Literature Graduate Programs
The BA-MA, MA, and PhD degree programs in English and American Literature enable students to deepen their knowledge of literature and culture through graduate work in different historical periods and genres; to devise theoretical and historical frameworks that enhance their comprehension of literary and cultural materials; and to complete individualized projects that best represent the particular strands within literary studies of most interest to them. Small seminars with outstanding teacher-scholars in all the major areas of literary study provide an excellent grounding in the contemporary practices of literary criticism, theoretical work, and historical scholarship.
Combined BA + MA
Miami offers undergraduate students in Literature the unique opportunity to earn both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in four to five years.
Students accepted to the English B.A./M.A. program take graduate courses while completing their undergraduate degree. A maximum of nine hours can be double-counted for the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, but the full number of hours required for the Master’s degree must be taken.
Masters’ students prepare works related to their own areas of interest with a faculty of active researchers. Seminars offered by the graduate faculty embody a variety of perspectives and research and writing interests. M.A. courses provide excellent preparation for M.F.A. or Ph.D. degree programs.
MA Requirements
The Master of Arts (MA) in English and American Literature enables students to deepen their knowledge of literature through graduate work in different historical periods and genres; to devise theoretical and historical frameworks that enhance their comprehension of literary and cultural materials; and to complete individualized projects that best represent the particular strands within literary studies of most interest to them. Small seminars with outstanding teacher-scholars in all the major areas of literary study provide an excellent grounding in the contemporary practices of literary criticism, theoretical work, and historical scholarship.
Degree Requirements
To earn the degree, students complete at least 20 hours of coursework in Literature. An introductory course in literary and cultural theory is also required. Students may choose either to write a thesis or to take a written examination to cap the degree. Both options include a final oral defense.
Funding Opportunities
Almost all students admitted to the MA program in English and American Literature hold Graduate Assistantships, teaching two sections of first-year composition in the College Composition program during their first year in the program, and three during the second. During their first year, students also enroll in a full-year workshop that supports their classroom teaching experience and a two-credit introduction to issues of the profession required of new MA and PhD students in all degree programs.
For those applicants who do not wish to be considered for a teaching assistantship, other assistantships are available: please contact the graduate program director.
Learning Outcomes for our M.A.
- Demonstrate expert knowledge about the texts, genres, theoretical concerns, and historical and cultural contexts of their chosen field of study;
- Demonstrate their ability to compose original scholarly research that contributes to their chosen field of study;
- Develop professional experience necessary to participate in the community of scholars, teachers, and other professionals associated with the fields of literature, cultural studies, writing, and rhetoric
Literature PhD
For PhD students in literature, the coursework comprised in a Course of Study might observe period distinctions or, where appropriate, cut across those in order to achieve historical range. It might emphasize study of a single genre or aim to achieve a representative balance of genres in focusing on a particular movement at a particular time. It might focus entirely on a single national, ethnic, or cultural tradition or traverse such boundaries. The Course of Study must take into account the historical distribution requirement and other course requirements, and it may include more than one composition and rhetoric course.
Learning Outcomes for Our Ph.D.
Graduate Successes
Teaching Opportunities
In addition to first-year composition, graduate students have opportunities to teach in the Professional Writing major, the Rhetoric and Writing minor, the College Composition program and in other programs, such as Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Interactive Media Studies.
Teaching Apprenticeships in Literature
Humanities Center Altman Graduate Fellowships
Administrative Opportunities
A considerable strength of our program is that we offer extensive and diverse administrative opportunities for graduate students to gain professional, administrative experience while contributing in positive ways to the university community. For doctoral students especially, this level and scope of administrative experience provides a strong professional credential for university writing program administration.
Humanities Center Communication Associates
Assistant Directors of Composition
Each year two doctoral students are awarded positions as Assistant Directors of Composition. In this capacity, they serve as co-administrators with the Director of Composition, helping with administration, curriculum development, and teacher preparation in the first-year composition program. Their primary responsibilities are:
- to co-teach with the Director the graduate seminars and practica on the teaching of writing (ENG 731 and ENG 606);
- to advise and work with the new TAs who are teaching first-year composition (ENG 111) and advanced composition (ENG 225).
Assistant Directors and Consultants, Howe Center for Writing Excellence
The Howe Center for Writing Excellence is a university-wide center that involves both a writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) program and the Howe Writing Center (a student writing center where undergraduate and graduate consultants work with student writers). A variety of assistantships and paid hourly opportunities exist for MA and PhD students to work as Writing Center consultants and as assistants on various WAC projects and other initiatives, providing graduate students with excellent opportunities for gaining experience in these important areas of writing studies.
The Ohio Writing Project & Department of English Master of Arts in Teaching
Literature Graduate Faculty
Helane Adams Androne
Ph.D., University of Washington, 2002
Professor of English (Middletown and Oxford Campuses),
Chair, Interdisciplinary and Communication Studies
Affiliate for Black World Studies and Latin American Studies
Areas: Ritual PedagogyAfrican American and Chicana Fiction
James Bromley
Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago, 2007
Associate Professor and Associate Director, Literary London Program
Areas: Shakespeare, Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Drama, Poetry, and Prose, History of Sexuality and Queer Theory
Moira Casey
Ph.D., University of Connecticut, 2003
Professor of English and Regional Associate Dean for Academic Affairs (Middletown Campus)
Areas: Contemporary Irish Fiction, Irish Transnational Literature, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Mary Jean Corbett
Ph.D., Stanford University, 1989
Department Chair; University Distinguished Professor of English, Affiliate of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Global and Intercultural Studies
Areas: Nineteenth-Century English and Irish Writing, Feminist and Postcolonial Theory, Women’s Writing
Marianne Cotugno
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2002
Professor and Faculty Director (Middletown Campus)
Areas: Twentieth-Century American Literature (Conrad Richter, Vladimir Nabokov), Technical Communication
Madelyn Detloff
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1997
Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Director of Graduate Program
Areas: Queer, feminist, and gender studies. Modernism, Trauma, Virginia Woolf, H.D., Gertrude Stein
Erin Edwards
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2009
Associate Professor of English
Areas: Twentieth-Century American Literature, Modernism, Posthumanism, Theories of the Body, Film Studies
Carolyn Haynes
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1993
Professor of English, Interim Associate Provost of Undergraduate Education, and Affiliate of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Areas: Interdisciplinary Teaching, Learning and Writing; Student Development and Assessment
Andrew Hebard
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2003
Associate Chair for Administration and Curriculum;
Associate Professor
Areas: Late 19th and early 20th Century Literature, Law and Literature, Sovereignty, Genre, Literature and the Environment
Nalin Jayasena
Ph.D., University of California at Riverside, 2003
Associate Professor of English
Areas: British Literature, South Asian Literature and its Diaspora
Cheryl Johnson
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1988
Associate Professor Literature and Affiliate in Black World Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Areas: African American Literature, Theory, and Criticism with Emphasis on Black Women Writers and Criticism; Black Feminist Theory; South African Women Writers and Literature; 20th century American Literature and Criticism; Sociolinguistics
Katie Johnson
Ph.D., University of Washington 1996
Professor of English
Areas: American Drama and Culture, Film and Visual Culture, Feminist Film Theory, Gender Studies, Eugene O’Neill, Performance Theory and Performance Studies
Kelli Lyon Johnson
Ph.D., Northern Illinois University, 2003
Associate Professor English (Hamilton Campus)
Areas: Contemporary Slave Narratives, Human Rights Novels and Narratives, Testimony, Women's Literature
Katherine Kickel
Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, 2004
Associate Professor English (Hamilton Campus)
Areas: Eighteenth-Century English Fiction and Culture, History of the Novel, History of Science and Medicine, Early Modern and Romantic Women Writers, Shakespeare
Cynthia Klestinec
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, 2001
Professor of English
Areas: Renaissance Literature, Scientific Revolution, Anatomical Culture, Science and Literature, Representations of Health
Theresa Kulbaga
Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2006
Professor of English and Affiliate in American Studies & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Hamilton Campus)
Areas: Autobiography and Life Writing, Multi-Ethnic American Literatures and Cultures, Transnational Feminist Theory, Human Rights Representations, and Documentary Film
Tim Melley
Ph.D., Cornell, 1995
Professor of English, Affiliate of American Studies and Director of The Miami University Humanities Center
Areas: U.S. Literary and Cultural History Since 1950, Cold War Studies, Postmodernism, Fiction Writing
Patrick Murphy
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 2007
Professor of English, Co-Director of Literature Program
Areas: Old and Middle English literature, Medievalism, History of the English Language, Comics and Graphic Novels
Michele Navakas
Ph.D., University of California-Irvine, 2009
Professor of English, Co-Director of Literature Program
Areas: American Literature and Culture to 1900, American Intellectual History, Circum-Caribbean and Colonial Narratives, Discourses of Geography, Geology, Property Law, and Agriculture
Tory Vandevetter Pearman
Ph.D., Loyola University, 2009
Associate Professor of English (Hamilton Campus)
Areas: Medieval Literature and Culture, Disability Studies, Feminist Theory
Kaara Peterson
Ph.D., Boston University, 2001
Associate Professor of English and Director, Literary London Program
Areas: Early Modern English Literature and Culture, especially Shakespeare and Drama; Renaissance Medical History, particularly women’s; History of Art; Editorial Practices
Diana Royer
Ph.D., Temple University, 1989
Professor and Coordinator of English (Hamilton Campus)
Areas: Virginia Woolf, Global Feminism, Thanatology, Film Noir
Keith Tuma
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1987
Professor of English; Miami University Press Editor; Director of Low Residency MFA Program
Areas: Modern and Contemporary British, Irish, American, and Anglophone Literature, Creative and Performance Writing, Poetry and Poetics, Anecdotes and Ephemera, Travel Writing
Whitney Womack Smith
Ph.D., Purdue University, 1999
Professor of English and Faculty Director (Hamilton Campus)
Affiliate in Women’s Studies and Black World Studies
Areas: 19th-Century Women’s Writing, Anti-Slavery Literature, Transatlanticism, Feminist Theory
Current Literature Grad Students
Muiz Adewola
Sharbaditya Bandopadhyay
- B.A., St. Stephen's College (University of Delhi)
Creative and Research Interests: Memory & Trauma Studies in Afro-American women's memoirs of the 20th and 21st centuries Literature & Medicine-Race, Medicine and Nation in Human Body Women's Writing in Conflict Zones
Jacob Barta
- B.A., University of Kansas
Creative and Research Interests: Research Interests: Gothic Studies; Early Modern Literature and Drama; Queer Theory
Diyasha Chowdhury
- B.A., English Literature, Miranda House, University of Delhi
Creative and Research Interests: Late 20th and 21st Century Global Anglophone, Migration, Memory, Race, Psychoanalysis, Graphic novels.
Paige McWilliams
- BFA, Creative Writing, Spalding University (2018)
Creative and Research Interests: American Literature 19th century to modern day; poetry, children’s literature, feminist and queer writing.
Parisa Adlifar
Creative and Research Interests: postcolonial literature and theory, transnational and diaspora studies, trauma studies.
Emily Alexander
- B.A., Davis & Elkins College
Creative and Research Interests: medicine and literature, disability studies, postcolonialism, the intersection between illness, identity, and culture
Jaewon Back
- M.A., Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
- B.A., Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Creative and Research Interests: Contemporary anglophone literature, postcolonialism, ecocriticism, new materialism, trauma studies, mobility theory, global modernism
Cassandra Brausch
Creative and Research Interests: Post 45 literature; Network Theory; Postcolonialism
Jeff Carr
- M.A., Western Kentucky University
Creative and Research Interests: 19th and 20th Century American literature, Modernism, working class literature and rhetoric, war literature and rhetoric, and Hemingway.
Soumilee Dasgupta
- B.A. and M.A., Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University
Creative and Research Interests: Postcolonialism, Children's Literature, South-Asian Studies, Canadian Literature
Javiera Green
- M.A., Bradley University
- B.A., Eastern Illinois University
Creative and Research Interests: trauma studies, psychoanalysis, 20th century African American novels
Srishti Jha
- B.A., M.A., Jadavpur University
Creative and Research Interests: 20th-/21st-century American and transnational literatures; women, gender, and sexuality studies, queer theory, South-Asian literature, Indian writing in English, food studies, bildungsroman studies
Chris Lovgreen
- B.A., Western Washington University
- M.A., Western Washington University
Creative and Research Interests: nineteenth-century US literature, women writers, literacy, English education, writing program administration
Shelby Lueders
Conner Moore
- M.A., Miami University
- B.A., The Ohio State University
Cody Norris
- B.A., M.A., Coastal Carolina University
Creative and Research Interests: Performance Studies, Queer Theory, Contemporary Drama & Literature, and Tourism in Southern Literature, Drama & Performance
Rachel Schaefer
- M.A., Miami University
- B.S., John Brown University
Creative and Research Interests: 20th-21st Century American and Transnational Literatures; Arab American Literature; Chick Lit; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Lauren Van Atta
Creative and Research Interests: early modern drama, queer theory, embodied practices
Sheikh Zobaer
- M.A., English, University of Surrey
- B.A., English, North South University
Creative and Research Interests: feminism, postcolonialism, and African-American literature
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Contact Us
- For general inquiries about admission and the application process please write to EnglishGrad@MiamiOH.edu
- Directors of Literature Program, Patrick Murphy and Michele Navakas
- Interim Director of English Department Graduate Studies, Tim Lockridge (Lockrita@MiamiOH.edu)