M.A. in English

The M.A. in English literature is designed to prepare students to pursue a doctoral degree or to teach at the secondary level by giving them an advanced understanding of their subject matter. Graduates of our M.A. program leave well prepared to pursue professional degrees at selective universities or careers in teaching, higher education administration, business, publishing, the public sector, and the law. The English Department at the University of Mississippi is committed to the hands-on development of its M.A. students both as researchers and as teachers. Our M.A. program is based entirely on the Oxford campus, and we do not offer distance-learning programming. Our M.A. students undertake guided independent research and gain important experience in the classroom.

Unlike many Masters programs, which are oriented primarily toward tuition-paying students, the English Department at the University of Mississippi offers a funded Master’s degree, enabling us to attract qualified applicants regardless of means.

Students seeking an M.A. benefit from a faculty whose expertise covers American, British, and Anglophone literature, as well as literary and cultural theory, gender studies, postcolonial and global studies, critical race theory, cultural studies, history of the book, and digital humanities and textual science. The English department’s close ties to other academic departments and programs—including the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the African-American Studies Program, the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, the Environmental Studies Program, the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, and the Southern Foodways Alliance—enable M.A. students to see their work in an interdisciplinary context. Each year the English Department hosts the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference and for more than two decades our graduate students have helped organize the annual Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference.

Oxford has a rich literary heritage and maintains a vibrant literary culture. Visiting authors and scholars, endowed speaker series, and a variety of less formal working groups give M.A. students a chance to engage with current and ongoing research in the discipline.