Graduate Program
Doctoral Programs
Literature
05-08 English Department
Graduate Handbook
- Graduate_Handbook.pdf | 572 KB PDF file
- 07-08 Ph.D. Program Requirements | 295 KB PDF file (replaces pp. 24-35 in Graduate Handbook)
The Ph.D. program in Literature at Miami University houses an exceptional group of teacher-scholars, widely and well published in their respective fields, who train doctoral students as researchers, teachers, and professionals.
Our specialists in early modern literature and culture emphasize a range of historical, contextual, and theoretic approaches to the period, with expertise in Chaucer, Renaissance and Restoration drama, women’s literature, print culture, and transatlantic area studies. A core of faculty working in ‘the long nineteenth century’ take feminist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial approaches to eighteenth-century and Romantic poetry, the history of the novel, Victorian and Edwardian drama, and Anglophone writing. And faculty members in twentieth-century Anglo-American literatures have special expertise in modern and contemporary poetry in English, postmodern fiction, and African American literature and cultural production.
Whatever the historical specialization or theoretical orientation, all graduate faculty in Literature are committed to providing careful guidance to doctoral students as they choose courses, prepare for examinations, and imagine dissertations.
Below you may read an overview of the program. For more detailed information on the Curriculum and Dissertation requirements, please download the English Department’s Graduate Handbook.
The Curriculum
To earn the degree in Literature, doctoral students take seven seminars relevant to their individually planned Course of Study, including one seminar in a composition and rhetoric topic and at least one topical seminar in Literary Theories and Their Histories (ENG 740). ENG 740 seminars center on a specific area of contemporary theoretical work and critical practice, providing the opportunity for students to integrate its methods with their own areas of interest (for instance, historical, generic).
Historical Distribution Requirements
The Ph.D. in literature presupposes that students have a breadth of literary and cultural knowledge. Satisfaction of the historical distribution requirement for the Miami M.A. (see the department’s Handbook for Graduate Students and Faculty, p. 6), comprising 16 credit hours of courses in four fields, is presupposed. Doctoral students admitted from a master’s program other than Miami’s may, with the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies, partially satisfy the historical distribution requirement with transferred courses, within the 12-credit limit established by the Graduate School. The historical distribution requirement for Ph.D. students in literature further requires (a) one course in English or American literature before 1700 and (b) one course in English or American literature between 1700 and 1900, if two such courses were not used to satisfy the historical distribution requirement for the Miami M.A. Transfer credit is usable only for the satisfaction of historical distribution requirements or ENG 603. It cannot be used to satisfy any part of the seven-seminar requirement.
General Degree Requirements
All doctoral students also enroll in English 605 (Issues in the Profession), ENG 603 (Literary Theories and Their Histories), ENG 731 (The Theory and Practice of Teaching Composition), and ENG 698/699 (Teaching Workshop I and II for College Composition) if they had not been completed for the M.A.; and a minimum of 16 credit hours of Dissertation Research. Doctoral students also must demonstrate reading proficiency in at least one foreign language and usually take two graduate-level courses in a cognate area beyond the department, such as Philosophy, History, or Women’s Studies. Students should expect to spend the first two years of the Ph.D. program completing coursework requirements, with the expectation of preparing to take their comprehensive exam early in their third year.
Teaching and Administrative Opportunities
In addition to the required teacher training in composition and the classroom experience of first-year composition courses, all doctoral students in Literature teach one 100-level historical survey course in their third year of doctoral study, an excellent opportunity that provides a valuable teaching credential.
They may also be invited to participate in other teaching opportunities depending on their interests, with the chance to design and teach courses in the undergraduate literature program. Beyond English, they have taught both introductory and topics courses in the interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in Black World Studies and Women’s Studies, and several have served as the teaching/administrative TA assigned to the Women’s Studies program.
Other assignments may include research positions that support faculty scholarship or provide assistance in editorial projects. Beginning in 2002-03, one doctoral student in Literature will serve as Assistant to the Director of Undergraduate Studies, with responsibility for advising undergraduate majors and minors and coordinating special projects.
Doctoral students in Literature also play important roles in activities related to our first-year-writing program. A team of Ph.D. students works together each summer to edit College Composition at Miami, the in-house publication that is required reading for all first-year writing students. Some participate as well in compiling the Teacher’s Guide on which new graduate teaching assistants rely in teaching first-year composition. And the Portfolio project involves doctoral students from Literature in a process that culminates in a two-day holistic evaluation of writing portfolios submitted by incoming students for advanced placement.
In addition, doctoral students in Literature regularly serve on the department’s Graduate Committee, as well as search committees for new faculty members. All of these assignments help to give them a realistic and informed sense of what an academic career entails, as well as enabling doctoral students to make sure that their special concerns are well represented in central venues of department life.