Additional Areas of Concentration

In addition to regular graduate program options, concentrations may be arranged in the areas listed below.

Rhetoric and Composition

Faculty research and interests have made our Rhetoric and Composition Program particularly strong in the areas of contemporary theory, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy. Six permanent faculty offer courses or act as mentors, conduct research and are professionally active in the field, some with national reputations. Students who declare Rhetoric and Composition take 3 required courses--Rhetorical Theory, Composition Research Methods, and a special topics Seminar in Rhetoric, which may be taken more than once for credit. Students with a declared specialization also write a dissertation in the field and are introduced to the profession.

Professional development is strongly encouraged; for example, doctoral students may be required, as part of a course, to submit a proposal to CCCC. To prepare students for all areas of the composition job market, we try to provide a variety of professional experiences: experienced teaching assistants may have the chance to teach a writing course at the 300-level; all students tutor in the campus Writing Center, selected students will be awarded administrative duties in the Writing Center or in the College Writing program.

M.A. in English and M.L.I.S. Cooperative Program

By proper selection of course work, a student may simultaneously earn the degree of Master of Library and Information Studies and Master of Arts in English.

Admission requirements: All requirements listed for M.L.I.S. and M.A. in English. Applicant must apply to both programs and be accepted by both. The application to each program must indicate English/library and information studies as the field of specialization.

Program requirements: Students must submit individual programs of study for the 42-credit M.L.I.S. program and the 30-credit M.A. in English. The integrated pursuit of the two degrees makes it possible for six credits of appropriately selected course work from one program to serve as electives in the other, and for six credits of course work to be applied in the opposite direction. ENG 510 / ENG 511 and ENG 514 are required. Thus, when planned and taken jointly, the two programs can be completed with a total of 60 credits rather than 72. Students must complete at least 36 credits in librarianship and at least 24 credits in English.

Critical Theory in the Graduate Program

The M.A. and Ph.D. programs in English, with emphases on literary studies, Writing, Rhetoric and Composition, and cultural and area studies (including women's, African-American, gender, film & media, and comparative literature studies) offer many courses with either a primary emphasis on theory, or which feature strong theoretical components.

ENG 514: "Studies in Critical Theories" has been designed as an introductory course in theory, and is offered with different emphases. In recent years it has explored the concept of the "subject" as it emerges in a number of theoretical discourses including post-structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, feminism, post-colonial studies, and queer theory; or as an historical survey of critical theories of representation and mimesis from Plato through the twentieth century. This course is currently required for all graduate students at both the M.A. and the Ph.D. levels; it offers to students strategies for learning how to discover and articulate the theoretical underpinnings of their ongoing work; it introduces students to the major theoretical debates driving literary and cultural studies today; it provides a workshop for learning how to situate one's writing vis-à-vis theoretical texts, whether that means writing ABOUT those texts, or being INFORMED by those texts in writing about something else.

ENG 650: "Seminar in Critical Theories" is a more advanced course solely organized around theoretical issues and debates, and offers students an opportunity to explore some theoretical terrain in more depth. It must also be noted that, while they may not include "theory" in their title in the URI Bulletin of courses, many other graduate courses have significant theoretical emphases. Following are examples of theoretical inflections of recently offered graduate courses at both the 500 and 600 levels.

"European Texts: Fetishism, Paranoia, Melancholia" has been offered as an exploration of key texts of Freud and their deployment within contemporary cultural studies (Professor Walton); on other occasions "European Texts" has investigated literature and literary understanding through the interpretive interrogations of nationalism, ethnocentrism and ethnicity, and postcolonial critique (Professor Leo); "Seminar in Authors: Beckett and the Politics of Disembodiment" has placed Beckett's fiction within the context of his French theoretical post-structuralist contemporaries (Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Derrida) (Professor Walton); "Seminar in Culture and Discourse: Contemporary Performance Art and the Discourse of Performance in Feminist Theory" has explored theories of performativity in feminist and queer studies (Professor Cappello); "Seminar in Media" has included emphasis on visual culture, theory and literacies, as well as on Film Theory and Practice (Professor Leo); "Seminar in Canons" has been taught as a history of canons and canon formation, the culture wars, curricular reform, and the theoretical debates and underpinnings of concepts of "literature" and "curricula" (Professor Leo); it has also been taught as "Problems in American Realism: Chesnutt, James and the Politics of Canonicity" and explored theories of canon formation drawing from post-Marxist, race, and queer theory (Professor Cappello).

Students are encouraged to take on original and independent work under the rubric of "theory" and "practice" in all sectors of the English graduate curriculum and in interdisciplinary study; to conjoin and develop their competency and grasp of theory in their professional development (e.g. conference work, curricular design); and to imagine (after John Carlos Rowe) ways of bringing theory into other communities of which the University is already a part.