Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in English

Students admitted to the PhD after completing an MA must complete 24 hours of coursework. (Beginning in 2015, students admitted to the PhD program from the BA must complete 18 hours after completing the MA.) All PhD students must complete English 510: Research Methods; English 506: Professional Communication, Theory and Practice; and English 487: Literary and Critical Theory (or another theory course). Those who have not completed the equivalent of English 400: Composition and the Teaching of Writing in the course of MA work are strongly urged to complete that essential course as soon as possible. There are no distribution requirements for doctoral coursework. PhD students complete a minimum of 18 credits of dissertation research in addition to a Qualifying Examination. Doctoral students admitted with prior MA degrees typically take Exams in the spring semester of their second year; those admitted from the BA should take them in the spring of the third year. Working with an advisory committee, students prepare a list of approximately 75 works in two or three areas of concentration. They also prepare four research questions in these areas, from which the committee will select two for submission after a 72-hour period. (Examination answers to all four questions may be drafted in advance of the 72-hour period between receipt of the assignment of questions and the submission of the completed exam.) The written exam is followed by an oral examination. Both portions of the Qualifying Examination must be passed in order for students to Advance to Candidacy. All doctoral students must demonstrate proficiency in at least one foreign language, normally by completing an upper-division undergraduate course in the language at CWRU with a grade of “B” or better. Non-native speakers of English are exempt from this requirement; students who have completed a minor or major in a foreign language in the course of undergraduate study, or who have completed a comparable foreign language requirement as part of prior graduate study, may petition to have the prior work satisfy the language requirement. No later than the semester following successful completion of Qualifying Exams, a dissertation prospectus must be accepted by the dissertation committee. The student should complete and defend the dissertation within five semesters following the acceptance of the prospectus. Writing History and Theory (WHiT) Project Emphasis English Graduate students at the PhD level can elect to focus their research in Writing History and Theory (WHiT) as part of their degree program. Students pursuing a WHiT doctoral research concentration work closely with faculty to ensure that their work fulfills the aims of the WHiT Rationale. WHiT students select courses, define exam areas and build reading lists, and design dissertation projects that represent scholarly interventions in the history, theory, and practice of writing in all of its aspects. WHiT rationale: The Writing History and Theory (WHiT) doctoral concentration addresses writing in all of its aspects, including its material bases—its diverse technologies, sites, and economies; its conventions, forms, and pedagogies; and its practices and uses, both contemporary and historical. Students who pursue this concentration investigate a variety of writing practices, historicizing them in sophisticated ways and relating them to dominant strands in literary, cultural, and rhetorical theory. WHiT courses emphasize the relationships among texts and the larger social, economic, and political contexts in which they are produced and circulate, exploring, for instance, the legal infrastructure of creative production; the origins, uses, and revisions of generic forms; the remediation of texts; and the material practices of invention, dissemination, and display.