English (Graduate Program)

For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here.  

Program Overview

The Department of English offers graduate students the opportunity to work with an extraordinarily productive and internationally respected faculty that is particularly strong in interdisciplinary approaches to modern literature and culture. The department continues to build upon its long-standing strengths in critical theory and the literature of the United States. The department is strong in most traditional fields of study, including Medieval and Renaissance, 18th century, and Victorian literature. Special areas of strength include modern fiction, film, cultural studies, women’s and gender studies, African-American literature, Southern literature, Louisiana and Caribbean studies, post-colonial literature, rhetoric, and popular culture. The highly ranked MFA program in creative writing combines individualized supervision of student work and literary study. Students in all three programs—MA, MFA, and PhD—complete all their coursework in small graduate seminars or workshop classes. Each program is distinguished by its flexibility, allowing the student significant input in determining a departmental-level academic course plan.

Administration

Admission

Applications and supporting materials for all graduate study must be submitted through the online application site for the LSU Graduate School. Official transcripts, official test scores, and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed to: Graduate Student Services, 114 West David Boyd Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. These paper documents are stored electronically and departments have access to all materials submitted by and/or on behalf of a student applying to graduate study.

Admission is granted for the fall only. The application deadline is December 15 for MA and PhD applicants, and January 15 for MFA applicants. All applicants must take the GRE general examination. A combined total of 1200 on the verbal and quantitative elements of this examination is also recommended, typically with a minimum of 600 on the verbal portion (in the old format). Comparable scores (160 verbal; 148 quantitative) are expected in the new format. It is recommended that MA and PhD students also submit scores for the advanced English portion of the GRE. A minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.2 is recommended. International students whose native language is not English must also submit an acceptable TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE score. A writing sample is required of all applicants: eight to ten poems, 20 pages of prose, or a substantial portion of a script for those applying to the MFA program; a 20-page sample of sustained critical writing for those applying to the MA or PhD programs. Students should indicate on the writing sample the year it was written and for which degree program, if any.

Financial Assistance

Graduate assistantships ($16,500 to $17,000) are available for most students admitted to graduate study in this department. Editorial assistantships are awarded in conjunction with journals edited in the department (the Southern Review for a first-year MFA student entering with a BA, and the New Delta Review for an advanced MFA student). In order to be considered for financial aid, completed applications should be submitted no later than December 15 for MA and PhD applicants, and January 15 for MFA applicants.

Graduate Faculty

(check current listings by department by clicking this link)

Christine Barrett (6A) • Renaissance British literature, critical theory, Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton
James G. Bennett (EM) • Creative writing, fiction
Jacob Berman (M) • American literature, cultural studies and postcolonial theory
Michael P. Bibler (M) • American studies, Southern studies, sexuality studies, critical theory
William Boelhower (M) • Atlantic studies, critical theory, American Literature
Lillian Bridwell-Bowles (M) • Feminist rhetoric, rhetorical and literary history, composition studies
Jason D. Buch (6A) • Screenwriting
James V. Catano (M) • Rhetorical and critical theory, gender studies, film studies, non-fiction prose
Lauren Coats (6A) • American literature
Andrei Codrescu (EM) • Creative writing; literary translation; editor, Exquisite Corpse
Kevin L. Cope (M) • 18th century literature
Brannon Costello (7M) • Southern literature, American literature
J. Bainard Cowan (EM) • American and comparative literature, critical theory
Moira Crone (EM) • Creative writing, fiction
Rebecca W. Crump (M) • Victorian literature, bibliography
Frank de Caro (EM) • Folklore
Jennifer Davis (6A) • Fiction Writing, Literary Journals
William W. Demastes (M) • Modern drama
Femi Euba (M) • Playwriting, drama, third world literature
John I. Fisher (EM) • 18th century literature, Swift
Daniel Mark Fogel (EM) • The modern novel, American literature, creative writing
Carl Freedman (M) • 20th-century literature, critical theory, film
Jesse M. Gellrich (M) • Medieval studies, critical theory
Lara Glenum (6A) • Creative writing, international modernism, the historical avant-garde
Zachary L. Godshall (6A) • Screenwriting
Angeletta Gourdine (M) • Diaspora literary and cultural studies, African-American literature, women’s studies
Barbara A. Heifferon (7M) • Writing (composition and rhetoric), medical rhetoric
Katherine R. Henninger (7M) • Southern American literature, women writers, photography and literature
Benjamin Kahan (6A) • American literature, queer studies
Rodger Kamenetz (EM) • Creative writing, poetry, nonfiction, Jewish studies
J. Gerald Kennedy (M) • American literature, short fiction, narrative theory
Emily Lauren King (6A) • Shakespeare and Renaissance drama
Mari Kornhauser (7M) • Screenwriting
Joseph G. Kronick (M) • American poetry and nonfiction prose, critical theory
Isiah Lavender III (6A) • African and African-American literature, cultural studies, science fiction
Sarah L. Liggett (7M) • Composition research and theory, technical writing
John W. Lowe III (EM) • Southern, African-American, Louisiana, and ethnic literature; humor
Phillip J. Maciak (6A) • American studies, cultural studies, film and media studies
David Madden (EM) • Creative writing, fiction, literary and film criticism, the Civil War
Michelle Massé (M) • Feminist and psychoanalytic theory, theory of the novel, 19th century British and American literature
Patrick McGee (M) • Film studies, cultural studies, Joyce and Irish studies
Elsie B. Michie (7M) • 19th-century British literature, the novel, women’s studies, critical theory, film
Richard C. Moreland (M) • American literature, modernism, critical theory
Laura Mullen (M) • poetry, theory, experimental fiction and nonfiction
Anna K. Nardo (M) • Renaissance literature, Milton, George Eliot
Lisi Oliver (M) • Medieval law, Old English, languages, linguistics
James Olney (EM) • Modern poetry, autobiography, third world literature
Solimar Otero (7M) • Folklore, Caribbean culture
Peggy W. Prenshaw (EM) • American literature, Southern studies, women’s studies
Pallavi Rastogi (7M) • Colonial and postcolonial literature, theory, international cinema
Panthea Reid (EM) • Modern novels
Malcolm Richardson (M) • Technical writing, medieval language and rhetoric
Christopher Rovee (6A) • 18th- and 19th-century British literature; poetry and poetic theory; literature and the arts
Keith A. Sandiford (7M) • 18th-century British literature and cultural studies, colonial West Indian culture and history
Lawrence Sasek (EM) • 17th-century British literature
Irina Shport (6A) • Linguistics, secondary English education
Dave Smith (EM) • creative writing
Emily Toth (EM) • American popular fiction, biography, women’s studies
Carolyn Ware (M) • Louisiana folklore, women’s folklore
Susan Weinstein (7M) • English education, social literacies, adolescent writing
Sharon A. Weltman (M) • Victorian literature and culture, drama, gender studies, musical theater
James Wilcox (M) • Creative writing, fiction

Sunny Yang (6A)  • Multi-ethnic American literatures, U.S. Empire, comparative race studies, and law and literature
Michelle Zerba (7M) • Classics, comparative literature, literary theory, rhetoric

RECENT FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

A representative sample of faculty publications during recent years includes the following:

Lillian Bridwell-Bowles, Rhetorical Women
James Catano, Ragged Dicks: Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-Made man
Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield
Brannon Costello, Plantation Airs
William W. Demastes, Staging Consciousness: Theater and the Materialization of Mind
Carl Freedman, The Incomplete Projects: Marxism, Modernity, and the Politics of Culture
Angeletta Gourdine, The Difference Place Makes: Gender, Sexuality, and Diaspora Identity
Michael Hegarty, Feature-Based Functional Categories
Katherine T. Henninger, Ordering the Façade: Photography in Contemporary Southern Women’s Writing
Rodger L. Kamenetz, The Lowercase Jew
J. Gerald Kennedy, A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe
Michelle Massé, Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Labor in Language and Literature Workplaces
Patrick McGee, Theory and the Common from Marx to Badiou
Elsie Michie, The Vulgar Question of Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Novel of Manners from Jane Austen to Henry James
Lauren Mullen, Murmur
Anna K. Nardo, George Eliot’s Dialogue with John Milton
Daniel Novak, Realism, Photography, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Lisi Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law
Solimar Otero, Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World
Pallavi Rastogi, Afrindian Fictions: Diaspora, Race, and National Desire in South Africa
Malcolm Richardson, Middle Class Writing in Late Medieval London
Keith Sandiford, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism
Susan Weinstein, Feel These Words: Writing in the Lives of Urban Youth
Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education
James Wilcox, Hunk City

Programs

• English, Ph.D.

• English, M.A.

• Creative Writing, M.F.A.