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 literature and culture. The department continues to build upon its long-standing strengths in critical theory and literatures of the United States, and is strong in most traditional fields of study, including Renaissance and Early Modern literature and Victorian literature. Special areas of strength include modern and contemporary fiction, film, cultural studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, African American literature, Southern literature, Louisiana and Caribbean studies, post-colonial literature, Global Anglophone literature, rhetoric, and popular culture. The highly ranked MFA program in creative writing combines individualized supervision of student work and literary study. Students admitted to the PhD program can earn their MA in English within the program, and students in both the MFA and PhD programs 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 and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed to: LSU Office of Graduate Admissions, 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. The GRE is not required for admission. 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 PhD program. MFA applicants applying in multiple genres should submit samples of each genre in which they are applying, the sample length not exceeding 30 pages. Students should indicate on the writing sample the primary genre of the work, the year it was written, and the degree program for which it was originally written, if any. Applicants interested in the English MA program should apply directly to the PhD program instead; all applications to the PhD are considered equally, and applicants who do not yet have an MA will have the opportunity to earn their MA in English along the way to the PhD.

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. 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 faculty listings by department here)

Chris Barrett (7M) • Renaissance British Literature, Ecocriticism, Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton
Jacob Berman (M) • American Literature, Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Theory
Michael P. Bibler (M) • American Studies, Southern Studies, Sexuality Studies, Critical Theory
Jason D. Buch (7M) • Screenwriting
Jimmy Butts (6A) • Rhetoric and Composition
Adam Clay () • Poetry Writing, Editing and Publishing
Lauren Coats (M) • American Literature, Digital Humanities,
Kevin L. Cope (M) • 18th Century Literature
Brannon Costello (M) • Southern Literature, American Literature, Comics Studies, Cultural Studies
Jennifer S. Davis (7M) • Fiction Writing
William W. Demastes (M) • Modern Drama
Femi Euba (M) • Playwriting, Drama, Third World Literature
Ariel Francisco (6A) • Poetry Writing, Translation, Ecopoetics, Latin American Literature
Richard Godden (6A) • Medieval Culture, Disability Studies, Chaucer
Zachary L. Godshall (7M) • Screenwriting
Angeletta Gourdine (M) • Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies, African-American Literature, Women’s Studies
Kalling Heck (6A) • Cinema & Media Studies, Global Art Cinema, Critical Theory, Political Theory
Katherine Henninger (7M) • Southern American Literature, Women Writers, Photography and Literature
Benjamin Kahan (M) • British and American modernism, American Literature, Queer Studies
J. Gerald Kennedy (EM) • 19th and 20th Century American Literature
Mari Kornhauser (M) • Screenwriting
Joseph G. Kronick (M) • American Poetry and Nonfiction Prose, Critical Theory
Saumya Lal (6A) • Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Postcolonial Studies, Affect Studies
Michelle A. Massé (EM) • Feminist and Psychoanalytic Theory, Theory of the Novel, 19th Century British and American Literature
Alexandra Meany () • 20th and 21st-century American Literature, Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature, Urban Humanities, Critical Race Studies
Elsie Michie (EM) • British Victorian Literature, Theory of the Novel
David Nee () • Early Modern/Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, Form and Media Studies
Jonathan Osborne (6A) • African American Rhetorics, Rhetorical Theory, Inclusive Pedagogies, Critical Race Theory
Casey Patterson (6A) • African American Literature, Black Studies, Critical Race Theory, Studies of the University
Pallavi Rastogi (M) • Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Postcolonial Theory, International Cinema
Christopher Rovee (7M) • 18th- and 19th-Century British Literature, Poetry and Poetic Theory, Literature and the Arts
Maurice Carlos Ruffin (6A) • Fiction Writing, American Literature
Irina Shport (7M) • Linguistics, Secondary English Education
Jessica Valdez () • 19th-century British Literature, Novelistic Form, Empire and Migration, Media and Periodical Studies
Susan Weinstein (M) • English Education, Social Literacies, Adolescent Writing
Joshua Wheeler (7M) • Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Fiction
Ashlynn Wittchow () • English Education, Posthuman Pedagogies, Environmental Humanities
Michelle Zerba (M) • Classics, Comparative Literature, Literary Theory, Rhetoric

Programs

• English, M.A.

• Creative Writing, M.F.A.

• English, Ph.D.