The essential and expected instructional accomplishment of the Graduate Programs in English is embodied in the students who have successfully completed their degrees in the past academic year. This year's degrees reflect dissertations on topics such as a critical edition of eighteenth-century Clara Reeve's Schools of Widows , Shelley's The Cenci , late romantic and Victorian volumes of verse by women, the genesis of George MacDonald's Lilith , African American narrative and the problem of cultural authority, the black, feminist aesthetic of Jessie Redmon Fauset, humanistic concerns in Thomas Pynchon's fiction, the execution novels of Robert Coover and Norman Mailer, contemporary women's short story cycles, and two creative dissertations, all of which, together with the performance of the group as a whole, demonstrate a balance of faculty strength in English though clearly this year favoring more modern topics.
Placement continues to be a protracted and difficult endeavor.
Of last year's six graduates who had continued in the Department with instructorships, three are now well launched, one at North Carolina State Wilmington, one at a tenure track appointment at Gordon College, and one with a renewable appointment at the university's College of Business. Since the spring of 1999 the Department has also awarded nine Master of Arts degrees, a decrease of six from the year before. Two others are at present working in the area. A list of all degree recipients in English with the titles of their theses or dissertations appears as Appendix 1 . An impressive total of eight graduate teaching assistants in English this year won the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the Office of Instructional Development.