Graduate Education
UConn English is a vibrant, supportive, and diverse intellectual community where graduate students develop as writers, thinkers, scholars, and teachers.
Our department offers MA and Ph.D. programs in English. Students in these programs engage with traditional and cutting-edge fields in the discipline of English, including literature, composition, and creative writing.
Our Community
UConn English graduate students are part of a welcoming, collaborative community with a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are active participants in UConn’s graduate employee union and work together through the English Graduate Student Association to enhance the graduate student experience in the Department of English.
Our graduate professors are passionate educators, engaged mentors, and highly-respected scholars in their fields. Students have direct access to faculty through courses, seminars, and research. They also gain hands-on experience in teaching and public engagement. As a result, UConn English alumni flourish in positions in academia, administration, and the nonprofit and private sectors.
Areas of Interest
UConn English graduate students specialize in historical periods and fields from Medieval to twenty-first century literature, from multiethnic literature to poetics to children’s literature. Their work engages in a range of methodologies, including those drawn from postcolonial theory, adaptation studies, disability studies, anti-racism, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.
Our students also engage in specialty communities, such as the Creative Writing Program; connect their research to their pedagogy through upper-level teaching; and complete graduate certificates in areas like Digital Humanities and Media Studies, American Studies, Human Rights, College Instruction, and Literary Translation.
More Graduate Education Resources
Campus and Facilities
The UConn English graduate program is housed in the Austin Building on the dynamic main campus in Storrs, nestled among the lovely hills of northeastern Connecticut. We are half an hour from Hartford, just over an hour from New Haven, Boston, and Providence, and about two hours from New York City.
Members of our community therefore benefit from the high quality of life that comes with living in an affordable suburban area located among several of America’s greatest cities. Graduate students also enjoy the proximity of archives such as the American Antiquarian Society, the Beinecke Library, the New York Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. On the Storrs campus, The Dodd Center for Human Rights has strengths in human rights, children’s literature (including the Maurice Sendak papers), alternative press publications, and fine press and artist’s books.
Faculty and Research
The Department of English is home to more than 50 full-time graduate faculty members, whose books, articles, scholarly reputations, and engaged teaching help make UConn one of the top public research institutions in the nation.
English faculty approach their work as archivists and cultural studies scholars, as literary theorists and creative writers, using methodologies from areas as diverse as disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial theory, and childhood studies. We pride ourselves on our coverage of nearly all major specialty areas.
Funding and Teaching
Full-time students in all three UConn English graduate programs receive tuition waivers, a living stipend, and access to university health insurance. This funding is supported by guaranteed teaching assistantships, through which our graduate students gain valuable classroom experience in our innovative First-Year Writing Program, which is dedicated to writing across technology, collaborative learning, and small class sizes.
MA/Ph.D. and Ph.D. students are also guaranteed one semester in which they teach two courses that speak to their professional interests, such as genre courses, literature surveys, major author courses, advanced writing courses, or courses focused on a literary period or theoretical approach. Our department values and strives to support our graduate students as teachers as well as scholars.
Awards and Contests
The Department of English supports a range of annual awards and writing contests that recognize students for outstanding achievements in creative writing and teaching.
Learn more about English awards, contests, and scholarships.
Career Development
Our program is distinctive in its support of graduate students as they meet the demands of an increasingly competitive job market.
In their first semester, all MA and MA/Ph.D. students enroll in a three-credit course on pedagogical theory, a one-credit teaching practicum, and a one-credit exploration of graduate study. MA/Ph.D. and Ph.D. students also take a three-credit seminar on professional development, in which they explore research activities such as academic publishing, conferencing, and grant writing while learning about classroom strategies and careers open to Ph.D. alumni.
Students also receive one-on-one support from a member of our Job Market Committee as they develop materials from cover letters and CVs to diversity statements and teaching philosophies. This support has helped our students earn positions in academic settings and beyond across the country.