项目介绍

2022年4月25日

Graduate Education

The Yale English Department offers a broad-ranging program of graduate education, with courses that engage all the traditional chronological periods of British literature, American literature since its inception, and many of the contemporary interdisciplines (feminism, cultural studies, post-colonialism, and LGBTQ studies).

The Department aims to train future college teachers of all kinds, from those who wish to work in a research-oriented institution to those who would feel most at home in a large public university or a small undergraduate college. Its faculty believe in the values of pluralism (in what is studied and how it is studied), and they are committed to preparing students to succeed in a competitive and demanding profession. To that end, we make the teaching of undergraduates an important part of graduate training.

Pluralism within the Department is enhanced by relations with other graduate programs. The English Department is affiliated with the programs in African-American Studies, Film Studies, History of Art, Renaissance Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (with all of which it offers a combined degree), as well as American Studies, Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, and Religious Studies. Faculty members are often joint appointees in English and another of these programs, and many courses are cross-listed. The Department encourages its students to design programs of study that combine specialization with wise generalization.

Ph.D. Requirements

In order to fulfill the basic requirements for the program, a student must:

1. Complete twelve courses – six courses with at least one grade of Honors and a maximum of one grade of Pass by July 15 following the first year; at least twelve courses with grades of Honors in at least four of these courses and not more than one Pass by July 15 following the second year.  One of these twelve courses must be The Teaching of English (ENGL 990).  Courses selected must include one medieval, one early modern, one eighteenth- and/or nineteenth-century, one twentieth- and/or twenty-first century.

2. Satisfy the language requirement by the end of the second year. Two languages appropriate to the student’s field of specialization, each to be demonstrated by a) passing a translation exam administered by a Yale language department or (for languages not tested elsewhere at Yale) by the English Department; b) passing an advanced literature course at Yale (graduate or advanced undergraduate, with DGS approval); or c) passing both English 500 and English 501.

3. Pass the oral examination before or as early as possible in the fifth term of residence. The exam consists of questions on five topics, developed by the student in consultation with examiners and subject to approval by the DGS. (At least three topics will comprise works chosen from distinct periods of literary history, as a norm approximately one hundred years each.  As many as two topics may be organized around a genre, a mode, a theme, or a field of theory.)

4. Submit a dissertation prospectus, normally by January 15 of the third year.

5. Teach a minimum of two terms.

6. Submit a dissertation.

Upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus, students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. Admission to candidacy must take place by the end of the third year of study.