Program Description
The English department emphasizes preparation for Ph.D. work and supports local secondary school teachers who wish to earn an M.A., but we accept all qualified students who have an interest in literature and critical theory. We also welcome students who, in the pursuit of a variety of career goals, wish to pursue an advanced degree in literature in order to enrich their knowledge and to improve their reading, writing, and analytical skills.

Degree Requirements
The minimum requirement for the M.A. in English is 33 hours of graduate credit in English. All students must take ENG 599: Bibliography and Methods of Research in their first semester, and one course that focuses on literature pre-1800. At least 17 hours of a student’s graduate credit must be earned in courses on the 600 level or above. Nine hours constitute a full-time graduate course load.
The 33-hour requirement is the minimum for the degree. Students may, whenever possible within approvable course loads, take courses in addition to the 33-hour minimum. The Graduate Studies Committee of the English Department reviews admissions applications and makes recommendations to the Graduate School under three classifications: unconditional, conditional, and provisional admission. (Non-degree status is not a matter for departmental review.) Click here to access the English M.A. Program Checklist or go to the Graduate Forms section of this site.

Grades
The university grading system for graduate courses is:
A                     Excellent                    4.0
A-                                                        3.7
B+                   Very Good                 3.3
B                     Good                          3.0
B-                                                        2.7
C                     Poor                           2.0
F                      Failure                       0.0
S/U                  Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory [Thesis and selected courses]

• Plus and minus grading is optional for faculty.  Please make certain your understand whether or not your professors will be using a plus or minus system.
• Graduate students may register for graduate courses using the “audit” option for elective courses only. These courses will not count as part of the student’s program of study.  Under no circumstances may the credit option be changed from “audit” to “credit” or “credit” to “audit”. Students are required to pay for courses taken as “audit.”  Audit courses cannot be paid for using any university sources of funding.
• A grade of “NP” (not processed) will be given to students who are registered for thesis work before the thesis is completed. When the thesis is complete, the grade will be changed to “Satisfactory” or “Unsatisfactory” for the 6 hours of credit.
• A grade of “NC” (no credit) will be given for comprehensive continuance and thesis continuance.
• Courses in which a student receives an “I” (incomplete) must be completed before the end of the next regular semester, or the grade is reported permanently as an “F”.
• Please see the Graduate Catalog for additional details.

Honor Code
All graduate students, beginning with those who entered Fall 2006, including those who earned their B.A. from JMU, are required to watch a web-video containing information about the JMU Honor Code and then take a web-based test on the material.  This must be completed by the end of the student’s first semester at JMU or a hold will be placed on the student’s registration.  Click here to access the video, test information, and test.

Satisfactory Progress
A graduate student will receive a notice of academic warning upon receiving a grade of “C” in any two graduate courses or if the student’s grade point average falls below 3.0.  This academic warning will be noted on the student’s transcript.  A student will be dismissed from the degree program or provisional status will be revoked if the student receives an “F” or “U” in any graduate course or a total of three “C” grades in his or her graduate program.  A student cannot graduate with a GPA below 3.0

Changes in the Catalog
A graduate student may elect to follow the catalog in effect at the time of first registration through to graduation or may request to change to any new catalog issued prior to the completion of studies. However, it is The Graduate School policy that published descriptions of degrees establish only minimum requirements and that it is the prerogative of each school or department to make changes in programs at any time. A student is expected to satisfy any additional departmental regulations approved by the University’s Commission on Graduate Studies (if required) and put in effect prior to graduation, regardless of current or previous catalog content.

Advising
The Director of Graduate Studies acts as advisor for all M.A. students on all academic and administrative matters.  Students are required to meet with the Director toward the middle of their first semester in the program for a discussion of the student’s progress and performance.  Students are also strongly encouraged to meet with the Director each semester to plan their coursework for the following semester.  Those who are contemplating study at the doctoral level should seek the advice and support of the Director and of those members of the graduate faculty whose field aligns with the student’s own interests well in advance of the application dates.  Students who choose the thesis option will select a thesis director and two readers from among the graduate faculty.  Students should consult the thesis director for advice about committee selection and about the thesis generally. 

Continuous Graduate Enrollment
All students enrolled in graduate degree programs must enroll each regular semester for a minimum of one graduate credit hour.  This registration must continue with no breaks from enrollment in the first graduate program course to graduation.  This policy does not include summer sessions.  Students should enroll in courses relevant to their graduate program to facilitate timely completion.  If it is not possible to do so, however, The Graduate School has established a one-credit Continuous Enrollment course, GRAD 597.  The tuition for this course is $50.00.  No grade will be assigned for this course.  For more information, please refer to the Graduate Catalog.

Foreign Language Requirement
A reading knowledge of a foreign language is required for the M.A. in English.  Students should try to meet the foreign language requirement during the first year of graduate study.  Proof of competency can be established in one of the following ways:
•The completion of the third year of college-level foreign language courses—that is, 6 credit hours of 300-level college work in a foreign language (excluding literature courses devoted to works in translation).  Students must achieve a B average in 300-level courses.
•Translating a foreign language text under a specified time limit and with the use of a dictionary.  The Graduate Director will administer the exam and the translation will be read and evaluated (Pass/No Pass) by qualified faculty in the Departments of English or Foreign Languages.  A student may retake the examination in a language as many times as may be necessary to achieve a passing score, however, a different text will be used on each occasion.
•Proof of competency by other means.  A student seeking certification of a reading knowledge of a foreign language by other means must obtain approval of the Director of Graduate Studies and the Department Head.

Course Descriptions and Offerings
Please note that course offerings vary; in any given semester we work to offer a variety of British, America, and World literatures, as well as courses in theory, literary criticism, and creative writing.  Note, however, that the creative writing option will no longer be available to students who enter the program after the fall 2006 semester.
ENG 501 Professional Seminar in College Composition
ENG 503 Old English
ENG 505 Middle English
ENG 508 History of Literary Criticism
ENG 509 Contemporary Critical Practices
ENG 510 Author Seminar
ENG 512 Special Topics Seminar
ENG 581 Poetics
ENG 582 Narrative Form
ENG 583 Poetry Workshop
ENG 584 Fiction Workshop
ENG 599 Bibliography and Methods of Research
ENG 602 The English Language
ENG 604 Linguistics
ENG 615 Chaucer
ENG 618 Medieval Drama
ENG 620 Shakespeare
ENG 625 Sixteenth-Century Literature
ENG 628 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
ENG 630 Seventeenth-Century Literature
ENG 634 Studies in Early American Literature
ENG 635 Milton
ENG 640 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENG 645 Nineteenth-Century British Literature
ENG 651 American Romanticism
ENG 656 American Realism
ENG 661 Twentieth-Century British Literature
ENG 662 Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States
ENG 664 Modernist Drama
ENG 666 Postmodern Drama
ENG 671 Studies in World Literature
ENG 672 African-American Literature
ENG 674 Women’s Literature/Feminist Theory
ENG 683 Advanced Poetry Writing
ENG 684 Advanced Fiction Writing
ENG 685 Advanced Independent Work in Creative Writing
ENG 698 Comprehensive Continuance
ENG 699 Thesis Continuance
ENG 700 Thesis

Conference Funding
The Department of English can typically offer limited travel funding to graduate students who have had a paper accepted for presentation at an academic conference.  Availability of funding and amount, however, depend upon the budget in any given year.  Interested students should first see the Graduate Director.  If funds are available, a travel authorization must be completed prior to travel.  See Rose Gray, Administrative Assistant for Department of English, for assistance with travel authorizations. 

Useful Research and Computing Links

Research Links (General):
Carrier Library:  http://www.lib.jmu.edu
Carrier Library -- Interlibrary Loan:  http://illiad.jmu.edu/illiad/
MLA International Bibliography: http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/0/1/1/purl=rc6_MLA?sw_aep=viva_jmu
Modern Language Association http://www.mla.org
Oxford English Dictionary http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl
UVA online catalogue (Virgo) https://virgo.lib.virginia.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/KaFx8zMrNn/UVA-LIB/286150008/60/1180/X

Research Links (Discipline Specific):
British Romanticism:
Romanticism on the Net: http://www.ron.umontreal.ca/
Romantic Circles: http://www.rc.umd.edu/
Blake Archive: http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/
Rossetti Archive: http://www.rossettiarchive.org/

Victorian:
Victorian Web: http://www.victorianweb.org/
www.victorianresearch.org

Linguistics: http://www.linguistlist.org

Medieval: Labyrinth is a hub for all areas of medieval studies, medieval organizations, journals, and discussion lists http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/

Milton: Excellent links to scholarly sources as well as where one may subscribe to the Milton-L listserv, which features scholarly and congenial discussions that include independent scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, and such luminaries as Diane McColley and John Shawcross, among others. http://www.urich.edu/~creamer/milton/

Women’s Studies:
Women's Studies On-line Resources: http://research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/
The National Women's Studies Association: http://nwsa.org/
Voice From the Gap: Women Artists and Writers of Color: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/
Brown University Women Writers Project: http://www.wwp.brown.edu/index.html

Computing:
Center for Instructional Technology:  http://cit.jmu.edu/cit/
Computing Support:  http://www.jmu.edu/computing/support/
Computing Helpdesk:  http://www.jmu.edu/computing/helpdesk/
Media Resources:  http://www.lib.jmu.edu/media

Faculty Specialties

Bankert, Dabney A.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise:  Medieval Literature (from the late classical period to ca. 1500) -- Literatures:  Anglo-Saxon (Old English); Old Norse/Icelandic (Viking romances, sagas, Eddic poetry); Old Irish; Arthurian & Middle English romance; Late Medieval literature (Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl-Poet, etc.); Modern narrative and film adaptations of medieval literature; Eighteenth century British (chiefly Swift, Pope, and female authors with particular interest in publishing history and gender politics); Fantasy and Science/Speculative fiction; Theological and Biblical:  Hagiography; Apocryphal Biblical narrative and patristics (commentaries by the church fathers); Medieval conversion narratives and theories of religious conversion; Theory:  New historicism, and Medieval historical criticisms; Medieval feminist theory; Reception Theory – reader response to medieval texts in later periods; Genre theory – how generic categories influence reception; Translation theory and methodology; Bibliographical and Textual Criticism:  Manuscript studies, especially the editing of manuscripts; History of the book; editorial theory, practice and method; History of British publishing houses
Current Research Area:  Anglo-Saxon lexicography and the history of the discipline.

Canivell, Maria Odette
Current Research Areas: Nation building and Literature: Writers and Politics and their literary works; The "Medusas" of Literature; The Meta-narrative of history: Spain and England in their historical perspectives about Empire building. I am currently at work on a novel in Spanish on The Loss of Innocence regarding the Guatemalan Civil War.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: World Literature, creative writing, Latin American Literature, Psychoanalysis, Magical Realism.

Cash, Jean W.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Generalist in literature of the United states, with special emphasis on the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Canonical Literatures: 19th century: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson; Late 19th century and early 20th: Henry James; 20th century: Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison and Zora Neal Hurston, Sylvia Plath; Southern Literature: Early 20th century writers: William Faulkner, The Fugitives and Agrarians (John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Andrew Lytle); Mid-20th century writers: Flannery O’Connor, William Styron, Walker Percy, Harry Crews, Ellen Douglas, Ernest Gaines; Contemporary Southern writers: Larry Brown, Lee Smith, Gail Godwin, Josephine Humphreys, Dorothy Allison, Tim Gautreaux, Chris Offutt, Tim McLaurin, Steve Yarbrough; Theory: Thoroughly grounded in Formalist criticism and have a “smattering”of knowledge in the new historicism, psychoanalytic, and feminist criticism; Writing: The teaching of expository writing and traditional English grammar.
Current Research Area: Researching and writing a biography of Mississippi writer, Larry Brown

Castellano, Katey
Areas of Primary Expertise: :  British Romanticism, with emphases on Romantic poetry, Romantic aesthetics, and Romantic political philosophy. Research ncludes work on revolution, radicalism, conservatism, and “green” thought; the prophetic, pastoral, elegiac, and gothic aesthetic modes; Burke, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
Secondary Research Areas: Victorian poetry, Modernist poetry, the Romantic novel, Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Eco-criticism and Green studies, Experimental Aesthetics, Continental philosophy, including theories of the political, the subject, modernity, and psychoanalysis.

Cote, Sharon A.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Linguistics and Speculative Fiction
Current Research Interests: Discourse Modeling; Interrelationships between Sentential Syntax/Semantics and Discourse; Differences Between Written and Spoken Language; Use of cue words in discourse of normal and aphasic speakers; Pragmatics; Functions of Syntax

Sandra C. Duvivier
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: African American Literature; Caribbean American Literature; Black Feminist/Womanist Thought and Theory; Women of Color Feminisms; Critical Race Theory; Postcolonialism; Cultural Studies.
Current Research Area: Transnational Black American Women’s Literature.

Facknitz, Mark A.R.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Twentieth-century British and American, Creative non-fiction, Fiction, Mixed media creative work, History of the novel (English, American, or comp lit.), American short story, Modernism, Literary Theory, Aesthetics, Interdisciplinary work, Literature and war, esp. WWI and Vietnam, Trauma studies, Commemoration; Major Authors: British: William Blake, William Butler Yates, Shelley, Carlyle, Joseph Conrad, Ford, Rebecca West; WWI poets, novelists, and memoirists; W.H. Auden, Anthony Powell, Henry Green, Zadie Smith; Americans: Henry Adams, John Dos Passos, Wallace Stevens, Willa Cather, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Ray Carver, and Annie Dillard

Favila, Marina
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Shakespeare, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, film, psychoanalytic theory, Modern Drama; Bibliography and Research Methods; Directing work: public readings at the Blackfriars Theatre, Staunton, VA;
Other: Currently serving as Second Vice President of the College English Association and on the Education and Research Committee at the American Shakespeare Center.

Federico, Annette
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: nineteenth-century British literature; twentieth century British literature; the novel; women's literature; feminist theory; gender studies; literature and cultural studies; literature and ethics; and Canadian literature

Frederick, Joan
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: American literature and culture

Gabbin, Joanne V.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: African-American literature.
Director: Furious Flower Center

Geary, Robert F., Jr.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: 18th-Century British Literature, the Gothic, and modern literature and religion (especially questions of unmerited suffering)

Henigman, Laura
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Colonial and nineteenth-century American literature, American Studies, American women writers.
Research Areas: Coming Into Communion: Pastoral Dialogues in Colonial New England; recent articles on Harriet Beecher Stowe and historical fiction.

Jeffrey, David K.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Eighteen-Century British novel; American literature from Edgar Allen Poe to contemporary Southern fiction; popular culture, particularly detective/crime novels.

Johnson, Bruce A.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: 17th-century British, English Reformation and Renaissance, and 20th-century German literatures

Kutchins, Laurie
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: creative writing/poetry, poetic craft and creativity, literary nonfiction, contemporary poetry, literature and the environment (or the ecological imagination in literature).

Majors, R. Inman
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Creative writing, fiction

Mookerjea-Leonard, Debali
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: South Asian Literature—Ancient, Medieval, and Modern; Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures; Postcolonial Theory; Literature and Nationalism; Women’s Writing; Feminist Theory; Third World Feminisms; Gender Studies
Current Research Areas: Literature and Partition; the British Raj and Women; Literature of Migration.

Osotsi, Ramenga M.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: African literature, oral literature

Rankin, Mark
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Renaissance literature and culture, with primary emphasis on Shakespeare, the English Reformation, religious controversy, devotional poetry, Tudor non-dramatic literature, and the History of the Book. Secondary expertise in late-Medieval literature, the History of the English Language, Charles Dickens, and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Current Research Area: The cultural legacy of Henry VIII. Responses to the Henrician Reformation between 1535-1625 in both ‘literature’ and ‘polemic’. 

Rebhorn, Matthew E.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: American Literature (Beginnings to 1930) and American Drama; Melodrama; The Novel; Literary Theory and Criticism; Critical Race Theory; Gender Theory; The Frontier/Borderlands Studies; American Popular Culture; and Cultural History.

Smith-Berniss, Michelle A.
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: Caribbean literature

Thompson, Mary
Areas of Primary and Secondary Expertise: American Literature, Women's Literature, Feminist Theory, and Theories of The Body
Areas of Research Interest: Abortion, Reproductive Rights, and Motherhood; Cultural Studies and the Body as applied to women's literature and to representations of women's bodies in popular culture, including cosmetic surgery and abortion; Feminist Theory, including activism, third wave feminism, masculinity studies, and studies of the intersections of race/ethnicity, nationality, class, gender and sexuality; Critical Race Studies, including constructions of whiteness and anti-racist action

Graduate Degree Completion Requirements

Application for Graduation
You must be in "good standing" and have a grade point average of at least 3.0 to graduate. If you expect to graduate at the end of a term, please click here for the instructions and here for the application or you may pickup a Graduation Packet from The Graduate School. You must submit your Application for a Graduate Degree form by the dates indicated in the packet. No credit for University work may be given for a diploma, teacher's license, or transfer until all debts to JMU have been paid (excluding student loans).

Commencement
Students are expected to attend graduation exercises. If you are unable to attend, you must notify the Office of Registration and Records at least 21 days before commencement.

Application for Graduate Degree
Students are responsible for notifying both the Department of English Graduate Director and The Graduate School when they plan to graduate.  In order to graduate students must complete the Application for Graduate Degree form available online at: http://www.jmu.edu/grad/current/forms.shtmlor from The Graduate School.  Students are also responsible for consulting their advisors or The Graduate School regarding deadlines for graduation.  The Application for Graduate Degree form must be approved by the English Department’s Director of Graduate Studies and  the English Department Head.  Students are responsible for obtaining all necessary signatures to complete the Application for Graduate Degree.

Note:  Students must complete all the conditions of the original admission in their degree program, e.g. conditional admission, at least one semester before they are scheduled to graduate before they can be permitted to graduate.  Only six hours of 501 workshop courses approved for inclusion in a graduate program may be applied toward a degree.  If students plan to use transfer credits to fulfill degree requirements, these credits, along with official transcripts showing the credits and the transfer credit form, must appear on the Application for a Graduate Degree form and be forwarded to The Graduate School.