Graduate

The graduate program of the UCSB Department of English provides the opportunity for students to deepen their knowledge and enjoyment of literary texts, modes, and movements and explore their potential as interpreters, scholars, and in most cases, teachers of literature and language. The department offers a balanced emphasis on scholarship, criticism, and theory. We are especially strong in media studies and digital humanities; literary theory; cultural and interdisciplinary studies; race, gender, and sexuality studies; Medieval, Renaissance, Eighteenth-century studies; and Modern and American literature. The program is large enough to field a full range of graduate seminars, but small enough to provide a sense of community and a high level of faculty-student engagement.
 
Our department's unique research centers, activities, and projects are highlighted in the following video:
 

STATEMENT ON GRADUATE STUDENT DIVERSITY

The English Department has a strong commitment to extending participation in academia to people from all walks of life. We are home to a diverse community of scholars with a deep intellectual commitment to studying the power of language to make worlds. We value the variety of critical approaches to this question of literary world-making that often involve engaging matters of difference and inequality--for example, sexual difference, class and economic difference, matters of race, neurodiversity, social and environmental justice. We recognize that not only what we study, but also the theories and theorists we choose to cite, often reflect particular intellectual commitments and values that are in no small part informed by our unique life experiences. We value the diversity of our graduate student body to collectively learn together and experience the joyful moments of finding surprising and unexpected areas of commonality between each other's specific areas of research.

CONTACT US

Graduate Program Director: Heather Blurton
Graduate Program Advisor: Andrea Ellickson
Email: englishinfo@english.ucsb.edu