JSU | Graduate Studies

Graduate Studies

English
JSU Home » Graduate Studies » Graduate Programs » english

The English Department offers courses leading to the MA with a major in English and supporting courses for the MA with a major in liberal studies. For students majoring in secondary education with a teaching field in English Language Arts, supporting courses are offered for the MS.Ed. and the Ed.S. degrees.

Required Application Materials

Applicants for the MA with a major in English will be permitted to enroll for one semester of graduate course work while completing all other general application procedure requirements.

Applicants for the MA with a major in English must submit all of the following documentation to the College of Graduate Studies, Jacksonville State University, 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, Alabama 36265-1602, to be considered for admission:

Completed JSU Graduate Application for Admission (http://www.jsu.edu/graduate/grad_app.html)
Non-refundable $30.00 application processing fee
Official transcripts(s) from all postsecondary institutions attended. (Students who have previously attended JSU do not need to request a transcript from the University.)
Official tests scores on the General Test of the GRE or the MAT (please refer to page 18 of this Bulletin).
Three “Graduate Reference Forms” completed by individuals who can provide qualitative assessment of the applicant’s potential for success in graduate course work. This form is available in the office of the College of Graduate Studies or online at http://www.jsu.edu/graduate/forms.html or http://www.jsu.edu/graduate/docs/ref_form.pdf.
If English is not the applicant’s native language, the applicant is required to submit an official TOEFL score report, an IELTS score report, or a PTE score report (please refer to page 28 of this Bulletin).

Admission Requirements

In addition to meeting general admission requirements of the College of Graduate Studies, applicants for the MA with a major in English must have an undergraduate minor in English or its equivalent, as determined by the head of the English Department.

Applicants must meet one of the following formula requirements. For purposes of computing the undergraduate GPA, a 4.0 grade-point scale is used. The plus (+) and minus (-) grades from undergraduate transcripts are not used in calculating the GPA.

Unconditional Admission

450 times the undergraduate GPA plus the total score of verbal and quantitative sections of the General Test of the GRE is equal to or greater than a total of 1600 points;

15 times the undergraduate GPA plus the MAT score is equal to or greater than a total of 60 points;

Conditional Admission

Any applicant failing to meet the requirements for unconditional admission may be conditionally admitted with the recommendation of the graduate faculty in the applicant’s major and approval of the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies.

Applicants who are granted conditional admission must achieve a GPA of at least 3.0 on the first 12 graduate hours attempted within a twelve-month time frame. Failure to meet these conditions will result in the student being dropped from graduate studies.

Non-Thesis Option

Total of 30 graduate semester hours in approved English courses, including EH 501, which English MA students must successfully complete within their first 15 hours of graduate English study, and three semester hours in Shakespeare at either the undergraduate or graduate level.

Thesis Option

Total of 30 graduate semester hours. Minimum of 24 hours in approved English courses, including EH 501, which English M.A. students must successfully complete within their first 15 hours of graduate English study, and three semester hours in Shakespeare at either the undergraduate or graduate level, and six hours of thesis. See “Thesis Options and Procedures” on page 45 of this Bulletin.

Upon advisement, students may be required to demonstrate foreign language proficiency when a chosen program of study requires translation skills.

English Courses

Prefix EH

401G.		Chaucer (3). The poet against the background of the Middle Ages.
402G.		Special Studies in the English Renaissance (3). Dedicated to selected writers, themes, or genres.
408G.		Theory of Composition (3). A study of current theory and practices in composition studies.
409G.		The Art of the Film (3). A consideration of the motion picture in its artistic, technical, and historical contexts. A number of films by major directors will be viewed, ranging from the comedies of the thirties and forties to the work of Alfred Hitchcock and the fantasy of the Hollywood musical.
410G.		American Drama (3). Examination of American drama as theater and literature, considering early plays in their historical contexts with emphasis on major American dramatists: beginning with Eugene O’Neill and progressing through Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, Beth Henley and August Wilson.
411G.		Eighteenth-Century Literature (3). Survey of eighteenth-century English writers, focusing on major satirists such as Dryden, Pope, Swift, and Fielding; Johnson and his circle; some of the major novelists and dramatists; survey of “Pre-Romantics” (the poets of “sensibility”).
412G.		Victorian Poetry (3). Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Brown¬ing, Arnold, Swinburne, and other poets of the Victorian era.
413G.		English Drama (3). Medieval background of Elizabethan drama and reading of representative plays of the Tudor and Stuart periods.
420G.		Womens Literature (3). Six centuries of representative literature by women; emphasis on recent British, American, ethnic-American authors; discussion of women writers in relation to the traditional canon.
441G.		The History of the English Language (3). Study of the origins and developments of the English language from Old English through Modern English, focusing on the historical, cultural, and linguistic forces affecting language change.
442G.		Black Writers in America (3). Study of major twentieth-century writers, including Wright, Ellison, Hughes, Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and others.
452G.		Literary Criticism (3). Prominent themes and theories, various critical approaches, and outstanding examples of literary criticism from Plato to feminism and African-American literary theory.
467G.		Twentieth-Century English Fiction (3). British fiction of the twentieth century, including short stories and novels by modern and postmodern authors.
484G.		Current New York Theatre (3). Study of the New York theatre at the time the course is offered; attending four current Broadway productions; visiting Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and major art museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and others.
501.		Advanced Research Techniques in Literature (3). Techniques of literary research, critical and theoretical approaches, varieties of scholarly production, analysis and interpretation of literary texts. English M.A. students must successfully complete this course within their first 15 hours of graduate English study.
502.		Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (3). Important literature of the century; writers examined may include Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Dickinson, Douglass, and Jacobs.
510.		The Eighteenth-Century Novel (3). Major novels of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding and such minor figures as Behn, Smollett, Goldsmith, Burney, and the early Gothic novelists.
512.		Organizational Speech Communication (3). Analysis of speech communication variables operating in educational, volunteer, and governmental organizations.
551.		Writing Project Summer Institute (3). ). Prerequisite: Admission to JSU Writing Project. (EH 551 must be taken in conjunction with EH 552.) Intensive study of theory and methodology of composition and composition instruction.
552.		Summer Institute Practicum (3). Prerequisite: Admission to JSU Writing Project. (EH 552 must be taken in conjunction with EH 551.) Extensive writing and critiquing, with research and presentations on writing.
553.		Contemporary American Literature (3). Twentieth-century American literature, with emphasis on the work of major poets, novelists, dramatists, and non-fiction writers.
554.		Contemporary European Literature (3). Twentieth-century continental literature including such foundational figures as Mann, Kafka, Proust, Gide, Valery, and Pirandello; recent writers such as Alberto Moravia, Jean Anouilh, Andre Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Salvatore Quasimodo, Elio Vittorini, and Boris Pasternak.
555.		Literature of the South (3). Best of Southern literature with emphasis on the work of major writers.
556.		Victorian Literature (3). Prose fiction and nonfiction of the Victorian Age.
557.		Studies in Non-Dramatic Elizabethan Literature (3). Literature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with emphasis as the instructor desires.
558.		Studies in Romantic Literature (3). English literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; emphasis on Blake, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, and Keats; writers such as Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Burke, Paine, Barbauld, Smith, Hemans, Hazlitt, Hunt, and Clare also featured.
562.		Studies in Shakespeare (3). Reading of representative works of Shakespeare, with attention to the history of Shakespearian scholarship and criticism.
564.		Middle English Literature (3). Literature of England during the Middle Ages with emphasis on the romance and its background in general European literature.
565.		Seventeenth-Century English Literature (3). Poetry and prose of the seventeenth century.
570.		Special Problems (3). Special readings and assignments approved by department head and instructor after consideration of the student’s background.
571.		Shakespeare’s England (3). Part of program of study in Stratford- upon-Avon; visits to places associated with Elizabethan literature and extensive reading on social history of the period.
580.		Shakespeare in the Theatre (3). Part of program of study in Stratford-upon-Avon; attendance at plays presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company and other companies with lectures and discussions on the plays; consideration may be given to modern playwrights also, depending on the RSC production schedule.
599.		Thesis (3,3). (Grade of Pass or Fail only) Prerequisite: Approval of Application for Thesis Option. See “Thesis Options and Procedures” on page 42 of this Bulletin.

Resources

Admissions

Colleges

Men's Sports

Women's Sports

At a Glance

General Info

Required Application Materials

Admission Requirements

English Courses