About Graduate Studies
The Graduate Program in English at Chapel Hill is founded on a profound belief in the synergy between teaching and research. Over fifty full-time English Department faculty working across a wide range of traditional historical periods and emerging fields of inquiry give our teaching unusual intellectual diversity. Students entering at the master's level are encouraged to explore this diversity through broadly gauged coursework. Advanced work involves an intensive program of focused study in consultation with a small group of faculty. In each case, students develop scholarly expertise, critical sophistication, confidence in their teaching, and a high standard of professionalism.
UNC's English Department consistently ranks among the top twenty Ph.D. programs in the United States. Departmental strengths include African American, American, Medieval, Renaissance, and Southern literatures. In addition to genre studies such as the novel, critical approaches of note include cultural, historicist, and feminist methodologies. The Department's intellectual and scholarly breadth as well as its strong interdisciplinary ties to other curricula and programs within the university encourages graduate students to take full advantage of the extensive research facilities at UNC-Chapel Hill and at other major universities in North Carolina's Research Triangle.