Quick Facts
- Delivery: On Campus
- Credits: 30-33
In pursuing either a master’s or doctoral degree, graduate students in literature are encouraged to balance breadth of knowledge with depth of specialization. Our faculty has a wide range of interests and expertise, spanning traditional historical periods and cross-disciplinary fields like queer and feminist theory, film studies, disability studies, and literary biography.
This is a focused degree program that includes training in research methods and literary theory. It culminates in a research project or thesis. The master’s in English literature prepares students for doctoral work in the field as well as careers in law, marketing, communication, and other careers outside the academy.
What You Will Learn
Our MA in English (literature) enables you to connect research and teaching in meaningful ways and to balance breadth of knowledge with your areas of specialization. Faculty encourage your intellectual growth and practical development through courses on pedagogy and professionalism.
Students will learn to:
- Hone their analytical reading skills.
- Conduct focused, independent research.
- Write original, polished, and professional conference- and article-length papers.
- Develop pedagogical methods, rationales, and course plans.
Our Alumni
Learn more about what our graduate-program alumni do.
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Program Benefits
You’ll construct knowledge in close collaboration directly with your classmates and faculty members who boast impressive publication records. Your professors will bring to the classroom their excitement for researching and interpreting the cultural force of literature.
- For example, Dr. Rod Taylor publishes on African-American literature and culture, with a focus on archival research. His seminars have covered topics such as the American dream and the ways in which African-American writers have used various forms of print—pamphlets, periodicals, and traditional literary form—to address important issues of Black life in the United States.
- Dr. Joyce Huff brings her interdisciplinary specializations in Victorian Literature and Disability Studies to the graduate classroom in seminars on the conversation between literature and medicine in the Victorian era and on current literature by disabled writers who challenge traditional representations of disability. She co-edited the collection A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century.
- Dr. Vanessa Rapatz is the author of Convents and Novices in Early Modern English Dramatic Works: In Medias Res. Her expertise in drama and Shakespeare informs her teaching of courses that connect plays and performance across time, including seminars on gender on the Elizabethan stage and on the paradoxical representation of private spaces on public stages in current theatre and film.
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Graduate students regularly present at national conferences, including those held by the Modernist Studies Association, the American Literature Association, and the Popular Culture Association.
At a recent South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) conference, for example, a panel of Ball State graduate students presented papers on Watchmen, The Hunger Games, and Dracula.
This degree emphasizes pedagogy and includes a three-credit class devoted to teaching literature in higher education.
You may also pursue a graduate assistantship with the Freshman Writing Program, which has its own robust pedagogy-training program.
A graduate assistantship is an excellent opportunity to gain meaningful professional experience while helping cover the costs of your degree. Learn more.
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Take the Next Step
If you’d like to learn more about our master's degree, complete our online form. Or one of the best ways to get a true feel for Ball State is to see it for yourself, so schedule a visit today! And if you’re ready to apply, review our admission requirements and complete our online application.
Applications for the fall semester will be accepted until July 10; applications for the spring semester will be accepted until November 1. To ensure full consideration for academic-year graduate assistantships, applications must be complete by January 31.