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Copyright The New South's
Writing Workshop.

 Ph.D. in Creative Writing

 

The Ph.D. degree programs prepare students to write, to teach on the college and university levels, and to conduct scholarly research. At the end of their Ph.D. coursework, students will have acquired a productive general knowledge of the various fields of literary study in English and will have developed a concentrated preparation in their areas of specialization.

Students who specialize in creative writing must take either poetry or fiction as their major examination and must choose the other genre as their minor area. They must complete 30-39 hours of graduate coursework beyond the M.A. level, with 12 of those hours in creative writing workshops in the student's major genre, plus 20 hours of dissertation research. The following coursework requirements must be completed during the Ph.D program unless they have already been satisfied during a student's M.A. or M.F.A. program: (printer friendly pdf)

  • 12 hours of workshop in major genre;
  • 9-12 hours of courses in or strongly related to area of primary examination specialty, including 3 hours of Form and Theory in major genre and 3 hours of Contemporary Poetry or Fiction Craft in major genre;
  • 9 hours of courses in or strongly related to area of secondary examination specialty, including 3 hours of Engl 8160 Form and Theory in secondary genre;
  • 3 hours of language study, unless satisfied at M.A. level;
  • 3 hours of theory, unless satisfied at the M.A. level.

Doctoral students in creative writing must submit a dissertation. The dissertation must be a minimum of 50 pages long for a manuscript of poems or a minimum of 150 pages for a manuscript of prose fiction. It must include a critical introduction that is acceptable to the Department of English and to the Graduate Office of the College of Arts and Sciences. After students have completed initial work on the manuscript, they will meet with their committee to edit the dissertation. By the time the dissertation is completed, a student must have registered for at least 20 hours of English 8999 (Thesis Research). Students must pass a defense of the dissertation administered by the members of the student's dissertation committee and the Director of Graduate Studies.