Graduate Programs

Our graduate programs in English Studies train our students as scholars, teachers, and writers who investigate and enhance functions of language that are essential in human affairs. These functions of language include:

• Communicating with others and achieving a meeting of minds despite differences
• Articulating how the material and social worlds work and how to operate within them, contribute to them, and effect change within them
• Understanding, forming, and re-forming ourselves and others

Each graduate program contributes to this cultural and social work by developing advanced language, literacy, and literary practices that are essential for responsible, productive, and fulfilling global citizenship in the twenty-first century.

Prospective students: The English Department is planning a consolidation of the Literacy, Rhetoric, & Social Practice and Literature, Cultural Theory, & Social Practice doctoral programs listed below.  This merger will provide our students with a broader array of skills and job options. The proposed unified program, Literature, Rhetoric, Writing: How Narratives Make and Change the World, will provide students with a deep and nuanced understanding of the ways narratives not only represent the world but also make and change it, for both good and ill. We define narrative broadly as a fundamental and ubiquitous mode of thought that guides perception, constructs feelings, and directs actions, operating at varying scales, in all domains, and through multiple media and modes of perception. The approval process is ongoing, but students interested in learning more about applying to the new program should contact the graduate studies coordinator, Dr. Mark Bracher at mbracher@kent.edu.

Literacy, Rhetoric & Social Practice

Faculty and students in Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice study the literacy practices of an increasingly digitized contemporary world as enacted in specific communities—of work, of citizenship, of learning, of technology.  Through collaboratives between the university and these communities, our students and faculty contribute to the improvement of advanced and complex literacy practices.

Literature, Cultural Theory & Social Practice

Faculty and students in Literature, Cultural Theory, and Social Practice identify, investigate, and theorize the social functions of texts in a variety of contexts both within and outside the academy. Applying a variety of cultural theories—deconstruction, feminism, gender theory, historical materialism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, to name a few—the program provides sustained focus on the social functions of all categories of texts (both literary and non-literary), including the conditions of their production, distribution, and consequent use.

Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts

In the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program, creative writing students pursue the intensive study and practice of literary writing in order to develop advanced abilities to apprehend and articulate the complexities and nuances of human experience and the human condition, and to teach others to do the same.

Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL)

Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) students develop linguistic, pedagogical, and social practices necessary for second language instruction in variety of domestic and international settings, with the ultimate goal of increased cross-national and cross-cultural understanding and cooperation.

Graduate Studies Coordinator

Mark Bracher
Satterfield Hall 113B
mbracher@kent.edu
330-672-2665

Graduate Secretary

Bee Viton
Satterfield Hall 113C
bviton@kent.edu 
330-672-1708