The faculty in the Department of English offer the M.A. degree in English, the Master of Teaching English as a Second Language degree, and the Ph.D. degree in English.
Students admitted to the Master of Education degree program with a major in Secondary Education may also elect English as the subject matter field. See “Master of Education” degree.
Students may also pursue an interdisciplinary program leading to the Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing, offered by the faculties in the Departments of English and Theater. See “Master of Fine Arts” for M.F.A. program descriptions and requirements.
MASTER OF ARTS
This degree is designed to provide further cultural and professional advancement for students of English.
Admission Requirements. The department requires that applicants have an undergraduate major in English and a 3.00 GPA in courses taken in the major field. Those who do not have a major in English are encouraged to register as nondegree students while they take courses in areas of deficiency as identified by the advisor.
Deadline for admission applications and requests for financial assistance, including teaching assistantships, is February 1. Incomplete files are not considered.
Applicants for the M.A. program in English with concentrations in literature and language and rhetoric and composition are required to submit Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test scores, three letters of recommendation, a personal statement of aims and purposes, and an academic writing sample.
Applicants for the M.A. program with a concentration in English linguistics must show completion of one upper-division course in a linguistics-related field, and must submit a personal statement of aims and purposes and three letters of recommendation. GRE scores are not required.
Applicants for the M.A. program in English with a concentration in comparative literature must prove fluency in a foreign language to a level sufficient for graduate study.
Program of Study. A student may pursue a concentration in comparative literature, English linguistics, literature and language, or rhetoric and composition.
For the concentration in comparative literature, a candidate must complete 36 semester hours of graduate courses, with a minimum of 12 hours being taken in the Department of Languages and Literatures. Included in the 36 hours must be ENG 500 Research Methods, ENG 501 Introduction to Comparative Literature, and ENG 599 Thesis.
For the concentration in English linguistics, a candidate must complete a minimum of 30 semester hours of graduate courses. The 30 semester hours must include LIN 500 Research Methods, 511, 514, one LIN 591 Seminar, or their equivalents chosen in consultation with the advisor, and ENG 599 Thesis. Electives are chosen in consultation with the advisor.
For the concentration in literature and language, a candidate must complete a minimum of 30 semester hours. The 30 semester hours must include ENG 500 Research Methods; a course in Literary Theory; ENG 599 Thesis, a 12-hour distribution requirement; and six hours of other electives. Two courses selected must carry ENG 591 Seminar credit.
For the concentration in rhetoric and composition, a candidate must complete a minimum of 30 hours of graduate courses, including a 12-hour core, a six-hour thesis, and 12 elective hours that must include six hours of ENG 591 Seminar and may include nine hours of appropriate graduate courses outside the English department.
Foreign Language Requirements. A reading knowledge of French, German, Spanish, or other suitable language is required. The choice of language must be approved by the student’s supervisory committee.
Comprehensive Examinations. A comprehensive examination is required for students in the comparative literature concentration. (A detailed description of its scope is available in the Department of English.)
Thesis Requirements. A thesis is required.
Final Examinations. A final oral examination in defense of the thesis is required.
M.TESL
The Master of Teaching English as a Second Language degree is designed for students who seek a professionally oriented graduate education. For information, see “Master of Teaching English as a Second Language.”
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
See “Doctor of Philosophy” for general requirements.
Admission Requirements. Applicants for the Ph.D. degree in English are required to submit scores on the GRE (verbal and advanced literature sections), three letters of recommendation, a personal statement of aims and purposes, and an academic writing sample. Deadline for admission applications and requests for financial aid, including teaching assistantships, is February 1. Incomplete files are not considered.
Areas of Concentration. The Ph.D. degree in English offers concentrations in the following areas:
Literature. A minimum of 60 hours of graduate courses (exclusive of dissertation) beyond the bachelor’s degree constitutes the formal course preparation. Specifically required are three hours in history of the English language (for example, LIN 505 American English, ENG 507 Old English, ENG 508 Old English Literature, ENG 509 Middle English, and LIN 548 Studies in English Language); six hours in theory courses; and the following distribution requirement: English literature before 1660 (including one course in each of the following: Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton); English literature 1660–1900; British literature since 1900; American literature before 1900; and American literature since 1900. Students must take a minimum of five graduate seminars en route to the Ph.D. degree, at least three of which must be taken in the doctoral program at ASU. Up to 12 hours of course work taken outside the department may be counted toward the degree.
Rhetoric/Composition and Linguistics. A minimum of 60 hours of graduate courses (exclusive of dissertation) beyond the bachelor’s degree constitutes the formal course preparation. Specifically required are three hours of language (for example, LIN 505 American English, ENG 507 Old English, ENG 508 Old English Literature, ENG 509 Middle English, LIN 548 Studies in English Language); six hours in theory courses; and the following distribution requirements: Syntax/Semantics; Rhetorical Theory; Composition Theory and Method; Philosophy and Theories of Pedagogy; Pragmatics/Sociolinguistics. Students must take a minimum of five graduate seminars en route to the Ph.D. degree, at least three of which must be taken in the doctoral program at ASU. Up to 12 hours of course work taken outside the department may be counted toward the degree.
Foreign Language Requirements. A competent reading knowledge of a language other than modern English is required. The requirement can be met by
Ph.D. Examinations. The Ph.D. examination consists of three parts. Part I is a portfolio of three essays, representing different historical periods or fields of concentration and employing more than one critical approach. After successful completion of Part I, the student may advance to Part II, a three-hour written exam in the student’s area of specialization based on a bibliography compiled by the student and approved by the student’s supervisory committee. Part III is a colloquy, based on a written prospectus, defining the topic, scope, and significance of the dissertation.
Dissertation Requirements. (See “Research and Dissertation Requirements.”) The subject of the dissertation is decided in consultation with the chair of the student’s supervisory committee, subject to approval of the director of the Ph.D. program.
Final Examinations. A final examination in defense of the dissertation, arguing for its method and conclusions, is required.
RESEARCH ACTIVITY
Recent and current research by the Department of English faculty includes the following titles and areas: Old English poetry; Arthurian romance; Renaissance literature; the Elizabethan masque; Shakespeare’s plays in performance; Spenser biography; wordplay in Milton; literature of the age of discovery and encounter; literature of the Restoration; textual edition of Smollett (nine volumes) and Johnson (three volumes); letters of William Michael Rossetti; Victorian poetry; American sea fiction; Melville; reception of Dickinson’s poetry, bibliography of Dickinson criticism; 19th-century American literary periodicals; American writers’ responses to Darwin (from Howells to Hemingway); Kate Chopin; Sehnsucht in 20th-century American literature; Faulkner; biblical backgrounds for literature; Chicana/o literature; film history; film making in Arizona; science fiction and fantasy; literature and aging; gender studies; contemporary literary theory; translation theory; censorship in American schools; young adult literature; classical, 18th-century and modern rhetoric; stylistics; Latin American literature; composition theory; history of the English curriculum; literary language and the type-token ratio; sociolinguistics; pragmatics and discourse analysis; language and politics; language and gender; iconicity in syntax, connectionism and language teaching; phonology; natural language processing; language typology; language acquisition; English morphological structure; performance and contemporary theater; literatures of the Americas; gender studies in comparative contexts; science and literature; history of secondary English teaching; Irish literature; gay and lesbian studies; post colonialism; Native American literature; Afro-Caribbean literature; Black women writers; modern and contemporary drama; African American literature and popular culture; the representation of fasting women in early modern discourse; early modern prose fiction; contemporary multicultural literature; colonialism and culture; travel literature; William Blake.
Among recent books published by the faculty are Gospel Fictions; As Far Away as China; Perspectives on Official English; On the Rim of the Mandala; Body Betrayer; Snow Water Cove; Writing Arguments; Groom Falconer; The Lime Orchard Woman; News of the World; The Old English Verse Saints’ Lives; The Origins of Faulkner’s Art; Richard Brautigan; Screenwriting: A Method; Thematic Relations; Truants; Worlds Within Women: Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women; Faulkner’s Poetry; Emily Dickinson’s Critical Reception in the 1890s: A Documentary History; Studies in American Indian Literature; American Indian Women: A Guide to Research; Sacrificial Smoke (trans.); Expedition of Humphry Clinker (ed.); Playing With Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit (ed.); Dryden’s Aeneid: The English Virgil; Radio Sky; Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender and Power (ed.); Teodoro Luna’s Two Kisses; Teaching and Learning English Worldwide (ed.); Only a Mother (trans.); The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (ed.); The History and Adventures of an Atom (ed.); The Clouds of Magellan; Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Its Sources; American College Life in English Communication; Your Reading; Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography; Writing Arguments; Voodoo Dreams; The Instinct for Bliss; Inspiring Literacy: Literature for Children and Young Adults (ed.); Men Writing the Feminine: Literature, Theory, and the Question of Genders; Lushoot-seed Dictionary (ed.); Writing and Being; Sea Brothers: The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby Dick to Present; Elizabeth Bishop: Her Poetics of Loss; Ismael Reed; Sidney Lumet; Charreria Mexicana An Equestrian Folk Tradition; Gabriela Mistral: An Artist and Her People; Cynewulf: Basic Readings (ed.); Magic City; Presenting M.E. Ker; A Beowulf Handbook; Bob Rafelson; Humor in Irish Literature; Humor in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration; Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England (ed.); Pig Cookies; The Hotel Eden; Fortress of the Sun; The Descent of Love: Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction; Desire and Contradiction: Imperial Visions and Domestic Debates in Victorian Literature; British Imperial Literature, 1870–1940: Writing and the Administration of the Empire; The Rise of Functional Categories; Verbal Agreement and the Grammar behind its Breakdown; Romantic Dynamics: The Poetics of Physicality; Who Wrote the Gospels; Women Shapeshifters: Transforming the Contemporary Novel; Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic; Women Imagine Change: A Global Anthology of Women’s Resistance from 600 B.C to Present; Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women; Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile; Happiness (trans. and ed.); The Writer’s Toolbox; Living Rhetoric and Composition: Stories of the Discipline; Thinking and Writing by Design; Ntozake Shange: A Critical Study of the Plays; Anne Conway: The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (trans. and ed.).
English faculty currently serve as editors of Explorations in Ethnic Studies; Modern Scandinavian Literature in Translation; Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature; Centennial Review; Manoa: New Chicano Writing. Other faculty serve on the editorial boards of Age of Johnson, English Literature in Transition, MELUS, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Empirical Inquiry, Modern Language Journal, Revista Argentina de Linguistic, Rhetoric Review, Resources for American Literary Study, Dickinson Studies, and 18th Century: A Current Bibliography; Victorian Poetry; WPA: Writing Program Administration; Studies in American Indian Literature; English Journal; English Education.
Omnibus Graduate Courses: See omnibus graduate courses that may be offered.
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