Graduate Program

The Department's graduate program ranks as one of the strongest and most diverse in Canada. Subjects offered encompass all areas of theory, criticism, and scholarship and all major periods and genres. Literatures from a wide range of English-speaking countries and communities are represented. Interdisciplinary perspectives include medieval studies, cultural studies, postcolonial literature and theory, queer studies, feminist and gender studies, ecological criticism, and computing applications such as hypertext and multimedia.

Approximately twenty courses are offered each year and comprehensives are available in twelve areas. The Department works in close collaboration with the Department of Modern Languages, the Department of Film Studies, the Comparative Literature and Culture program, the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, and the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism.

Some major international research and publication projects based in the Department include the Canadian Poetry Project and the "Digital Ulysses."

Members of faculty are participants in the Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, the Skaldic Poetry Edition, Records of Early English Drama.and other international projects. Additionally, faculty are active on the editorial boards of a extensive range of international journals; academic societies such as the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism have the Department as their base. Among the faculty are a Canada Research Chair and three Distinguished University Professors. Research awards won by faculty include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hellmuth Prize, the Polanyi Prize and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, and four members of faculty have been appointed to the Royal Society of Canada. Awards won by our faculty for teaching include the Edward G. Pleva, Marilyn Robinson, and 3M-STLHE Prizes, and the USC Teaching Honour Roll Award of Excellence.

All graduate students are guaranteed teaching assistantships and provided with the training and mentorship to equip them to teach courses at various levels within the undergraduate program. Employment for some graduate assistants is provided by faculty research projects. Additionally, the Department is committed to a program of graduate professionalization. Experience in presenting research papers is provided by a series of conferences, some organized by the students themselves: recent topics include Shakespeare, Milton, Icelandic literature, Canadian poetry, Modernism, Victorian studies, and travel literature. Societies within the Department, or associated with it, also offer scope for graduate participation, among them the Medievial/Renaissance Group, the Saga Reading Group, the Western Early Modern Society, Shakespeare Club, the Research Group for Electronic Textuality and Theory, the Postcolonial Discussion Group, the Centre for American Studies, and the Twentieth-Century Group. Funding is available for conference and research travel and there are annual competitions for the Sara Marie Jones Memorial Scholarship and the McIntosh and Klinck Prizes. Graduates from the Department's doctoral program have found employment in some of the most prestigious academic institutions in North America.

The Department has access to first-rate research facilities and resources. The University Library system holds almost eight million print, microform, and other items, as well as providing links to tens of thousands of electronic full-text journals, books, and bibliographic databases. Resources for the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences are held in the D.B. Weldon Library, one of the foremost research facilities in Canada. Special collections housed there include the Regional Collection (a treasure-house of local literature and history), the Rare Book Room, the internationally recognized Stuart Collection of Milton and Miltoniana, and the Pride Library. The Department also has access to the archives of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.