English: Master of Arts
Overview
Curriculum
Course Descriptions
The Master of Arts in English at Notre Dame of Maryland University is a 30-credit comprehensive curriculum designed to provide students with the content and methodologies required to become better teachers of English at the secondary level and to prepare students for doctoral-level work in English.
The curriculum focuses on breadth of content, providing broad surveys of English, American and world literature while also requiring a depth of knowledge in literary research, history and interpretation. Students will hone their critical thinking and writing skills as they master the concepts and theories central to the study of literature. The program, while comprehensive in scope, is distinctive in its emphasis on gender: Notre Dame's mission focuses on women's ability to transform the world through education, and all courses in this program include literature by women and issues of women in literature.
The program is designed primarily for working adults who choose to pursue the degree part-time. Therefore courses are offered in a sequence, with one course taught per semester (one evening weekly in fall and spring and two evenings weekly during each of the two summer sessions), providing for completion of coursework and comprehensive exams within three years.
The course of study for the Master of Arts in English requires ten courses (3 credits each) in literary research methods, literary theory, literary movements and topics seminars. Students take two required core courses in research and theory, which will provide students with the skills needed to do graduate-level work in reading and writing literary criticism. Students also complete five required courses in literary movements, providing breadth in literary history.
Additionally, students take any three of the four topics seminars offered to their cohort. The topics courses will provide students with depth in particular, significant topic areas and give them the seminar experience central to pedagogy in literature. Students may transfer in up to two graduate seminars from another accredited English graduate program, at the discretion of the English Graduate Council, to count toward one or two topics seminars.
The program culminates in a comprehensive exam, which students will take at the end of their three years of coursework. A reading list will be provided. The exam may be taken only twice, and the student must pass it in order to earn the master's degree.
Program of Study
Curriculum
Required Core Courses
ENG-501 Research Methodologies of Literary
Criticism (3)
ENG-508 Contemporary Literary Theory (3)
Literary Movements Courses
ENG-518 Medievalism (3)
ENG-519 Renaissance and Neoclassicism (3)
ENG-528 Romanticism (3)
ENG-529 Realism and Victorianism (3)
ENG-538 Modernism and Postmodernism (3)
Topics SeminarsChoose from among the following, as offered
ENG-548 Classical World Literature (3)
ENG-549 Modern World Literature (3)
ENG-551 Literary Utopias (3)
ENG-558 Multicultural American Literature (3)
Course Descriptions
ENG-501 RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES OF LITERARY CRITICISM
Provides an overview of literary research methods, bibliography and
research writing. Students will use the major research tools
and databases in literature and apply these research strategies to
the study of selected literary and historical works on one specific
topic in literary theory. Students will also learn how to
analyze secondary sources and incorporate their findings into their
own writing in order to develop the skills necessary to producing
original literary criticism. The course is designed to prepare
students for the research and writing required in the master's
degree in English program. [3 credits]
ENG-508 CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY
Examines prominent literary theories that have influenced the
analysis and interpretation of literature in the last century.
Theories studied range from formalism, structuralism, and
post-structuralism, to psychoanalytic and reader-response theories,
to cultural-oriented theories, such as feminism, Marxism and new
historicism. Students will master theoretical concepts and
methodologies as well as apply theoretical literary concepts to
specific works of literature. Prerequisite: ENG-501.
[3 credits]
ENG-518 MEDIEVALISM
Focuses on ideas, arts and practices characteristic of the Middle
Ages as portrayed in English literature before 1485, with some
reference to influences from the continent. Brief overviews of the
oral formulaic tradition of Old English poetry and the historical
and legendary works of Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth form a
preliminary backdrop for the period. Selections from Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English introduce students
to the roots of their language and provide examples of literary
genres such as fabliau, fable, exemplum, and the Breton lay of Marie
de France. Through Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur students analyze
another popular medieval genre, the prose romance, and explore
Arthurian themes that have pervaded literature into modern times. In
addition to these major works, some attention is also given to
samples of medieval drama, mysticism and allegorical social satire.
Readings highlight estates satire, the church's use of literature
and art as a teaching device, and contradictory images of medieval
anti-feminism vs. the veneration of women. Prerequisite: ENG-508. [3 credits]
ENG-519 RENAISSANCE AND NEOCLASSICISM
Explores poetry, drama and prose of the English Renaissance, the
Spanish Golden Century and Neoclassicism. Influenced by the Italian
rebirth of Greek and Roman philosophy and literature, and
disseminated by the miracle of the printing press, the Elizabethan
and Jacobean ages produced great writers of English literature,
including Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne and others,
who will be read and critically analyzed. The Restoration and Age of
Reason gave us poetry, literary criticism, essays, drama and the
emerging new genre, the novel. Selected writers of the period will
be read and analyzed with a particular focus on women's issues.
Critical response papers are required as well as the presentation of
seminar papers on specific authors and/or topics. Prerequisite: ENG-518. [3 credits]
ENG-528 ROMANTICISM
Examines major concepts and themes of British and American
Romanticism. Major Romantic concepts include a belief in the
spiritual and restorative powers of nature, the importance of the
imagination and the truth of the emotions. Major Romantic
themes include the pursuit of the Ideal, glorification of nature,
centrality of the common man, and love of the supernatural and
mysterious. Writers studied include British Romantic poets
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Byron, and American Romantics
Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Radcliffe and Emerson. Prerequisite:
ENG-519. [3 credits]
ENG-529 REALISM AND VICTORIANISM
Examines major literary works of the realism period of the
nineteenth century, with a primary focus on English, American, and
continental fiction, the genre in which realism finds its greatest
variety and richness. Students will explore the foundations of
realism and its literary relation naturalism, including the
psychological basis of character, the uniqueness of individual
experience, the use of the commonplace, the goal of objectivity in
reporting what novelist W. D. Howells called "the truthful treatment
of material," new ideas concerning the purposes of fiction—including
the sometimes disparaged "novel with a purpose"—and
verisimilitude. Selected novels will emphasize the roles and
condition of women of the period. Students will explore the
importance of the magazine to the rise of the realistic novel and
will also read examples of the literary criticism of the period in
order to appreciate the parameters set for fiction by a new
generation of professional literary critics. Prerequisite:
ENG-528.[3 credits]
ENG-538 MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM
Examines the poetry, drama and fiction of selected representative
writers and analyzes the works from various literary theoretical
perspectives. Course will trace modern concepts of radical
individualism, re-contextualization through myth, dominance of
psychoanalytic thinking, emancipatory emergence—particularly as it
relates to women, and the shift from an epistemological to an
ontological aesthetic in the works of modernists such as Yeats,
Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, O'Neill and others. In the
context of the contractual nature of language and its development
with structuralism, poststructuralism and deconstruction, we will
analyze the works of postmodern poets, playwrights and novelists
such as Beckett, Ionesco, Churchill, Byatt, Morrison and Nabokov.
Critical response papers are required, as well as the presentation
of seminar papers on specific authors and/or topics. Prerequisite: ENG-529. [3 credits]
ENG-548 CLASSICAL WORLD LITERATURE
Analyzes classics of world literature from ancient to pre-modern
times, learning to identify and appreciate the qualities that make a
work a classic, including its enduring worldview, its style, its
impact and its universality. The course will explore such
issues as social and familial relationships, gender roles, the
relationship between the individual and society, differing value
systems, mythopoetic and folkloric influences on literature,
elements of narrative, poetic, and conceptual structure in the
works, and the ways in which literature shapes our perception of
reality. Texts covered may include works by Homer, Sophocles,
Aristophanes, Herodotus, Ovid and Virgil from classical times,
selections from Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita
(or another Vedantic book), the Tao Te Ching, and Persian poetry,
works like The Art of War by Sun Tzu and The Pillow Book by Sei Sei
Shonagon, and more recent works regarded as classic by such authors
as Dante, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Molière, Cervantes and
Goethe. Prerequisites: ENG-501 and ENG-508. [3
credits]
ENG-549 MODERN WORLD LITERATURE
Examines contemporary literature from around the world, either in
translation or written in English, analyzing it in terms of cultural
differences, gender roles, literary archetypes, universalities of
human experience and thought, and each book's thematic focus and
philosophical outlook. Potential issues raised by the course
include existentialism in literature, symbolism and magical realism
as literary styles, self-consciousness and structuralism in literary
form, experimental fiction, the relationship of literature to
political and cultural change, ethnocentrism and global
consciousness, and the increasing emphasis in contemporary
literature on the individual's responses to a bewildering,
frustrating and sometimes oppressive social context. Prerequisites:
ENG-501 and ENG-508. [3 credits]
ENG-551 LITERARY UTOPIAS
Traces the political, philosophical, social and scientific concepts
underlying different utopian and dystopian societies, linking these
concepts to the theory of human nature on which they are based. The
course moves from the genre-creating Renaissance classic, Thomas
More's Utopia, back to Plato's Republic and forward through the
satiric 19th century "nowhere" of Butler's Erewhon to 20th century
writers like Huxley, Zamyatin, Gilman, LeGuin and Piercy.
Discussions focus on such themes as the effect of the author's
"real" world on his/her utopian or dystopian world, variations in
the treatment of women and family relations and the tone of the
work (e.g., satiric, pseudo-scientific, realistic, romantic). The
seminar format expands basic course readings by including additional
works analyzed in major research projects. Prerequisites:
ENG-501 and ENG-508. [3 credits]
ENG-558 MULTICULTURAL AMERICAN LITERATURE
Examines works by writers of various ethnic groups in 20th- and
21st-century America, with emphasis on African-American,
Arab-American, Asian-American, Jewish-American, Native-American and
Latino/a writings. Readings will come from several literary
genres, including novels, short stories and poetry, but students
will also read theory and criticism relevant to recent work in
ethnic and feminist studies. Prerequisites: ENG-501 and
ENG-508. [3 credits]