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EIU Master of Arts in English


Graduate programs in English at EIU include both a 33-credit MA degree with options in Rhetoric/Composition, Literary & Cultural Studies, or Creative Writing and an 18-credit Certificate in the Teaching of Writing. The MA may be pursued on campus or fully online. (Fully online students pay in-state tuition, wherever you are.)

Learn more about our ONLINE PROGRAM

Applicant note: In addition to the Graduate School application, applicants to the MA in English must supply a statement of purpose, two letters of recommendation, a writing sample, and a resume or curriculum vitae.



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Why Choose EIU for English

Personal Attention

The MA program offers small graduate seminars (12-15 students) and close mentoring, encouraging students to develop projects directly related to their professional interests. Independent studies, mentored teaching, and thesis projects offer opportunities for one-on-one interactions.

Flexible Curriculum

Our three concentrations allow students maximum flexibility, providing a core of required courses with room for electives in other concentrations. Courses offer insight into the latest thinking about pedagogy, literature, creative and professional writing and are taught by faculty who publish in a wide variety of fields.

Students may shape their own curriculum by proposing independent study projects to match their interests, take coursework from other disciplines, complete an internship, or participate in a summer study abroad program.

Professional Opportunities

We offer a substantial number of graduate assistantships, which offer a monthly stipend and tuition waiver. Graduate assistants work in the Writing Center and may apply to teach a writing class in their second year; they may also assist professors with research or editorial work.

Creative writers work with well-published, well-connected writers of poetry, fiction, drama, and creative nonfiction; participate in readings, writing contests, and digital story-telling projects; interact frequently with visiting writers; and get involved with two literary magazines associated with EIU: Bluestem and The Vehicle.

Professional writing internships and mentored teaching opportunities are available to all students, offering hands-on experience. Students in all fields present their work at local and national professional conferences as well as on-campus venues.

Student Success

Recent graduates hold many different kinds of jobs. They teach at two-year colleges and work as professional writers for newspapers, non-profits, hospitals, and academic institutions. They run programs to help high school students go to college, write satiric blogs, and teach dual-credit classes at high schools. Many have gone on to success in PhD, MFA, and MLS programs at Purdue, the University of Tennessee, Texas A&M, the University of Mississippi, New York University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois State University, Simmons College, and the University of Washington.



Meet our Faculty

Dr. Suzie Park

Professor

Dr. Suzie Park was awarded the 2015 Provost's Undergraduate Research Mentor Award for the College of Arts and Humanities and the 2015 Rodney S. Ranes Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award for Eastern Illinois University. Dr. Park, on the far right, is pictured with the students who nominated her: from left to right, recent English M.A. graduates Terri Coleman and Stephen Nathaniel, and English undergraduate Molina Klingler.

Julie Campbell

Professor

Campbell's areas of teaching and research are Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature with specialization in the works of continental and English women writers. She is the author of Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2006) and the editor and translator of Isabella Andreini’s pastoral tragicomedy, La Mirtilla (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2002).

C.C. Wharram

Professor

With research interests in translation studies, Romantic and Gothic literature, and the intersections between literature, philosophy, and science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, C.C. Wharram is director of The Center for the Humanities at EIU. His most recent essay, on the intersections of humanism, translation, and the nonhuman, was published in Educational Theory in October 2014. He edited a special volume on “Teaching Romantic Translation(s)” for Romantic Circle Pedagogies (July 2014).


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