Students take a varied curriculum to earn an M.A. or a Ph.D. degree in English and American literature, emphasizing literary history and criticism or an M.A. with a concentration in literary biography. The department offers creative writing students in fiction and poetry a choice between an M.A. degree in English with a concentration in creative writing or an M.F.A. degree. Our distinguished faculty members have received international recognition for the excellence of their publications. Our creative writers have won the National Medal of Arts, MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and several Lamont Prizes. In addition, a member of our faculty has won the Modern Language Association's Mina P. Shaughnessy Medal for an outstanding research publication in the field of teaching English composition.
Students attend lectures, forums, readings, and discussions.
Many advanced graduate students receive support to present their research and writing at national conventions and publish papers and creative writing in scholarly journals and national magazines. The Poetics Institute, under the co-direction of Professors Anselm Haverkamp and Denis Donoghue, sponsors public readings and lectures each semester by distinguished visiting writers and critics. The Poetics Institute also sponsors more informal programs on problems and methods in literary criticism. The Medieval and Renaissance Society sponsors lectures and parties every semester. The Biography Seminar, which meets monthly in the department, includes biographers working in New York as well as faculty members who have written biography such as Kenneth Silverman, Frederick Karl, and John Maynard.