MA in English and American Literature

Literary works and their authors and readers

OSU's two-year concentration in English and American Literature is designed for students who wish to undertake study and research in significant literary works, important authors, and innovative and ground-breaking movements in English or American Literature. In courses which are open to a variety of perspectives and which employ a diverse range of critical approaches and teaching methods, students will gain a solid understanding of both the craft of great writing and its powerful social and cultural impact. Students may concentrate the majority of their course work on particular historical periods or movements, such as Modernism and Romanticism, or focus on a key genre, such as the novel or poetry. The diversity of critical approaches to English and American texts and authors will provide students with a broad perspective on literary achievement and its role in defining and transforming English and American history, society, and culture. Students of English and American Literature and Culture have the opportunity to choose from among a wide spectrum of literary works, authors, eras, and topics, including:

Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Modernism
Shakespeare and the English Literary Renaissance
Contemporary Women Authors
Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, and the American Novel
British Romanticism
Thoreau, Emerson, Fuller and American Transcendentalism
Transatlanticism
African American Poetry, Drama and Fiction
Dickens, Eliot and the Victorian Novel
Modern British and American Short Stories
Chaucer and Medieval Literature
The Beats and Avant-Garde Literary Movements

English and American Literature highlights the importance of innovative authors and texts, and epoch-making literary shifts and achievements. Students and faculty engaged in research and study in English and American Literature focus on both the practical and the theoretical in the analytical frameworks they bring to literary works:

textual analysis grounded in a knowledge of literary forms and genres, and incorporating feminist, poststructuralist, ecological, postcolonial, and multicultural approaches;
cultural analysis of literary works in their historical and political contexts;
historical analysis of the backgrounds and larger historical impact of novels, poems and dramatic works;
teaching practices emphasizing interchange, dialogue, innovative interpretation and analysis, and attention to the ethical implications of reading, writing and discussing literary works.

Degree requirements

The program requires 48 credits, distributed as follows:

Core requirements

12 credits in literature (including at least 6 credits in English and/or American). Six credits must be Pre-1800 Literature; six, Post-1800 Literature.
6 credits in Theory (e.g. ENG 575, 590, 591, 595; WR 512, 595)

British and American literature requirements

6 credits ENG 503 (thesis)
21 credits in literature (3 poetry, 3 novel, 6 American, 6 English - 12 of these may also fulfill core requirements)
3 credits of any other ENG course at the graduate level not used to fulfill other requirements