M.A. in Literature, Media, Theory

Program Overview

Since the turn of the century UVM’s English Department has run one of the strongest terminal MA programs in the nation. The MA in Literature, Media, Theory engages students in advanced study of texts spanning from novels and poetry to film and critical theory. Our dedicated graduate faculty offer rigorous seminars in a variety of periods and genres in American, British, and postcolonial literatures, as well as film, media, rhetoric, and critical theory—and their intersections.

Ideal for those interested in literary studies, film or media analysis, and/or theoretical inquiry, the program prepares graduates for careers in further academic research as well as education, publishing, writing, and beyond. Our diverse student body includes graduates planning to go on to PhD programs; teachers seeking to deepen their knowledge of English literatures, media studies, and theory; and scholars and artists from Vermont, the nation, and the globe who wish to immerse themselves in literary or media studies.

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 and the English Department strives to create a collaborative and inclusive environment for graduate students.

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 Jean Bessette, Director of the Graduate Program, at Jean.Bessette@uvm.edu

Curriculum

View English M.A. Requirements

Admissions

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 .
• Statement of Purpose: This should be a 1-2 page single-spaced document that explains your motivations for pursuing graduate study in Literature, Media, Theory at UVM and gives a sense of how you have prepared for that study. Successful statements place key experiences (courses, research projects, awards, conferences, etc.) in a context that leads to an area of study or project you’d like to undertake in our program, demonstrating your preparation, scholarly interests, and individuality. The document should focus on your intellectual and professional interests rather than on personal issues.
• Writing Sample: Submit a 10-15 page, double-spaced sample of critical writing that showcases your best work in literary, film, or cultural 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, drawing on research (secondary sources).
• 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.

Costs and Funding

• Graduate Teaching Assistantships provide a full tuition waiver plus a stipend (currently $23,000) for both years of the program. GTAs support faculty members in the teaching of literature-, film-, theory-, or writing-focused courses.
• Non-teaching merit scholarships are available for MA students (possibility for up to 65% tuition discount as well as up to approximately $10000 additional scholarship funding).

More

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

2024 

• Katherine Booth “Radical Resistance: Grounded Normativity in Three Speculative Works.” 

• Sarah Gäss “Beauty as a Mode of Being: Enacting Queer Listening to Parse the Cultural and Affective Resonance of Sad Girl Pop.” 

• Aki Jacobson “Economics, Platforms and the Formal Structure of Webcomics.” 

• Mara Knoecklein “‘To Be On the Move Again at Least is Something:’ Ann Quin, Gilles Deleuze, and the Spectacular Nomadism of Capital.” 

• Marina Palladinetti “The Way European Standards of Beauty Affect Black Girls and Black Women: Maintaining White Innocence in Feminism.” 

• Madi Rougier “‘A Narrative is a Living Body:’ Trans Relations in Contemporary Transmasculine Fiction.”  

• Madison Storm “Promethean Romanticism: A Study of the Shelleys’ Prometheus Figures.”  

2023 

• Caleb Hayes “Horror and Representation: Violence in the Construction of Postindian Literary and Cinematic Identities.” 

• Chapman Matis “Get Rich and Die Trying: Capitalism, Its Repetitions, and the Financial Plot.” 

• Joy Mazahreh “Alef is a Key: Belonging and Resistance in MENA Women's Fragmentary Narratives.” 

• Eleanor McDowell “From Green Romanticism to Plant Thinking: Environmental Vitality in William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy's Nature.” 

• Devon Moore “‘They Made Me and Destroyed Me, and, Mr. Zuckerman, They Aren’t Finished with Me Yet:’ J.D. Salinger, Philip Roth, and the Subject of Late Modernism.” 

• Cade Olmstead “The Crypt of Being: On the Gothic Sensibility of Reason.”  

• Edwin Owusu “Race, Fantasy and Enjoyment.” 

• Miles Parkinson “Trickle-Down Poetics in the Paranoid Mode of Liberalism.” 

• Noah Slowik “The Future of the Air: H.G. Wells and the Aviation of Utopia.” 

2022 

• Curtis Browne “‘he went out and subdued them:’ The Significance of the Haitian Revolution in Absalom, Absalom!” 

• Oliver Creech “Lingering with Hegel and the Madhyamaka School: Lack in Anna Karenina and Swann’s Way.” 

• Christopher Kelm “The Reformist Exemplum of the Monastic Bishop in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.” 

• Grady Kennison “The Sublime Object of Digitality: Psychoanalysis and Cyberspace.” 

• Reid Lemker “‘The Side of those Not Fighting for the Children:’ Reproductive Futurism and the Female Sinthomosexual.”  

• Alexandra Perlow “The Voice of a Generation: Musical Persona and the Role of Myth in the Collective Memory of Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Performance.”  

2021 

• Cameron Bauserman “Familiar Forms, Unfamiliar Containers: A Formal Examination of the Body, Mind, and Community in Black Women’s Science Fiction and Fantasy.” 

• Mckenzie Bergan “‘Can You Tell When There is a Good Fire?’ Haunting and Ecogothic Violence in Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The Moonstone.” 

• Emma Giering “The Origins of Manufactured Dissent and the Efficacy of Climate Change Narratives.” 

• Seunghyun Shin “How Postmodernist Poetry Imagines” 

• Emily Thibodeau “A Deed Without a Name: Magical Social Reproduction in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream,  Macbeth, and The Tempest.”