The Department of English roots its Graduate Program in recognition of the African Diaspora as a founding event of modern history and culture. The courses of the Department address such fundamental literary issues as genre and period formation, authorial techniques, rhetorical strategies, thematic motifs, and critical theories. Attention to these issues is intended to foster the skills in critical reading, research, and analysis requisite to professional careers in the language arts. At the same time, the Program generally conceives its offerings within paradigms of the changes wrought by conflict, accommodation, and adjustment in the passage from traditional to modern and contemporary ways of life and writing. Substantive specialization may be gained in the various periods of African American, American, British, and Caribbean literatures, as well as in comparative studies among those fields and in Literary Criticism. In addition, the Graduate Program in English takes inspiration from the heritage of eloquence in those literatures and designs its courses and requirements so that our graduates will possess uncommon skills in writing. The Department seeks to sustain a community of learning where students, under the direction of the faculty, participate with their peers—and the faculty too—in creative scholarship and lively interchange centering upon the significance of literature. Toward that end, the Graduate Program demands that students read widely in the literatures written in English, become familiar with the research and critical problems generated within the fields we offer, and produce work that contributes to our collective knowledge. The Department of English awards two graduate degrees: the Master of Arts in English and the Doctor of Philosophy in English.

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