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Program Offered
Master of Arts, English

Mission Statement
The Master of Arts in English at Marygrove College offers students opportunities for advanced study in literature, writing, and the teaching of English. By emphasizing teaching potentials for literature and writing, the program serves the needs of those teaching or seeking to teach in community colleges or high schools. However, its rigorous examination of multiple critical approaches offers ample preparation for students planning to pursue a doctoral degree.

General Informatiton
The Master of Arts in English is designed to provide both theoretical and practical foundations for teaching English in community colleges or high schools. It is a 33 credit hour program whose courses are usually offered in the evening and on weekends. Two required core courses will give a solid base for graduate English studies, while advanced seminars will offer rigorous opportunities to explore various disciplinary topics in depth. And the flexibly conceived Masters Project (prepared by a Directed Reading course) will provide an opportunity for students to further explore their topic of interest in literary works or in teaching composition.

Admission Requirements
The Master of Arts in English is open to any applicant who has successfully completed any undergraduate from an accredited institution of higher education. In addition to the admission requirements as explained in the “Graduate Admissions” section of the graduate catalog, all applicants should submit two letters of recommendation and a substantial writing sample that demonstrates adequate preparation and potential for graduate work in English. After reviewing the completed application package, the Graduate Coordinator will schedule a personal interview.

Graduation Requirements
To complete the master’s degree, students must complete 33 credits of approved coursework.

Two Required Core Courses:
ENG 501 Foundations of Graduate English Studies (3 hours)
ENG 514 Literary Criticism (3 hours)

Two Required Advanced Seminar Courses
Two 3 credit hour Advanced Seminar courses (600 level courses)

Masters Project
ENG 660 Directed Reading (3 hours)
ENG 665 Masters Project (3 hours)

Electives:
15 credits; any mix chosen from 1- 4 credit elective courses, seminars, or one independent study course (no more than 3 credit hours)

Course Descriptions:
ENG 501 Foundations of Graduate English 3 hours
This course introduces students to graduate studies in English literature and language. It focuses on current professional issues in the field, various contemporary theoretical approaches to literature and language, their practical implications in writing and teaching, and the principles and procedures of scholarly research.

ENG 510 Detroit in Literature 3 hours
This course examines representations of Detroit in poetry and fiction produced between the 1930s and the present. By reading and discussing works of such authors as Robert Hayden, Harriet Arnow, Dudley Randall, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Levine, Lawrence Joseph, Jim Daniels, Jeffrey Eugenides, and others, the course studies the translation of a familiar environment into literature and “places” Detroit in modern American culture.

ENG 514 Literary Criticism 3 hours
In-depth examination and application of particular critical theory. For example, Marxist, deconstructionist, post-colonialist, feminist, critical race theory, structuralist, post-modernist, or eco-criticism

ENG 520 Dickinson and Frost 3 hours
This course examines the work of two New England poets who share not only the imagery of a common natural landscape but also a set of common philosophical and literary traditions. Course sessions will consist of close reading and explication of individual poems by the entire class and discussion of the issues raised in them.

ENG 520-529 Literary Genre
Studies in specific genres such as fiction (novel, short story), poetry, drama, essay; or modes including comedy, satire, romance, tragedy.

ENG 521 Adolescent Literature: Realism, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction 3 hours
Studies in specific genres such as fiction (novel, short story), poetry, drama, essay; or modes including comedy, satire, romance, tragedy.

ENG 520-529 Literary Genre
This course will concentrate on analyzing literary works whose primary audience is middle and high school age students. The course will focus on works in the genres of realistic fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy/science fiction. Literature will be broadly defined to include printed texts, films, television, and games, including works by authors such as Lois Duncan, Rosa Guy, Virginia Hamilton, S.E. Hinton, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mildred D. Taylor, and Cynthia Voigt.

ENG 524 Selected Topics 3 hours
In-depth study of major authors, periods, or topics as chosen by the instructor.

ENG 525 Contemporary Drama 1970-Present 3 hours
This course examines works of influential drama from the 1970s to the present.

ENG 529 Studies in African American Literature 3 hours
This course examines the work of influential black writers of the 20th century such as Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Dorothy West, Paule Marshall, Charles Johnson, Clarence Major, and John Edgar Wideman. The course provides a window into how these innovative writers have documented, critiqued, and responded to the major historical and literary movements that have shaped their ideologies and informed their world views.

ENG 530 19th Century Novel 3 hours
This course will examine canonical novels of the European 19th Century, such as Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, Sons and Lovers, and select from Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Thackeray, Zola, Bronte, and others.

ENG 534 Studies in Modern British Literature 3 hours
This course introduces the student to the historical, intellectual, and formal aspects of British literary modernism. The course will attempt to provide a broad, if necessarily selective, picture of modernist literary works in all its considerable variety, and will also focus on modernism’s recurrent preoccupations, particularly its concern with modernity itself. Readings might include selected works of authors such as Yeats, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Forster, Ford, West, Ishiguro, and Bowen.

ENG 538 The Romantic Poets 3 hours
This course will survey the major poets and poetry of the British Romantic period (roughly 1789-1832), with an emphasis on how the poetry responded to the turbulent social, emotional, intellectual, and political dislocations of the times. The course will provide the key terms and texts for the study of Romanticism as both a period of literature and a set of aesthetic practices that may be applied beyond that period.

ENG 539 Witchcraft and Gender 3 hours
This course will explore early American notions of gender, especially as they relate to and inform the infamous witch hunts in Salem and beyond. The course will examine relevant early American literature to connect and complicate the relationship between conceptions of womanhood and the hysteria of the witch-craze.

ENG 541 Approaches to Composition 3 hours
This course examines important contemporary critical theories and questions that have shaped the conversations of writing teachers and researchers, particularly over the last four decades.

ENG 561 Shakespeare on Film 3 hours
This course will examine texts and contemporary film interpretations of such works as Hamlet (Branagh, Zeffirelli, Almereyda), Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli and Luhrmann), Branagh’s versions of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labours’ Lost, and Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night.

ENG 565 Writing Creative Nonfiction 3 hours
This course will explore how to write alternative forms of nonfiction beyond the traditional academic essay. Using readings, discussions, and class workshops, students will use elements from fiction and poetry to write creative nonfiction such as memoirs, personal essays, nature essays, and personal cultural criticism.

ENG 570 Women’s Literature: Experimental Literature by Women 3 hours
This course considers how various women writers across the twentieth century have experimented with literary form and explores the implications of this experimentation on the authors, on notions of gender, and on the world.

ENG 601 Advanced Seminar: American Modernist Poetry 3 hours
This course examines the works of major 20th century American poets to construct an understanding of the primary characteristics of modernist poetry. The course considers how the works of these poets define the nature of truth, what the works say about the individual’s relationship to the social world, what it means to be an artist in the context of modernism, and what historical, aesthetic, critical and cultural contexts gave rise to modernist poetry. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514.

ENG 603 Postcolonial Re-imaginations: “The Empire Writes Back” 3 hours
This course is designed to examine the interplay between the classic, colonial fictions of the West and the postcolonial responses of the formerly colonized. It will offer an opportunity to explore classical works “dialogically,” alongside more contemporary works. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514.

ENG 604 Advanced Seminar: Studies in the Harlem Renaissance 3 hours
The coursewill focus on one of the dominant themes of the period, “A Quest for Wholeness and Meaning.” Students will begin with the discourse on the Harlem Renaissance and examine the cultural and philosophical essays of such authors as W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Marita Bonner. Then students will explore the theme in selected works by selected poets and novelists, as well as the works of artists, musicians and dramatists. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514.

ENG 610, Advanced Seminar: 19th Century American Authors 3 hours
This course will identify and discuss the points of contention between major nineteenth century American writers, such as Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Douglass, Whitman, Dickinson, and Twain. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514.

ENG 615, Advanced Seminar: Film Noir 3 hours
This course will examine the phenomenon of Film Noir as a response to post-World-War-II anxieties and moral ambiguities. The seminar will explore the genre in terms of its characteristic cinematic techniques, rhetorical connections to hard-boiled detective fiction, development of iconic character types and subsequently, identifiable stars, and reception by the American film industry of the time. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514.

ENG 620 Novel and Nation 3 hours
The course will examine the ways in which the novel has helped to build nation and national identity in a variety of voices, spaces, and contexts. The students will read selected novels alongside critical works by contemporary scholars. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514. 

ENG 665, Master's Project 3 hours
The master’s project is a requirement for the completion of the master of arts in English degree, and should demonstrate original thought and substantial research. It may take a number of forms: it may be a critical study of literary works and authors; a theoretical exploration of issues related to literature or writing; or an empirical study of composition and/or pedagogy (for example, a case study, composing process analysis, classroom ethnography, or other fieldwork). This course is only open by permission of and prior arrangement with an instructor. Prerequisites: ENG 501, ENG 514, and two advanced seminars.

ENG 691 Independent Study 1-3 hours
Independent in-depth study of particular authors, periods, genres, or issues. No more than 3 hours of independent studies may be taken.