M.A. in English

Program Overview

Since the turn of the century UVM’s English Department has run one of the strongest terminal English MA programs in the nation. Our diverse student body includes English graduates planning to go on to PhD programs; teachers seeking to deepen their knowledge of English literature and theory; scholars and artists from Vermont, the nation, and the globe who wish to immerse themselves in literary studies. Our dedicated graduate faculty teach rigorous seminars in wide-ranging and relevant specialist fields and provide one-to-one supervision of independent research.

The English Department strives to create a collaborative and inclusive environment for graduate students. We offer seminars in a range of periods and genres in American, British, and postcolonial literatures, as well as composition, rhetoric, and critical theory. Students choose either the thesis track or the comprehensive track (see details below) and work closely with faculty while pursuing an individualized research plan. Faculty members are engaged in current research in diverse areas of expertise. Our fully funded Graduate Teaching Assistantships offer pedagogical training and experience teaching at the university level.

Thesis or Comprehensive Options

The department offers two options for earning the MA, both requiring the completion of 30 credit hours over the course of the program and a written examination in the second year. The thesis track culminates in the successful defence of a thesis written under the supervision of a graduate faculty member. The comprehensive track allows students to work closely with three graduate faculty members on different subject area lists and culminates in successful completion of a tripartite comprehensive exam. 

For information about policies and procedures, calendars, deadlines, and forms, visit the graduate college web page.

Contact Professor Helen Scott, Director of the Graduate Program, at hscott@uvm.edu

Admissions Requirements

Applications are processed through the Graduate College. The deadline to apply is February 1st.

Application Requirements:

• Electronic Application
• Statement of Purpose
• Application Fee of $65.00
• Email addresses for three people who will provide letters of recommendation. This information is submitted within the application and letters are sent from the recommender directly to us through the application portal.
• One transcript from each institution you have attended, including the one you currently attend. Unofficial transcripts uploaded by you are sufficient for the review process for most programs (Public Health applicants, please review your requirements). Official transcripts are only required if you are admitted. Please have official transcripts sent directly from your institution(s) to graduate.admissions@uvm.edu.
• Residential Status Questionnaire (for in-state tuition purposes)
• Test scores for English proficiency for applicants whose native language is not English.
• Resumes are not required but may be submitted .
• English Department Requirements::
• Statement of Purpose: This should be a 1-2 page document that explains your motivations for pursuing graduate study in English at UVM and gives a sense of how you have prepared for that study. The document should focus on your intellectual and professional interests rather than on personal issues
• Writing Sample: Submit a 10 to 15 page sample of critical writing that showcases your best work in literary analysis. An essay from an undergraduate English class would be ideal. Do not submit creative writing. Successful writing samples will demonstrate a clear ability to analyze texts within a particular critical or theoretical framework.
• GRE: This program does not require the GRE General Test or the GRE Subject Test

Outcomes

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of the MA degree, students will demonstrate:

• Substantive knowledge of literatures in English.
• Critical and analytical facility with the interpretation of literary texts.
• Engagement with critical and theoretical approaches and debates.
• Proficiency in independent scholarly research.
• A command of written academic English including the ability to develop original arguments and effectively employ the language of the discipline.

Career Outcomes:

• We place many of our students in prestigious PhD programs. In recent years our students have been admitted into graduate programs at Brown University, SUNY Binghamton, Concordia, University College London, University of Delaware, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Miami (Florida), the University of Minnesota, Northwestern, and Yale Divinity School, among others.
• The English MA prepares students for successful professional careers. Graduates of the program have gone on to work in education at all levels as well as in legal and technical writing, journalism, marketing, media and performance arts, and the non-profit sector.
• The program enables current teachers to enhance their professional credentials and knowledge base. Our seminars are offered in the evenings to accommodate teachers’ schedules, and the degree may be earned on a part time basis.

More

Funding

• Graduate Teaching Assistantships provide a full tuition waiver plus a stipend (currently $23,000) for both years of the program. GTAs receive training in pedagogy, and teach in the university's First-Year Writing Program (3 courses each academic year).
• Non-teaching merit scholarships are available for MA students (18-credit tuition scholarship) and AMP students (12 credit tuition scholarship)

Recent Seminars

• Jazz and the Cultural Imagination
• Queer Literature
•  Schuyler & the New York School
•  The Book of Mormon & Its World
•  Morrison & Walker
•  Postcolonial Shakespeare
•  Poe & the Gothic
•  Rhetoric and Social Justice
•  Victorian Literature & Culture
•  The Darkroom Collective

Recent Master's Theses

2020

• Adams, Jeffrey Garfield (2020) Apocalypse Out of Time: William Apess's Political Theology
• Adler, Nicholas (2020) The Vicissitudes of Lack : Situating Asexuality Within Psychoanalysis
• Conroy, Ryan Anthony James (2020) What Is Wardian? : Formulating Jesmyn Ward's Literary Style and Technique Through Textual Analysis, Comparison, and Differentiation
• Frodeman, Annie (2020) Aridity in the Literature of the American West : Water in Stegner' Angle of Repose and Abbey's the Monkey Wrench Gang
• Gray, Kelly (2020) "Saved? What Is Saved?" : The Potentiality of Bakhtinian Ecology in DeLillo's White Noise
• Keel, Jesse Marie (2020) Autobiography She Wrote : Agatha Christie and the Problem of Female Authorship
• O'Day, Meghan (2020) The Intersection of Motherhood and Manipulation: How Slavery Informs the  Maternal Identity [M.A.] English
• Pomykaj, Edward (2020) "Do You Want to Live?": Law, Freedom, and Psychosis in the Modernist Novel
• Royce, Amelia (2020) The Axes of Fantasy : A Lacanian Exploration of Time and Space
• Theoret, Claire (2020) Waking the Dragon : Routes to Female Empowerment in Fantasy

2019

• Adams, Zackary Michael (2019) Comedy Basque Style: A Recontextualization of Commedia All'Italiana
• Burkett, Matthew Luis (2019) The Body in Avant Garde Poetry
• Leahy, Sean (2019) As One Who From a Volume Reads: A Study of
  the Long Narrative Poem in Nineteenth-Century America
• Nordle, Ryan (2019) Ethics in Iran : Jacques Lacan and the Films of Abbas Kiarostami's "Koker Trilogy"
• O'Reilly, Casey Michelle (2019) Phantom Limb: An Exploration of Queer Manner in Nineteenth-Century Gothic Tales
• Ridgeway, Andrew Joseph (2019) Digital Affect and the Rhetorical Situation After the Las Vegas Shooting

2018

• Jessica Slayton “A Par/ergon for Poe: Arthur Rackham and the Fin de Siècle Illustrators”
• Georgia Googer  “The Radical Ekphrasis of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons”
• Kimberly Dean “Simulacra of the (Un)Real: Reading Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle as a Feminist Text of Bodily Resistance”
• Alana Smith “Cutting the Gordian Knot: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Moby Dick and Absalom, Absalom!”