The M.Phil. in American Literature
Course Overview
The M.Phil. in American Literature is a nine month course which runs from October to June. This well established course encourages detailed attention to American literary texts in their historical and intellectual contexts. While some students take the M.Phil. as a free-standing Master’s qualification, many go on to PhD research in Cambridge or elsewhere. The course provides an excellent foundation for doctoral research, equipping each student with a firm historical and literary base and advanced research skills, while fostering individual choice in research focus, methodology and critical analysis.
The three-term course consists of classes and seminars on texts and contexts in American Literature and on specified periods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the outset, graduate students will pursue individual research projects with the guidance of a supervisor. The research and teaching of Faculty members ranges widely in American literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries: any proposal for a project on American Literature will be considered. Particular interests of faculty members include early American writing especially diaries and autobiography, captivity narratives, transatlantic polemic, and Puritan poetry; nineteenth-century literature and culture including popular theatre, especially melodrama, African American literature, the novel, Transcendentalism; twentieth-century writing especially modernist and experimental poetry, the Harlem Renaissance, ‘little’ magazines and periodicals, drama, 1930s writing, particularly documentary forms and the photographic image. We welcome transatlantic and comparative projects especially in the colonial period (1600-1750), the mid-late nineteenth century and the modernist period (1910-1930).
Students are encouraged to draw on the exceptional strengths of the Cambridge English Faculty, attending lectures or seminars on a wide range of complementary subjects, from Elizabethan or Victorian literature through to postcolonial writing and critical theory. The American Literature Research Seminar meets fortnightly and provides postgraduate students, faculty members and academic visitors working in Cambridge with an opportunity to discuss recent work in the field. There are regular joint meetings with the History Faculty.
Students’ research is greatly facilitated by the holdings of the University Library, one of only five copyright libraries in the United Kingdom, which is supplemented by the English Faculty Library as well as libraries within individual colleges.
Under normal circumstances, students will not be permitted to register for Ph.D. research in American or Anglo-American subjects unless they have completed the M.Phil. in American Literature (or a similar postgraduate course) at an appropriate standard.
Course of Study
During Michaelmas and Lent terms MPhil students attend classes and seminars. These are lively collaborative sessions centred on core reading in which students are expected to participate fully, sometimes giving class presentations. A piece of coursework (5,000 words) on a topic of the student’s choice associated with one of these seminars is required each term, each contributing 25% to the overall mark for the M.Phil.
Classes and Seminars for 2011-2012:
Texts and Contexts in American Literature before 1900 (Dr Sarah Meer)
This course examines texts and contexts in American literature befoe 1900, alongside current critical issues. It will draw out certain aspects of cultural and literary history in the period by examining some now unfashionable or little-read texts and writers, as well as more obvious ones. It is absolutely not an introduction to ‘classic texts’ from the period, and students who haven’t encountered much early American literature before will profit from doing some general reading for themselves, alongside specific preparation for this course.
1. Captivity, Appropriation and ‘ Indian-hating’
2. Rural and Cosmopolitan Americans
3. Explorations
4. ‘Real’ and ‘Natural’ 1860-1900
Albert Bierstadt, 'In the Mountains', 1867
Period Class 1845-1855 (Dr Tamara Follini)
This class closely examines several key texts in one of the most politically turbulent and artistically creative decades in 19th century America. It also considers how later American writers engage with the literary issues these works define and perpetuate. Individual works will be read in relation to broader religious and social movements of the period; however, particular attention will be paid to their experimental quality, and the way they struggle to find new styles, literary voices and personal identities. Discussion will centre on such issues as the individual’s relation to community and to Nature, the representation of unorthodox forms of spirituality and rare, often deviant, kinds of human behaviour, challenges to literary and social authority as well as the reader’s comfort. The ways these texts reflect desire for kinds of ‘Extra vagance!’, as Thoreau put it, will be a concern throughout.
1. Idealism, Transcendentalism, Spirt and Society
2. Scepticism, Habitations of Gothic and Romance
3. Languages of Landscape and Identity
4. Afterlives
Texts and Contexts in American Literature Since 1900 (Dr Anne Stillman)
In this course we will examine a wide selection of post-1900 American literary texts and films in relation to the social and cultural contexts of four particular periods. How matters of community—whether literary, racial, class, or counter-cultural—are depicted as bearing on individuality will be a main focus for discussion. How the writers and directors we consider turn context into issues of style and genre will be another continuing concern.
1. The Jazz Age
2. Great Depression and New Deal
3. The Long 1960s: Watershed to Watergate
4. Transition: Cold War to 'War on Terror'
Alvin Langdon Coburn, Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1912
Period Class 1915-1925 (Dr Fiona Green)
This course focuses on writing from an exciting decade in American literary history. We will consider a diverse sampling of texts in their historical and cultural contexts, discussing, for instance, their relations to the Great War, the feminist movement, and urbanization. We will also discuss the various literary critical approaches that these works invite, and the texts’ participation in or repudiation of American literary traditions and transatlantic Modernism.
1. Poetry
2. Experimental Prose
3. Modernism and/or Harlem?
4. Nativism, Manhood, War
Resources and Methods for Americanists (Dr Sarah Meer)
A series of four seminars on information resources, scholarly methods, textual editing and the professional development of American literary studies. A compulsory requirement, but not formally assessed.
The dissertation
Throughout the nine months of the M.Phil. course, students pursue individual research on a topic of their choice, supported by frequent consultation with their personal supervisor. At the end of the first term, students submit a statement of projected research, with bibliography, as preparation for the writing of a dissertation of between 12,000 and 15,000 words, which will provide the main focus of the student’s work between April and June. The mark for the dissertation counts for 50% of the M. Phil. as a whole.
Faculty
Faculty members whose teaching or research interests include American topics:
Further information is available on this server about these and other members of the Faculty.
Entry requirements and application procedures
You may find it helpful to find out about funding for home students or funding for overseas students before you apply. You should also consult our guide for prospective graduates. All graduate students in Cambridge are members of a College as well as of a Faculty of the University, and those applying through the Board of Graduate Studies for a place on the course will find themselves invited to list a number of Colleges in order of preference. It is a good idea to consult the prospectuses of a number of Colleges before you apply.
Applications which which can be made via the Board of Graduate website, are first considered by the Faculty. Potential supervisors are then consulted. Successful applications are then offered to the Colleges of the student's choice, and may be then passed on to the second or third choice. Since this can be a lengthy process it is very much in the interests of applicants to apply in good time (and before the deadline for applications of January 20th).
Applicants for funding should be aware that many funding bodies require a firm acceptance from the University before they will consider your application. If you hope to have a decision from the University in time to apply for funding, you should apply well before the January 20th deadline. You may find it helpful in drawing up your funding application to have had some discussion with the person assigned to be your supervisor.
Applicants should normally have a first-class honours degree or high II.i , or its overseas/international equivalent. Applicants whose first degrees are in other disciplines are always considered, provided they can give an account of how their interest in literary study has developed. We welcome qualified UK, EU, and overseas applicants (those for whom English is not a first language will be required by the Board of Graduate Studies to provide evidence of linguistic proficiency).
Applicants should include specific proposals for advanced study or research (of around 500 words). A piece of written work, of 5,000 - 7,500 words, should accompany a formal application. Applicants may submit any work they like, but it is worth choosing work which is recent and which relates to your proposed area of study, if this is available. Many applicants submit their undergraduate dissertation or similar extended piece of work. In reaching decisions about applications the Degree Committee takes particular account of:
- The applicant's academic record and references
- Their suitability for the proposed course (including knowledge of foreign languages)
- The applicant's research proposal, which should suggest a realistic program of work for a 15,000 word dissertation.
- Whether a suitable supervisor can be found for the proposed research
- The written work which a candidate submits in support of their application
Enquiries should be addressed to:
The Director of Graduate Studies,Degree Committee of the Faculty of English,
University of Cambridge
9 West Road
Cambridge
UK
CB3 9DP