Return to: English Language and Literature

Degree Requirements (45 Hours)

The student must choose one of three options within the program: poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction. In addition to all the basic requirements for admission to the graduate English program, applicants must submit a writing sample in the genre that they wish to pursue (25 pages of fiction or writing for the media; at least 12 poems).

Requirements include:

1. 15 hours of workshop courses
2. 6 hours in theory (three of these hours may be in the theory and teaching of composition, exclusive of  ENGL 701A  and ENGL 701B )
3. 9 hours in literature
4. 9 hours of approved electives
5. Thesis, ENGL 799  (6 hours)
6. A three-hour written comprehensive examination in the history and practice of the student’s genre
7. A thesis, which will be a book-length work (a novel, a collection of short stories, a group of poems, or a piece of writing for the visual media) of a quality that compares favorably with work being published by university presses and commercial publishers
8. An oral examination on the thesis
9. A reading knowledge of one foreign language