Doctoral Program
The Ph.D. in English provides professional training for teachers, scholars, and literary artists. The program at Ohio University offers students the opportunity to concentrate in one of the three areas of English studies described below. While our program requires students to concentrate in an area, it also asks them to explore other areas and to seek the common concerns that unite them. Accordingly, the program includes general requirements, as well as specific requirements within each of the concentrations.
Doctoral Concentrations
Literature: Doctoral students in this concentration aspire to a comprehensive knowledge of literature through a systematic historical, theoretical, and critical course of study. They develop techniques and skills in scholarly research, theoretical reflection, and careful reading of texts.
Creative Writing: Creative writing students specialize in one genre—fiction, nonfiction, or poetry—while also taking one writing workshop in another genre. Students also study literature to seek and articulate connections between the achievements of past traditions and their own work.
Rhetoric and Composition: Doctoral students in rhetoric and composition study the history and tradition of the discipline and the theories that underlie the teaching of writing.
Course Requirements for all Ph.D. Students
M.A. Requirements: Doctoral students whose M.A. programs did not include the following requirements, or their equivalents, must fulfill them as part of their Ph.D. program:
- ENG 591 The Teaching of English
- ENG 593 Bibliography and Methods
- A course in literary theory
- A course in the history of the English or American language
Literature: All doctoral students are required to take doctoral seminars in literary history. The number and distribution of these courses vary by concentration.
Composition and Critical Theory: Doctoral students are required to take one rhetoric and composition course at the 700 level, and one critical theory course at the 700 level, both to be in addition to courses in these areas taken for the M.A. Doctoral teaching associates take 791 (1 credit hour) every quarter of their residency. This course addresses professional and pedagogical issues in the profession.
Foreign Language: All doctoral students must prove reading knowledge of one foreign language by the Princeton exam, a translation exam, or an original project.
Colloquium on the English Profession ENG 777 Doctoral students in all concentrations who are pursuing coursework meet at regular intervals with visiting and resident faculty to discuss theoretical and practical issues in English studies. This colloquium provides a special opportunity for students and faculty with differing interests to discover common ground.
Course Requirements For Each Concentration
For Literature Students: Doctoral students in the literary history concentration take two doctoral seminars in the period of specialization and three doctoral seminars in periods other than their period of specialization. They also take two elective courses in areas of their choosing.
For Creative Writing Students: Doctoral students in creative writing take two doctoral seminars in their period of specialization and two doctoral seminars in periods other than their period of specialization. They also take two creative writing workshops a year for the first two years of doctoral study, including one in a genre which is not their primary one. They take a fifth workshop in their third year as part of their preparation for the creative writing dissertation.
For Rhetoric and Composition Students: Doctoral students in rhetoric and composition take five doctoral seminars in composition and rhetoric, two in literature, one in literary theory, and one in creative writing.
Examination Requirements
After the completion of required coursework, students take Ph.D. exams. All examinations are based on reading lists designed by the examining committee in consultations with the student. Exam requirements for each concentration follow.
Literature: For students in literary history, the Ph.D. exam consists of two written sections and one oral section. One written exam covers a period of specialization and the other covers the tradition. After both written exams are passed, an oral exam over the dissertation area will be scheduled.
Creative Writing: The written exam in creative writing consists of the period-of-specialization section and the tradition section; a written critical introduction to the creative thesis replaces the oral "dissertation area" exam. This introduction, which is evaluated and defended as part of the thesis, establishes a context for the student's creative work by relating it to the ideas and texts of other writers who have been especially important to the student's creative progress.
Rhetoric and Composition: The Ph.D. examination for rhetoric and composition studies consists of one written exam and an oral defense of the dissertation prospectus. The written exam is a take-home completed over a weekend on a predetermined date. Two weeks prior to the exam date, students will receive eight questions from the Graduate Rhetoric/Composition Committee. On the Friday afternoon of the weekend of the exam, students will be given four of the original eight questions, in response to which they will write an approximately 1800-word essay for each question. The questions will be developed from a reading list created and regularly revised by the Graduate Rhetoric/Composition Committee. As soon as possible after passing the written exam, the student will identify a committee and work with her/his dissertation committee chair to complete the dissertation prospectus. The committee chair will solicit comments from committee members and set a date for the discussion and defense of the prospectus, which is a two-hour long oral discussion examination. (updated 4/11/06)
Dissertation and Oral Presentation
The main criterion for the dissertation is quality, not quantity. Students are encouraged to plan dissertations that are original, significant, and, ideally, publishable. The number of pages is not crucial; the finished dissertation may fall below the usual 150 to 200 pages, but the project should nonetheless require an investigative process equivalent to that required of the dissertation of traditional length. Thus, a self-contained section of a proposed book-length study may satisfy the dissertation requirement.
The dissertation also may consist of a series of essays connected in some meaningful way by author, technique, theme, movement, etc. It may be an edition with appropriate introduction and annotations; a translation or collection of translations; or an original literary work (novel, short stories, poems, essays), prefaced by a scholarly introduction. Creative writing faculty must approve the project in advance.
Once a topic has been decided upon, the student and his or her advisor draw up a prospectus to be approved by the dissertation committee.
In lieu of the traditional oral examination, the candidate delivers a public lecture on some aspect of his or her dissertation and leads a discussion on the work.
Visit our dissertations title page to see some of our most recent graduating candidates' topics.
Dissertation and Dissertation Defense for Rhetoric and Composition
The main criterion for the dissertation is quality. Students are encouraged to plan dissertations that are original and significant to the discipline and offer strong starting points for further scholarship. Most dissertations are 200-300 pages.
Once a topic has been decided upon, the student, under the direction of the advisor, writes a prospectus to be defended and approved by the dissertation committee. (See Rhetoric and Composition examination requirements above.)
The dissertation defense is a public presentation in which the candidate briefly sets the project in an appropriate scholarly context. Following this presentation the committee members engage the candidate in scholarly inquiry by commenting on and asking questions about the dissertation project. Once committee members have finished questioning the candidate, the chair of the committee will open the discussion to the public.
Visit our dissertations title page to see some of our most recent graduating candidates' topics.
Teaching Associateships
All Ph.D. students with Teaching Associateships are expected to teach as part of their professional training. Because Ohio University is a moderate-sized state university, it has a wide variety of undergraduate English courses to be staffed. Consequently, graduate associates receive considerable experience in teaching different courses. Ph.D. graduates usually will leave the university having taught four or five different courses at the freshman through junior levels. Although they will have received supervision, they will have been primarily responsible for organizing and teaching these classes. Recent Ph.D. graduates have found this varied experience particularly valuable when they enter the professional job market. Teaching experience is not provided to students without Teaching Associateships.
Ph.D. students are also eligible to apply for TA positions for professors teaching 200-level literature survey courses.
Placement, Orientation, and Preparation
The need to facilitate the transition between graduate study and the job market, or between the M.A. at OU and Ph.D. programs elsewhere, is more and more apparent in this period of diminished professional opportunity. The department offers counseling and practical support in important areas of job search, planning, preparation of applications and letters of candidacy, and interview techniques.