English M.A.
The Master of Arts in English program at SUNY Buffalo State provides a broad understanding of the significant areas of English literature and culture, serving as an excellent preparatory program for doctoral-level study in English, certification for NY State high school teaching, and for many other career paths, including editing, technical writing, social justice work, and law school.
At-a-Glance
Program Benefits
- working closely with scholar-mentors
- small class sizes with diverse class options.
- access to Buffalo State’s Butler Library, which has over half a million volumes, thousands of periodicals, an extensive online catalog, and The Madeline Davis Archives.
Recent Course Offerings
- The 1619 Project
- Eighteenth-Century Literature: Life Writing
- Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Circle
- Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes
- David Bowie and Postmodernism
- British Women Poets
- Speculative Fiction
- Narratives of Symbolism and Decadence
- Becoming Jane Austen
- James Joyce’s Ulysses
- Hawthorne and Melville
- Magical Realism
- Rewriting the Canon
- The African American Novel.
- A bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 (4.0 scale) in English and 2.75 overall.
- 36 credit hours in English, at least 27 of which must be in English literature, exclusive of basic college writing.
- Students must demonstrate competency in written English by submitting a writing sample of their best academic work. Students for whom English is an alternate language are required to submit evidence of passing TOEFL scores, as required by the SUNY system for international students.
Students must complete 30 graduate-level credits to receive the M.A. degree in English.
A comprehensive examination is required for all students, 0 credit hours, to be taken after the completion of at least 24 credit hours.
Required courses for the degree include:
- Research in Language and Literature
- 1 British Literature course
- 1 American Literature course
- 1 World Literature course
- 1 Genre Study course
- 1 Social, Critical, or Literary Theory course
The remaining 12 credits are electives. These electives can be English courses or, with permission of the graduate advisor, courses from other academic areas of interest. Students will have the option of completing a master’s thesis (6 credits) as part of the elective credits.
Start Your Journey Today
Applications Are Now Open
Learn More & Apply