Graduate study in the Department of English presents an opportunity for you to work
with a dedicated and gifted faculty in small classes and to receive a noteworthy level
of personal attention. The close faculty-student mentoring relationships that our
small class sizes allow enables our graduate students to develop their critical, creative,
and professional skills to an extent many larger programs cannot match. It's not unusual
for our graduate students to present papers at regional and national conferences,
even international ones, or to submit manuscripts and creative work for publication.
In recent years, grad students have traveled as far as Spain, Hawaii, California,
and Italy with financial support from Winthrop to present their research and creative
work. Very few other programs our size can provide such support.
Each member of the graduate faculty holds a Ph.D. and is an active scholar in his
or her field; the Department also includes widely-published fiction writers and poets.
At the same time, Winthrop is primarily a teaching institution, and the Department
of English is committed to teaching excellence. We note that five of our members have
won prestigious teaching awards and that teaching is at the center of every faculty
member's work.
A recent study published by the Association of Departments of English shows that more than half of faculty teaching English in collegiate settings in the United States have a stand-alone M.A. degree, so it is a valuable professional credential for college teaching. In recent years, about 40% of the students who receive an M.A. in English at Winthrop have also been admitted to doctoral programs, usually with assistantships. Others have gained employment teaching in two-year and four-year colleges and secondary education, as well as going on to law school, divinity school, and other professional programs, and to careers in editing, writing, business, and other professional fields. Whatever your career goals, we are happy to work with you to help you achieve them.
We have a rolling admissions deadline. If you seek an assistantship, we strongly encourage you to have your application complete before February 1 for assistantships beginning in the fall. We work hard to help students find assistantships and associateships, and other employment opportunities on campus, but these are usually highly competitive, so please send us your best work to be considered!
The best source for specific information on our graduate programs is our Graduate Resources page.
