According to the National Research Council, FSU's English Department is among the top-ranked, PhD-granting English Departments in the country. Internationally recognized for their cutting-edge research and publications, our faculty offer a wide range of courses in literary fields, genres, and media. Our program exposes students to provocative questions that spark scholarly engagement and creativity, helping them discuss the social and political impact of literature. Together, we explore literature's various histories, cultures, and philosophical and geographic movements.
Our nationally-recognized History of Text Technologies Program (HoTT) extends from the History of the Book to Digital Humanities as a means of exploring how the history of the forms of texts is also a history of human culture in its largest sense, a history that speaks to how we use texts to establish ways of thinking, means of knowing, and practices of living. In addition to HoTT, we continue to push the boundaries of our scholarship through other highly acclaimed programs. Our faculty and students continue to break new ground in researching a wide cross-section of time periods, from medieval literature to early modern dramas to contemporary American poetics. Film and media studies, a fast-growing discipline, have also found a home here as we continue to innovate and grow.
The Graduate Program in English offers the Masters of Arts (M.A.), Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees. Students in the M.A. program emphasize one of two tracks: (1) Literature, Media, and Culture, (2) Rhetoric and Composition. M.F.A. students emphasize Creative Writing. Students pursuing an M.A. in Literature, Media, and Culture must complete the Capstone Course in Professional Writing (ENG 5971). See the Graduate Handbook for description. Students in Rhetoric and Composition may write a thesis or take a portfolio examination. Creative Writing students present a body of creative work for the thesis. All Ph.D. students satisfy core requirements in literature, language study, and literary theory. Students then take comprehensive examinations and write dissertations in fields such as Medieval and Early Modern British Literary and Cultural Studies (through 1660), British and Irish Literary and Cultural Studies: 1660-1900, Post-1900 Literary and Cultural Studies (American, British, Irish), American Literary and Cultural Studies to 1900, African-American Literary and Cultural Studies, History of Text Technologies, Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Colonial, Postcolonial, and Transnational Literary and Cultural Studies, and Publishing and Editing.
