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 for MFA and PhD applicants is January 15. . All applicants must take the GRE general examination. A combined total of 308 on the verbal and quantitative elements of this examination is recommended, typically with a minimum of 160 on the verbal portion. A minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.2 is also 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 15-20-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 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 January 15 for PhD and 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 (EM) • Atlantic studies, critical theory, American Literature

Lillian Bridwell-Bowles (M) • Feminist rhetoric, rhetorical and literary history, composition studies

Jason D. Buch (6A) • Screenwriting

Mary Katherine Callaway (3P) • Publishing

James V. Catano (M) • Rhetorical and critical theory, gender studies, film studies, non-fiction prose

Lauren Coats (M) • 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

Jennifer Davis (6A) • Fiction Writing, Literary Journals

Francis A DeCaro (EM) • Folklore

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 (M) • 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 (M) • 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 (M) • 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

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 A. 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 (M) • 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 (EM) • Renaissance literature, Milton, George Eliot

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

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

Joshua Wheeler (6A) • Creative writing, nonfiction, fiction

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.