ObjectivesThe MA in English literature offers students the chance to check out the challenges and expectations of graduate school in a collegial, personable, and stimulating environment. The program effectively prepares students for PhD programs in English literature and may serve as a conduit to our own PhD in the Production of Literature, which concentrates on the production, circulation, and reception of texts through analyzing their institutional, technological, and discursive contexts. For those who do not want to pursue a PhD, the MA degree gives a competitive edge in the job market, whether in business, the government, or non-profit sector—in areas as diverse as publishing, human resources, communications, public relations, and marketing. It also gives an academic advantage to students applying for further professional qualifications and training in teaching, journalism, law, and library sciences.
Academic titleMaster of Arts in English Language and Literature
Course descriptionProgram Requirements
Each candidate will select one of the following program patterns:
* 2.0 credits in English, selected from those at the 5000-level (excluding ENGL 5908), plus ENG 5005, and a master's thesis; an oral examination on the thesis will be required. A prospectus for the thesis must be submitted to the graduate committee by December 1 after registration in September, or at the end of three months for any other registration, or
* 3.0 credits in English selected from those at the 5000-level (excluding ENGL 5909), plus ENGL 5005, and a research essay; an oral examination on the research essay may be required, or
* 4.0 credits in English selected from those at the 5000-level (excluding ENGL 5908 and ENGL 5909), plus ENGL 5005.
Each program is designed to be completed within the three-term academic year. Each program is of equal status.
ENGL 5000 [0.5 credit] Literary Criticism
A study of specific topics or particular areas of literary criticism.
ENGL 5002 [0.5 credit] Contemporary Literary Theory
Contemporary approaches to theory and literary studies. Topics vary from year to year and may include Marxism, feminism, hermeneutics, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, or postcolonialism.
ENGL 5003 [0.5 credit] Feminism/s: The Literary Dimension
This course examines a range of topics in feminist and gender theory. Topics vary from year to year and may include women and mass media, gender panics, female spectacles and specularization.
ENGL 5004 [0.5 credit] Literature, Contact, and Empire in
Colonial and Post-Colonial Societies
Topics in colonial, postcolonial, native and diasporic literature and theory. Topics vary from year to year.
ENGL 5005 [0.5 credit] M.A. Seminar
Examines topics such as research resources and methodologies, current issues in literary theory and professional concerns. Graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
ENGL 5207 [0.5 credit] Early Medieval Studies
Topics in early medieval period. Topics vary from year to year and may include Old English, Old Norse, Latin texts in translation, or pre-Chaucerian texts.
ENGL 5208 [0.5 credit] Middle-English Studies
Topics in the literature and culture of the Middle English period. Topics vary from year to year and may include Chaucer, Piers Plowman, Arthurian literature, medieval drama, medieval romance, 15th Century Literature, religious and mystical texts. Also may be offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as ENGL 4208, for which additional credit is precluded.
ENGL 5301 [0.5 credit] Renaissance Poetry
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5302 [0.5 credit] Seventeenth-Century Poetry
A study of selected seventeenth-century poets.
ENGL 5304 [0.5 credit] Renaissance Drama
Topics vary from year to year and may include a focus on specific dramatists, themes, or genres.
ENGL 5307 [0.5 credit] Renaissance Authors
A study of selected Renaissance authors.
ENGL 5308 [0.5 credit] Renaissance Studies
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5402 [0.5 credit] Eighteenth-Century Studies
Eighteenth-century cultural concerns such as: literature and the marketplace; gender, authorship and genre; the literary periodical; literature and the public sphere; literature and nationalism; literature and science.
ENGL 5408 [0.5 credit] Studies in Romanticism
Selected texts of Romantic literature and culture. Topics vary from year to year and may be organised by theme, author or genre.
ENGL 5501 [0.5 credit] Nineteenth-Century Studies
A study of works written between 1830 and 1870 in terms of gender representation in relation to generic modalities, exploring the thesis that poets of the period - Tennyson, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Arnold, Clough - confronted a crisis in gender ideology that problematized the lyric.
ENGL 5503 [0.5 credit] Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5508 [0.5 credit] Nineteenth-Century Literature
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5601 [0.5 credit] Twentieth-Century Poetry
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5603 [0.5 credit] Twentieth-Century Fiction
A study of selected twentieth-century writers.
ENGL 5604 [0.5 credit] Twentieth-Century Drama
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5606 [0.5 credit] Twentieth-Century Literature
Topics vary from year to year and may include issues of genre, selected themes, particular literary movements or developments in critical theory.
ENGL 5607 [0.5 credit] Twentieth-Century Authors
A study of twentieth-century authors of fiction.
ENGL 5608 [0.5 credit] Twentieth-Century Studies
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5701 [0.5 credit] American Poetry
A study of the formative poetry and poetics of several major modern American writers, including: Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., George Oppen, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley.
ENGL 5703 [0.5 credit] American Fiction
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5706 [0.5 credit] American Literature
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5708 [0.5 credit] Studies in American Fiction
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5801 [0.5 credit] Canadian Poetry
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5802 [0.5 credit] Ethnicity, Multiculturalism, and Canadian Literature
Canadian literature in relation to theoretical and critical issues posed by ethnicity and other aspects of Canadian cultural diversity.
ENGL 5803 [0.5 credit] Canadian Fiction
Canadian writing of the last twenty to thirty years, with reference to the concept of ideology, within the contexts of Marxist, feminist, and postmodernist literary theories.
ENGL 5805 [0.5 credit] Canadian English
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5807 [0.5 credit] Selected Topics in Canadian Literature
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5809 [0.5 credit] Colonial Discourse and Native Literatures in Canada
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5900 [0.5 credit] Selected Topic
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5901 [0.5 credit]
Selected Topic
Topic may vary from year to year.
ENGL 5903 [0.5 credit] English and Cultural Studies
The borders of literature and cultural studies. Topics vary from year to year.
ENGL 5904 [0.5 credit] Special Studies in Dramatic Literature
Topic may vary from year to year.