Best Graduate Programs in English Language and Literature - Updated 2020

The Graduate Program in English aims to provide PhD candidates with a broad knowledge of the field of English, including critical and cultural theory. Additional important skills include facility with the tools of scholarship—ancient and modern foreign languages, bibliographic procedures, and textual and editorial methods. The program also emphasizes the ability to write well, to do solid and innovative scholarly and critical work in a specialized field or fields, to teach effectively, and to make articulate presentations at conferences, seminars, and symposia.

The Department of English Language and Literature also offers, in conjunction with the Department of African American Studies, a combined Ph.D. degree in English Language and Literature and African American Studies. The Department of English Language and Literature also offers, in conjunction with the Department of the History of Art, a combined Ph.D. degree in English Language and Literature and History of Art. The requirements are designed to emphasize the interdisciplinarity of the combined degree program.

Students seeking a joint PhD in a program other than TAPS may petition to be admitted into a second department only after completing at least one year in a Ph.D. program. Students in the Division enrolled in a doctoral program may be permitted to pursue a joint program with another doctoral program in the University leading to a joint degree in both programs. Students admitted to such a joint program pursue a specific course of study depending on their research and professional interests and must satisfy all the requirements of both doctoral programs.

The 34 point InSTEP Program in the Teaching of English is an Intensive Summer MA Program over three consecutive summers in New York City. Come together with a select group of experienced English educators from around the country and around the world to take advantage of Teachers College, Columbia University's highly regarded English Education program.

This program is ONLY open to current Stanford undergraduates who are majoring in English or related fields, Modern Thought and Literature, Comparative Literature. and American Studies. M.A. candidates must complete program with a 3.0 (B) grade point average (GPA) at least nine courses (a minimum of 45 units), at least two of which must be 300-level courses. The master's student may take no more than 5 units of directed reading and research.

Graduates of the MALit program are well prepared for application to PhD programs and for success in diverse professional areas from advertising to law. Secondary-school teachers develop a competitive edge by deepening their subject-area knowledge, a key distinction between the MALit program and more general graduate programs in education.

Master of Arts in Education (MAED), Instructional Process. Applications for the Master of Arts in Education-Instructional Process program are currently closed for the Fall 2019 semester. Washington University Education offers a part-time Master of Arts degree focused on an Analysis of Practice for practicing educators in a variety of settings. This Analysis of Practice allows educators to consider multiple and enhanced approaches for data collection, analysis, and reflection on educational issues involving educational assessment data, video microanalysis, learning sciences research, and educational foundation concepts.

Upon completing the MA and PhD degrees in the field of English, students will be able to apply advanced knowledge of literary, cultural, and critical studies, including: critical reading, thinking, and writing; professional methodologies; literary and cultural histories, and theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives; demonstrate breadth and depth of knowledge in fields of specialization for research and teaching; demonstrate the ability to teach literature and culture at the university level; demonstrate professional level skills in public and oral presentation through participation in symposia, work-in-progress groups, conferences, and in-course presentations; and emonstrate the capacity to create professional-level and ultimately publishable research that makes original contributions to scholarly debates.

The Berkeley English Department offers a wide-ranging Ph.D. program, engaging in all historical periods of British and American literature, Anglophone literature, and critical and cultural theory. The program aims to assure that students gain a broad knowledge of literature in English as well as the highly-developed skills in scholarship and criticism necessary to do solid and innovative work in their chosen specialized fields.

Through the Master of Arts in Catholic Clinical Ethics core coursework, students develop a strong foundation in Catholic moral theology and the ability to apply philosophical and medical principles in an ethical reasoning process.