English and American Literature (PhD)

Department Website

Program Description

The Department of English warmly welcomes qualified applicants who wish to pursue advanced study towards a graduate degree. We are a large department and value historical coverage of the field that has traditionally been the study of English and American literature: we also encourage innovative approaches to that study, and have an expansive sense of the topics it might cover.  We teach in all areas and currently have particular research clusters among our faculty and graduate students in Medieval and Renaissance, modernist, post-colonial, Latino/Latina, American and African American literatures.  We maintain close ties with the Department of Comparative Literature, with which we jointly organize a certificate in Poetics and Theory and an Advanced Certificate in Comparative Approaches to the Literatures of Africa, the Middle East, and the Global South (CALAMEGS), and with the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, while we also participate in offering an Advanced Certificate in Digital Humanities.  In addition, our graduate students originate, organize and receive funding for their own working and reading groups, which currently include African American and African Diasporic Working Group; Critical Theory and Medievalisms; Cultures of War and the Post-War; Creative Writing; Digital Culture/s; the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Literature Working Group; Politics of Empowerment; Postcolonial, Race and Diaspora Studies Colloquium; Nonhuman(isms) Working Group; University On the Edge/ (re)Thinking the University; and the Organism for Poetic Research.

Admissions

All applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) are required to submit the general application requirements, which include:

See English for admission requirements and instructions specific to this program.

Dual Degree

The English Department offers a dual degree with the NYU School of Law: English PhD/Law JD.

See English for admission requirements and instructions specific to this program.