Graduate Program
Master of Arts—Concentration in English
Faculty
Kathryn M. Moncrief, Ph.D., University of Iowa, Chair
Christopher Ames, Ph.D., Stanford University
Richard L. Gillin, Ph.D., Bowling Green University
Thomas Cousineau, Ph.D., University of California at Davis
Jehanne Dubrow, Ph.D., University of Nebraska
Richard C. DeProspo, Ph.D., University of Virginia*
Alisha Knight, Ph.D., Drew University
Sean Meehan, Ph.D., University of Iowa
Robert Mooney, Ph.D., Binghamton University
Corey Olsen, Ph.D., Columbia University
Katherine E. Wagner, M.F.A., University of Massachusetts
Phillip Walsh, Ph.D., Brown University
* Graduate Program Director
Requirements for the Degree
The aim of the Master of Arts Degree in English is to have each graduate student become more deeply familiar with the great literary tradition in English and American Literature and to learn of new directions, critical perspectives, and approaches to traditional and non-traditional literary forms. To this end, it is suggested, but not required, that candidates for the degree should take three classes in literature before 1800, four courses in literature from 1800 to the present, and three electives, including special topics courses. A student may take as many as two courses in a particular topic if, in the opinion of the Graduate Program chair, this would represent significant extension rather than repetition.
English 500 - Shakespeare
A detailed study of selected plays.
English 501 - Seventeenth-Century British Literature
A close study of selected authors representative of the period.
English 502 - Eighteenth-Century British Literature
A close study of selected authors representative of the period.
English 503 - Romantic Poetry
A study of six great Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, considered against the social and intellectual background of the time.
English 504 - The Nineteenth-Century British Novel
A close study of one or more major novelists of the period.
English 505 - Poe and the Literature of the British Colonies of North America and of the Early U.S.
The course will concentrate on the writings of Poe as exemplifying the literature of the British Colonies of North America and of the early U.S. Other readings will be chosen from among the writings of Bradford, Bradstreet, Taylor, Edwards, Franklin, Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Brockden, Brown, and Irving.
English 506 - Literary Romanticism in the U.S.
Readings will be chosen from among the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman.
English 507 - Twentieth-Century British Literature
A study of the origins and development of modernism in British literature as exemplified by works of the following authors: Conrad, Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence, Woolf, and Beckett.
English 508 - Yeats, Joyce and Beckett
Readings include Yeats's Collected Poems, Joyce's Ulysses and Beckett's plays.
English 509 - Faulkner and Literary Modernism in the U.S.
The course will concentrate on the novels of Faulkner as exemplifying modernism. Other readings will be chosen from among the writings of Eliot, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anderson, Barnes, Porter, Cummings, and Cather.
English 510 - American Fiction Since 1945
A survey of major American fiction writers who have written and published their work in the post-World War II era. Salinger, Mailer, Updike, Cheever, and O'Connor are examples.
English 511 - American Poetry Since 1945
A survey of the major American poets who have written and published their work in the post-World War II era. Lowell, Wilbur, Stafford, Brooks, and Hecht are examples.
English 512 - Modern Drama
A study of 20th-century drama that includes the following authors: Yeats, Synge, Pirandello, Brecht, Genet, Beckett, and Pinter.
English 513 - Studies in Comic Drama
A study of ancient and modern plays as well as comic modes, themes, and characters. Attention is also given to critical materials.
English 515 - James and Post-Romantic Literature in the U.S.
The course will concentrate on the writing of Henry James as exemplifying the postromantic reaction against romanticism. Other readings will be chosen from among the writings of Dickinson, Mark Twain, DeForest, Howells, Douglass, Dreiser, Crane, and Chopin.
English 516 - Chaucer
A reading of The Canterbury Tales and other writings.
English 517 - Medieval Literature
The Gawain/Pearl poet, Piers Plowman, Sir Orfeo, The Owl and the Nightingale, debates, drama, lyrics and selections from Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Malory, and the Alliterative Morte Arthur.
English 518 - Victorian Literature
A study of selected poets, novelists, and essayists.
English 519 - Post Colonial English Literature
Representative Works of writers from Africa, the West Indies, Australia, Ireland and Canada. Writing in English will be studies in relation to the central issues related to post-coloniality.