Department of English
Graduate Programs
The Master of Arts is a two-year program that offers you a choice between critical and creative specializations as well as multiple paths to completion. If you choose a creative writing emphasis, you take graduate-level workshops in multiple genres with professional writers that enable you to develop not only multi-genre fluency in your own work, but also to learn pedagogical skills and credentials in the creative writing classroom. The critical specialization lets you explore literature across a span of periods and genres. You take classes in British and American literature, from Shakespeare to the postmodern novel, the American West, the rise of the novel, British modernism, and American Transcendentalism.
The Ph.D. program is one of only a few in the United States that offers you a specialization in creative writing or you can pursue critical literary studies. The creative writing specialization revolves around the department’s seminars in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and publishing. It also includes strong grounding in literary studies, as you study alongside critical track students in literature seminars. The critical specialization centers on seminar offerings in British and American literature and critical theory, taught in a vibrant department by faculty who publish widely.
Highlights
- Funded Graduate Teaching Assistantships that give you experience teaching composition and literature courses.
- Close mentorship relationships with dedicated faculty who are experts in their fields.
- Valuable work experience on literary magazines and presses.
- Deeply discounted tuition rate for Graduate Assistants.
- In-state tuition for Western Interstate Commission students.
- Low cost of living and no state income tax in Vermillion, SD.
- Vermillion, SD combines academic, rural, and Lakota culture into a warm, welcoming community with an active arts and culture scene, hiking, camping, and other recreational activities only a few miles from the mighty Missouri River.
For more information or to apply:
-Email questions to Dr. Lisa Ann Robertson, Graduate Coordinator
-Review our admissions and application requirements
-Request more information from the Graduate School
-Fill out an application
Lisa Ann Robertson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Nineteenth-Century British Literature
Coordinator of Graduate Program in English
Associate Editor, Review 19, review19.org
Organizing Committee Chair, Utopia/Dystopia Symposium
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University of South Dakota
Department of English
Dakota Hall, 207
Vermillion, SD 6709 U.S.A