history, linguistics, philosophy—and the University provides a supportive environment for advanced studies of this kind.

The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The program leading to the Ph.D. degree aims primarily to prepare students for independent work as teachers, scholars, and critics by developing their abilities to pose and investigate problems in the advanced study of literatures in English and in film. Departmental requirements are designed to lead to the doctorate in five to six years after the A.B. Course work, the preparation of oral fields examinations, workshops, teaching, and the dissertation introduce students to a variety of textual modes, critical methodologies, and historical/cultural problems; provide extensive practice in research, discussion, argument, and writing; and develop pedagogical skills through supervised teaching. While a student’s progress will be carefully monitored and periodically evaluated by individual advisors and the department, all students will be accepted into the program on the assumption that they will proceed to the Ph.D.

In the first two years of the Ph.D. program, students are required to enroll in six graduate courses each year (including two to three seminars the first year and at least three the second year), and to optionally submit one seminar paper as a master’s essay in the spring quarter of the first year. All first year students also participate in a two-quarter colloquium designed, in the fall quarter, to introduce theoretical and practical questions posed by the study of literature (through readings in a range of theoretical and literary texts); and, in the winter quarter, to consider problems in the production and transmission of texts and the editorial practices and bibliographic tools that may be used to address them. In the spring of their second year students will also take a one-quarter course in various approaches to the teaching of literature and composition.

Note: Students entering with an M.A. degree in English will be asked to complete one year of coursework (6 courses, including at least 3 seminars), participate in the fall quarter colloquium, and take the fall quarter course on teaching in either their second or third years.

Students in their third and fourth years will normally teach at least one quarter-course each year: initially as course assistants in departmental courses for undergraduates; then as lecturers in the departmental methods and issues course for majors, as bachelor’s paper supervisors, or as instructors in courses of their own design. Other opportunities for teaching are available as writing tutors, assistants in introductory humanities and social sciences core courses, instructors in the College Writing Program course in expository writing (which provides its own training in the teaching of composition); or at other area colleges and universities. The department believes that both training and experience in teaching is an important part of the graduate program.

The Degree of Master of Arts

Students seeking a master’s degree should apply to the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH), a three-quarter program of interdisciplinary study in a number of areas of interest to students, including literature and film. MAPH permits students to take almost all of their courses in the English Department, sharing classes with students in the Ph.D. program. The resulting degree is equivalent to a master’s in English.

Further details of the MAPH program are available from the Dean of Students for the Division of the Humanities, to whom students should apply for admission.

Inquiries

For more information on the department’s programs and requirements, write to the Department of English, The University of Chicago, 1050 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637.

This text was last revised on 9/03/2003.