Janine Wilks
Senior Program Support Assistant
As a student in our program, you will develop a deeper understanding of canonical and innovative approaches to literature in English, including both such nationally-defined traditions as British and American literatures, and traditions organized around other principles, such as Postcolonial or African American literatures. Organized to reflect the changing profession of literary study--its history, its methodologies, and its production of new knowledge--the program includes the study of literature in cultural and historical contexts, the study of representations of identity, comparative approaches to literature, theoretical perspectives, gender studies, and cultural studies. The program offers you both broad-based and specialized courses on a variety of literary topics, and students may supplement their course of literary study with graduate offerings in related subjects and departments, including courses in composition, creative writing, languages and linguistics, history, and sociology, among others.
At UNH, you will have an intensive intellectual experience in a friendly, supportive community of scholars and writers. Our classes are typically quite small (6-12 students) and are often taught as seminars. Because the ratio of faculty to students is quite high (roughly 1 faculty to every 4 graduate students), you can expect close contact with and guidance from scholars actively involved in research in their fields. The UNH English Department also provides opportunities for you to hear nationally-known scholars talk about their research: recent speakers have included Nancy Armstrong, Jonathan Culler, Dana Nelson, and Srinivas Aravamudan. We offer financial support for those graduate students who deliver papers at conferences. Recent MA students have presented papers at such conferences as "Self and Identity in Translation" (at the U. of East Anglia), Arizona State University's Southwest Graduate English Symposium, "Out of Time: Theorizations of Culture and the Political" (U. of Minnesota), "Britain's Long 18th Century" (U. of Chicago), McGill University's 11th Annual Graduate Symposium: "Violence and Recovery," the COPIA Graduate Renaissance Studies Conference (Yale U.), the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, and the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies Annual Conference (U. of Massachisetts). And some go on to publish their research; one student has an essay forthcoming in a volume on philosophy and film (Cambridge Scholars Press), while two MA students published a collection entitled What to Expect When You are Expected to Teach (Heinemann, 2002).
