Graduate Study in English
The Ph.D. Program
The Berkeley English Department offers a wide-ranging Ph.D. program, engaging in all historical periods of British and American literature, Anglophone literature, and critical and cultural theory. The program aims to assure that students gain a broad knowledge of literature in English as well as the highly-developed skills in scholarship and criticism necessary to do solid and innovative work in their chosen specialized fields.
Please note that the department does not offer a Master’s Degree program or a degree program in Creative Writing. Students can, however, petition for an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing upon completion of the Ph.D. course requirements (one of which must be a graduate writing workshop) and submission of a body of creative work.
Students interested in combining a Ph.D. in English with studies in another discipline may pursue designated emphases programs in Film Studies, Medieval Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Normative time to complete the program is six years. The first two years are devoted to fulfilling the course and language requirements. The third year is spent preparing for and taking the Ph.D. oral qualifying examination. The fourth through sixth years are devoted to researching and writing the prospectus and dissertation.
Courses
The general goal of the first two years is to assure that the students have a broad and varied knowledge of the fields of English and American literature in their historical dimensions, and are also familiar with a wide range of literary forms, critical approaches, and scholarly methods. Students will complete ten courses distributed as follows:
- 1) English 200, “Problems in the Study of Literature”
- 2) Medieval through 16th-Century
- 3) 17th- through 18th-Century
- 4) 19th-Century
- 5) 20th-Century
- 6) a course organized in terms other than chronological coverage.
- 7-10) Elective courses.
(An eleventh required course in pedagogy can be taken later.) Students who have done prior graduate course work may transfer up to three courses for credit toward the 10-course requirement. Up to three of the 10 courses may be taken in other departments.
Languages
Students must demonstrate either proficiency in two foreign languages or advanced knowledge in one foreign language before the qualifying examination. There are no "canonical languages" in the department. Rather, each specifies which languages are to count, how they relate to the student's intellectual interests, and on which level knowledge is to be demonstrated. "Proficiency" is understood as the ability to translate (with a dictionary) a passage of about 300 words into idiomatic English prose in ninety minutes. The proficiency requirement may also be satisfied by completing one upper-division or graduate literature course in a foreign language. The advanced knowledge requirement is satisfied by completing two or three literature courses in the language with a grade of "B" or better.
At the end of the second year each student’s record is reviewed in its entirety to determine whether or not he or she is able and ready to proceed to the qualifying exam and the more specialized phase of the program.
The Qualifying Examination
Students are expected to take the qualifying examination within one year after completing course and language requirements. The qualifying exam is oral and is conducted by a committee of five faculty members. The exam lasts approximately two hours and consists of three parts: two comprehensive historical fields and a third field which explores a topic in preparation for the dissertation. The exam is meant both as a culmination of course work and as a test of readiness for the dissertation.
The Prospectus and Dissertation
The prospectus consists of an essay and bibliography setting forth the nature of the research project, its relation to existing scholarship and criticism on the subject, and its anticipated value. Each candidate must have a prospectus conference with the members of his or her committee and the Graduate Chair to discuss the issues outlined in the proposal and to give final approval to the project. The prospectus should be approved within one or two semesters following the qualifying exam.
The dissertation is the culmination of the student's graduate career and is expected to be a substantial and original work of scholarship or criticism. Students within normative time complete the dissertation in their fourth through sixth years.
Teaching
It is the expectation of the department that each student in the Ph.D. program will have the opportunity to serve at least two years as a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI). Typically, students begin teaching in the third year, following successful completion of course and language requirements, and first serve as teaching assistants leading weekly discussion sections for larger lecture courses taught by department faculty members. Students who have passed the qualifying exam become eligible for appointments as Teaching Associates. Associate Instructors teach their own sections, under general supervision, of English 1A/B, the required reading and composition course.
Graduate students may also be employed as Readers for several of the department's larger undergraduate classes. Readers grade papers and exams and hold office hours to confer with students.
Students who are appointed as GSIs and Readers receive in-state fee waivers in addition to a stipend.
English Graduate Association
The EGA serves the needs of PhD students in the English department at UC Berkeley by fostering an intellectual, social, and professional community amongst students and faculty.
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ega
Admissions
Required of All Applicants:
- A Bachelor's Degree (or international equivalent)
- Two sets of official transcripts of all college-level work
- Scores for the GRE General Test and Subject Test in English (we will accept scores from all of the November and December tests) GRE Institution Code: 4833, Department Code: 2501
- University online application, including Personal Statement and the Statement of Purpose: http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/grad_app.shtml
- Three letters of recommendation submitted through the University online application: http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/grad_app.shtml
- A critical or scholarly writing sample of no more than 20 pages uploaded as a pdf to the following url: http://ls-ourunit.berkeley.edu:80/sReg.php?i=293.
Please note: you will not be able to upload your writing sample until the Saturday after you have completed your online application. We need to transfer applications from the Graduate Division site to the Departmental site and we make those transfers on Friday.
Applications are considered for fall admission only and must be submitted no later than December 8, 2009. Any paper materials including the required transcripts should be mailed directly to the following address:
Department of English, Graduate Office
322 Wheeler Hall #1030
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1030
For information, please contact the English Graduate Office (510-642-4005, dlbarton@berkeley.edu).
International Applicants
International applicants should consult the Graduate Division's web site, www.grad.berkeley.edu, for admissions requirements and estimated costs of graduate study for international students.
Application Preparation & Evaluation
The English Department typically receives between 450-550 applications each year and offers admission to 40-45 applicants, of whom 18-20 enter the program. We make our admissions decisions on the basis of the whole application. No one factor necessarily carries more weight than the others. The Graduate Division requires an overall GPA of at least 3.0; however, the average GPA of successful applicants is considerably higher at 3.85. We consider the kinds and number of the courses the applicant has taken and how well he or she has done, especially in the junior and senior years. The Bachelor's Degree need not be in English. There are no minimum GRE scores but those admitted score, on average, in the 700s (97%) in the Verbal test and 650 (88%) or higher in the Subject test. Letters of recommendation should come from professors who can attest to the quality and strength of the applicant's academic work. The Statement of Purpose should provide a clear sense of the applicant's interests and intentions in pursuing graduate study. The writing sample is an important element in our evaluation. Applicants should submit only one paper of no more than 20 pages, and it should be an example of scholarly or critical writing (not creative writing). Applicants should not send a longer paper with instructions to read an excerpt, but should edit it themselves.
Reactivation of a Previous Application
The Department keeps all applications on file for two years. If you have filed an application within the past two years but have not registered, you may reactivate your previous application (see current application for instructions). The Department recommends that applicants submit new materials such as the Statement of Purpose and writing sample if the previous application was denied.
Fellowships, Financial Aid, Housing
For information on fellowships, financial aid, and housing, please consult the the Graduate Division, www.grad.berkeley.edu. The English Department typically is able to offer fellowships, which provide a stipend and cover tuition and fees, to approximately 20-25 of the admitted applicants each year.
Graduate Diversity Outreach
http://ls.berkeley.edu/divisions/art-hum/diversity/
Dr. Josephine Moreno is the Graduate Diversity Coordinator for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Letters & Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She works with both prospective and continuing graduate students, discussing graduate school preparation, admission criteria, the admissions process, university and extramural funding, academic issues, student life, and more.
Graduates and Placement
| Graduate | Dissertation Title | Field | Current Position |
| Jami Bartlett | The Novel as Theory of Reference | 19th-c British | UC Irvine, Assistant Professor |
| Kelvin Black | 18th-19th-c Transatlantic | Hunter College, CUNY, Assistant Professor | |
| Hillary Gravendyk | American Poetry (19th & 20th-c) | Pomona College, Assistant Professor | |
| Blaine Greteman | Problem Children: Concepts of Childhood in Early Modern Politics and Culture | Renaissance | University of Iowa, Assistant Professor |
| Paul Hurh | Epistemology and Terror in Early American Literature: Edwards, Poe, Melville | Early American | University of Arizona, Assistant Professor |
| Eleanor Johnson | Medieval | Columbia University, Assistant Professor | |
| Karen Leibowitz | The Reticence Effect: Narrative Interiority in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel | Victorian | Kenyon College, Visiting Professor |
| Ryan McDermott | The Gay Hermeneutic: Victorian Genealogies of Homosexuality and the Practice of Reading | Victorian | Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (advertising) |
| Leslie Walton Monstavicius | Education, Eros, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman | Victorian | |
| Fiona Murphy | Authorship Delayed: Strategies of Deferral in British Women's Writing | 17th-18th-c British | |
| Nicholas Nace | 17th-18th-c British | Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston, Lecturer | |
| Marguerite Nguyen | Vietnamese-American Encounters: Race, Power, and Literary Innovation | Asian American | |
| Matthew Ritchie | Functional Context: Underlying Principles of Language Structure in Literary Interpretation | Linguistics | |
| Snehal Shingavi | Postcolonial | University of Texas, Assistant Professor | |
| Vlasta Vranjes | 19th-c British | Fordham University, Assistant Professor | |
| Christopher Weinberger | Comparative Literature, English & Japanese | San Francisco State University, Assistant Professor |
| Graduate | Dissertation Title | Field | Current Position |
| Mark Allison | Wandering Between Two Worlds: Middleness in Victorian Literature and Culture | 19th-c British | Ohio Wesleyan, Assistant Professor |
| Penelope Anderson | Friendship's Shadows: Women's Ethical Friendship and Political Identity in the English Civil Wars | 16th-17th-c British | Indiana University, Assistant Professor |
| Erika Clowes | The Anal Aesthetic: Regressive Narrative Strategies in Modernism | 20th-c British & American | UC Berkeley, Lecturer |
| Vitaliy Eyber | Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House": An Analytic Commentary | Renaissance | |
| Talissa Ford | Prophets and Pirates: The Space of Empire in British Romantic Literature | Romanticism | Temple University, Assistant Professor |
| Monika Gehlawat | Boom: The New York City Flaneur in Postwar American Literature and Art | 20th-c American | University of Southern Mississppi, Asst Professor |
| Luciana Herman | American Race, Republicanism and Transnational Revolution | Early American | Harvard, Expository Writing Program, Faculty |
| Christine Hong | Legal Fictions: Human Rights Cultural Production and The Pax Americana in the Pacific Rim | American Studies/Asian American | 2007-09 Chancellor's Post-Doc UC Berkeley; Mt Holyoke, Assistant Professor |
| Victor Mendoza | The Erotics of "White Love"; or, Queering Philippine-US Relations | Postcolonial | Post-Doc Fellow, Asian American Studies, University of Illinois |
| James Murphy | Revision and the Making of Modernism | 20th-c British & American | Havard (History & Literature Program, Lecturer) |
| Alia Yap Pan | Remembering Bodies: Subject Formation in the Neo-Plantation Narrative | Postcolonial | Post-Doc Fellow, Asian American Studies, University of Illinois |
| Darryl Stephens | Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads: How Ink Marks on a Page Become Neural Images and Emotions in a Brain | 19th-20th-c American | US Government |
| Charles Sumner | The Aesthetics of Failure in Anglo-American Modernist Literature | 20th-c British/American | University of Southern Mississippi, Asst Professor |
| Graduate | Dissertation Title | Field | Current Position |
| Arthur Bahr | Convocational and Compilational Play in Medieval London Literary Culture | Medieval | MIT, Assistant Professor |
| Julie Carr | Surface Tension: Affect, Time, and Critique in Late-Victorian Poetry | Victorian & Creative Writing | University of Colorado, Boulder, Assistant Professor; |
| Andrew Daniel | I Know Not Why I Am So Sad: Melancholy and Knowledge in Early Modern English Painting, Drama and Prose | Renaissance | Johns Hopkins University, Assistant Professor |
| Sharon Goetz | Textual Portability and Its Uses in England, ca. 1250-1330 | Medieval | UC Berkeley, Mark Twain Project, Assoc. Editor |
| D. Rae Greiner | Sympathetic Realism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel | 19th-c British | Indiana University, Assistant Professor |
| Joel Nickels | Modernism Beyond the Subject: Literature, Spontaneity and the Social Body | 20th-c American | University of Miami, Florida, Assistant Professor |
| Misa Oyama | The Asian Look of Melodrama: Moral and Racial Legibility in the Films of Sessue Hayakawa, Anna May Wong, Winnifred Eaton, and James Wong Howe | Asian American | UC Berkeley, Lecturer |
| Ellen Samuels | Fingerprinting the Nation: Identifying Race and Disability in America | 19th-c American & Disability Studies | University of Wisconsin, Assistant Professor |
| Paul Stasi | Cosmopolitan Primitivism: Modernism, Imperialism and the Historical Sense | 20th-c British & American | SUNY Albany, Assistant Professor |
| Leonard Von Morze | One of the one, many: Republicanism and social unity in American writing of the 1790s | Early American | University of Massachusetts, Boston, Assistant Professor |
| Graduate | Dissertation Title | Field | Current Position |
| Mai-Lin Cheng | Marginal Stories: British Romanticism and the Genres of Human Interest | Romanticism | |
| Dennis Childs | Formations of Neoslavery: The Culture and Politics of the American Carceral State | African American | UC San Diego, Assistant Professor |
| Avilah Getzler | First Person Multiplied: Plotting Narration in Victorian Multi-Narrator Novels | 19th-c British | Grand View College, Assistant Professor |
| Anthony Hale | Performing Beyond the Pale: The Harlem and Irish Renaissance in Comparison | 20th-c British & American | Information Systems Technology, Mills College, Department Director |
| Marissa Lopez | Nationalism, Narrative, and History: The Formal Case for Chicana/o Literature | 19th-20th-c American & Chicana/o Studies | UCLA, Assistant Professor |
| Douglas O'Hara | New Heads on Old Bodies: Space, Politics, and Action in Late Sixteenth-Century London and Beyond | Renaissance | |
| Padma Rangarajan | Imperial Babel: Translation, Colonialism, and The Long Nineteenth Century | Victorian & Postcolonial | Colorado University, Boulder, Assistant Professor |
| Gary Schmidt | Mungrell Forms: Cultural and Generic Hybridity in the English Renaissance | Renaissance | Boston University Academy, Faculty |
| Travis Williams | Ethos and Enargeia: Literary and Rhetorical Strategies of Early Modern Mathematics | Renaissance | University of Rhode Island, Assistant Professor |
| Adrienne Williams Boyarin | Miracles of the Virgin in England: Origins, Development, Contexts | Medieval | University of Victoria, British Colombia, Assistant Professor |
A full listing of graduates and placements from 2003-04 to the present is available here as a .pdf file.
Last modified: October 15, 2009