Why the MA Literature Program?
"I am large, I contain multitudes": The intersections among the individual, our shared humanity, and our ultimate interconnectedness have rarely been described more concisely than in Walt Whitman's timeless poetic aphorism. These already spacious categories have been and will continue to be even larger and more multitudinous in an age when stable identities and analog environments must recognize and accommodate the fluidity and elusive nature of our digitally mediated virtual selves. Literature in its many guises functions as an intellectual proving ground and a meaning-making playground for our connected, unconnected, disconnected, reconnected, interconnected lives. Interrogating literary texts is the passion of professors in the Literature Program at Stanislaus State, and they dedicate themselves to sharing their expertise with students as a powerful way of navigating the cultural, social, and personal challenges that we face now and in the coming years. Master's candidates will do more than simply read across the spectrum of literature in both digital and printed media. Students will be encouraged to actively engage, to experience and absorb, to analyze, interrogate, write about the observational power, the wisdom, and the challenge of literature—from the classic to the contemporary of poetry, novels, dramatic works, and other literary formats.
Alongside the ability to read expansively and critically, proficiency in writing is a cornerstone of the Literature Program. Writing facilities and orders thinking, and in turn, discovery and creativity. Under the guidance of their professors, graduate students will broaden and polish their own literary skills as they write and think alongside the luminaries of literary history, including both traditionally canonical writers and contemporary authors, as well as paradigm-shifting literary critics. Learning how and what to read is important. Discovering how to situate what you have read among both classic and newer literary texts in the English language, the long conversation of Western thought, and a vibrant global literary heritage is integral. Understanding how to synthesize meaning from your mastery of foregoing and your own experience is paramount. Proficiency as a writer will bind these ways of knowing for the individual and their own cultural production.
Practical Considerations and Career Paths
The writing proficiencies in analysis and formal expression that students will acquire through their graduate studies will prepare them for career opportunities in many fields and disciplines including philosophy, film and media studies, teaching, professional writing, law, medicine and more. An M.A. in Literature from Stanislaus State will command the attention of admissions programs for PhD degrees in Literary Studies or Comparative Literature; of hiring committees looking for English teachers in community colleges; and of those high school teachers looking to expand and refine their knowledge of the canons of literature. These opening opportunities may also include experience in literary production as part of the editorial team overseeing Penumbra, our department's journal of art and literature. For 35 years, Penumbra has provided an applied learning venue for students who wish to acquire professional level skills including editorial teamwork, soliciting and evaluating submissions, and preparing material for print. The Penumbra project also offers opportunities for student-staff members and the public to publish their own art, poetry and other narrative texts in our printed edition of Penumbra or on the journal's website. Our literature faculty have shepherded students into print (both literary and academic), supported their participation in academic conferences, sponsored them in research competitions, and helped them gain access to PhD programs in California an across the nation.
Fortified with heightened awareness of power of language and its uses, graduates of the M.A. program in Literature have become teachers in community colleges and comprehensive universities; their critical thinking skills have led them to careers in law and other areas that traffic in the analysis of complex data and historical precedent; their enhanced imaginative faculties, creativity, and problem-solving make them leaders in entrepreneurial ventures or non-profit organizations; and of course, their skills as writers and communicators and their talent for creating compelling narratives out of events and ideas (not to mention the practical training available in our M.A.) make them ideal copywriters/editors, public relations representatives, columnists, podcasters, technical writers, correspondents, or filmmakers. With a Master's in Literature and the empathic understanding of human motivation and history that comes with it, the world will be yours to partake of and to change. To the narrative of history, you will have the wherewithal to add a verse; you will contain multitudes.
MA Literature Coursework (30 Units)
Literature students must take ENGL 5000 (Critical Theory and Research) and complete at least 27 more units of applicable course work. Of these 27 units, at least 18 must be in Literature courses numbered ENGL 5550 through ENGL 5950 and designated as seminars. Students who choose the thesis option (see below) may take 6 units of thesis writing in lieu of 6 seminar units. M.A. candidates in Literature may apply no more than 9 units of the following toward their degree (these may be applied in any combination, including repeating a course): 4000-level courses in Literature, independent study courses (ENGL 5980), internships, and/or 4000-level courses not offered by the English Department.
The Thesis Option: M.A. students with classified standing and a grade point average of 3.5 or higher in their first 24 units may choose to write a thesis. Such a challenge should not be undertaken lightly; the thesis is a sustained study delving into a particular topic of interest to the author and usually reaching a length of 50-100 pages. When completed and approved, the thesis is submitted to the library and filed electronically, thus becoming available to scholars worldwide. Though most PhD programs do not require a thesis of their applicants, writing one may enhance the chance of acceptance into a terminal degree program—successful completion demonstrates an ability to conceive of and complete a substantial project that may be the fountainhead of a dissertation. The thesis option also allows a student to work closely with a faculty advisor and mentor. Interested students should consult the program director early on in their studies and submit an approval form. One semester before enrolling in ENGL 5990 (Thesis), students must write a thesis prospectus (c. 500 words) and have it approved by the program director, thesis director, and second reader. Students may take up to 6 units of ENGL 5990 to meet M.A. coursework requirements. Those needing more time to complete these must enroll in one unit of ENGL 7005 (Continuing Thesis or Project). Completed theses are due four weeks before the end of the semester targeted for graduation. Students who write a thesis are not obliged to take more than 12 units of graduate seminars but must still take comprehensive examinations.
Comprehensive Examinations
M.A. exams in the Literature Concentration will be offered each semester near the middle of the term on date determined by the Department. Examinations consist of two parts; for each, candidates will have two and half hours to complete an essay or suchlike writing task (so, for example, students will have from 9-11:30 to complete part one, then return and complete part two from 1-3:30). The prompt for part one will be the same for all test-takers and will be based on a departmental reading list with which all examinees should be thoroughly familiar. Successful students will demonstrate an awareness of critical, historical, and cultural contexts along with the ability to read texts and textual passages closely and to write persuasively. The prompt for part two will be unique to each examinee and will be written by a faculty member who has agreed to serve as the student's major professor and mentor for the culminating experiences in the M.A. program. Together, the student and major professor will develop a list of ten related works not appearing on the general reading list and use this list as the basis for their response to the part two prompt. The examinee must address the same skills and depth of knowledge in the second essay, since it represents the student's professed area of expertise. That said, the part two essay should engage and persuade an educated but generalist academic audience.
For the purpose of the comprehensive examination, students are responsible for forty texts. Thirty of these are primary literary texts drawn from the canons of American and British literatures, fifteen from each (note that some of these selections may be edited collections containing multiple works). Ten additional texts representing each student's focused area of interest and developed in consultation with a mentor round out the collection of forty. The successful student not only demonstrates easy familiarity and paradigms and theorists. A student may have a particular fondness for Aristotle and classical theories, T.S. Eliot and formalism, Stanley Fish and reader-oriented theories, Julia Kristeva and psychoanalysis. Michel Foucault and New Historicism, Judith Butler and Queer Theory, other theorists and other schools, or a combination of several approaches—no matter; but discussions within a given context or contexts and with reference to ideas from some of the great thinkers who developed various discursive fields of inquiry.
After compiling their personal lists of ten works, students must fill out a Comprehensive Examination in Literature Form, have it signed by their major professor, and send a copy to the program coordinator in the English Department. This should be done by the first week of the semester during which the student plans on taking the exam. The exams will be read by and ad hoc group of Literature professors. Exam questions will be anonymized and each one scored by three graders, who may assign grades of "no pass," "pass," or "high pass." At least two of three graders must agree on a "pass" or a "high pass" for a student to pass an exam questions. If both parts receive a "no pass," both parts must be retaken the following spring. If only one of the two parts receives a "no pass" then only that part of the exam needs to be retaken the following spring. In either case, the student will receive a new prompt.
Contact: Dr. Tony Perrello, Coordinator, Master of Arts in English (Literature) tperrello@csustan.edu.
Master List for the MA Comprehensive Exams in Literature (2024-2025):
American
1. Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America
2. Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
3. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
4. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
6. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
7. Emily Dickinson, Essential Dickinson (ed. Joyce Carol Oates)
8. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
9. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
10. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
11. Langston Hughes, Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
12. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
13. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
14. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
15. Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
British Literature
16. Beowulf
17. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
18. Geoffrey Chaucer, Selections from The Canterbury Tales: "The General Prologue," "The Knight's Tale," "The Miller's Tale," "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," "The Clerk's Tale," "The Franklin's Tale"
19. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Bk. 1
20. William Shakespeare, King Lear
21. John Milton, Paradise Lost
22. Aphra Behn, The Rover
23. William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, 2nd. ed.
24. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 edition)
25. George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan
26. George Eliot, Middlemarch
27. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
28. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
29. W.B. Yeats, Collected Poems (ed. Richard J. Finneran)
30. Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Updated: August 27, 2024