The study of literature can provide students with insights concerning past and present concepts of personal and social identity, cultural traditions and beliefs, and interpersonal and cross-cultural relationships. Since the time of Aristotle, moreover, literary commentators have analyzed “setting” as an important formal aspect of literary writing; literary study can therefore help individual to investigate, and perhaps to reconsider, their relationships with both human and non-human environments. In today’s world, where efforts to resolve intercultural conflicts and environmental problems have taken on a profound sense of urgency, literary study provides a crucial forum for intellectual and ethical debate leading to the revision of cultural practice.

The study of English literature provides students with critical skills of analysis and synthesis, helping them to identify and understand complex problems, and encouraging them to conceptualize viable resolutions and alternative understandings. Perhaps more than any other academic discipline, English literature also emphasizes the importance of literacy, including the development of effective writing and oral presentation skills, thereby providing students with the communications skills so highly valued in the professional world.

The Master of Arts degree in English is available on a full-time. Students may choose a course-based MA option (plus ENGL 770) or the coursework and graduate thesis option. Upon admission into the English MA program, each student is assigned a supervisor, who works closely with the student to monitor their program of study and progress. In consultation with supervisors and supervisory committee members, each student chooses courses designed to complement and inform the proposed research area, completing most of the course work during the first year of the program. The second year is devoted primarily to the production of the thesis or, in the case of the course-based MA, to the completion of coursework and the major research paper.