Department of English Graduate Programs
Our MA and PhD in English combine rigorous disciplinary training and scholarship
with opportunities to pursue exciting new avenues of creative and public writing.
The Department of English offers programs in English studies leading to the Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. Our faculty are experts in established and emerging fields of English studies, acclaimed creative writers, and prolific public authors with recent writing in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker. With our distinctive emphasis on multiple forms of writing, we encourage students to pursue literary and scholarly work that combines intellectual rigor with creativity and to develop projects that reach new audiences inside and outside the academy.
Our coursework for the MA and the PhD provides advanced disciplinary training in English studies, in periods from the early modern to the contemporary as well as areas like medical humanities, global poetry and ecocriticism, and also offers students extensive teacher training.
Students with an existing creative practice and an interest in scholarly work may opt to complete a creative dissertation with a rigorous critical apparatus. Interested students should be aware that they will still fulfill all standard scholarly requirements of the degree, including coursework and exams. Whichever option they choose, our vibrant community offers mentorship and encouragement to pursue writing across a variety of genres and audiences.
Through our weekly departmental colloquium and affiliated Writers House, we host an extensive series of talks, roundtables, readings, workshops and discussions. These give students the opportunity to interact with and learn from scholars, poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, journalists and publishers, and to participate in key debates about the future of the field.
Both our PhD and our MA are fully funded programs, with tuition waivers, stipends, and benefits for all admitted students. Cleveland is uniquely affordable as a place to live, and our students enjoy our location in the cultural hub of University Circle, home to the Cleveland Art Museum, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and more.
We have a successful track record of preparing our graduates for academic positions at colleges and universities, for related work in higher education, and for nonacademic careers. Recent graduates have gone on to academic positions at institutions including The University of Pennsylvania, The University of Michigan, Roger Williams University (TT) and Murray State University (TT); further graduate study at The Ohio State University, The University of Washington St. Louis and Fordham University; and employment as grant writers, university administrators, teachers, non-profit professionals and technical authors.
Graduate director: Maggie Vinter Department chair: Walt Hunter
Application link Deadline: December 15th
English-Grad-Studies-Brochure-2024-2025
Doctoral Program Goals and Objectives
Ohio Board of Regents’ Advisory Committee on Graduate Studies
Review of University Doctoral Programs
Last program review: 2015
Next scheduled program review: 2023
Goals and objectives revised: 2015