Please note that our next deadline for applications is January 15, 2024. Prospective students may apply for admission for the fall semester only. For the incoming class of August 2024, we will be accepting only applicants who hold a Master’s degree (by August 2024). UF English is undertaking a self-study of our PhD Program. During this process, we are putting our “Direct-Admission Program” on hold and will not accept applicants with a Bachelor’s degree. We will consider students with Master’s degrees in English as well as students with advanced degrees in related subjects, including other literary studies, cultural anthropology, women’s studies, and creative writing. Our doctoral program is known for rigor, innovation, and pushing disciplinary boundaries and objects of study. Students structure their coursework and exams around their research interests and dissertation projects rather than according to distribution requirements. This emphasis produces innovative dissertations and shortens time-to-degree.
Our research faculty are exceptionally productive and innovative scholars and mentors. According to recent data from Academic Analytics, the UF English faculty ranked first among all public AAU institutions in book publications–and fifth among all college and university English Departments.
In addition to offerings in traditional literary periods, interdisciplinary areas of particular strength include film studies, media and technology studies, rhetoric and composition, cultural studies, literary theory, children’s literature and culture, gender studies, Victorian studies, and postcolonial studies and the synthesis among these and other areas of study. Faculty specialize in and combine their interests across the following areas of study (or area groups); these areas of study reflect core strengths of our program as well as faculty’s diverse research and teaching interests.
Click each heading below for more information on the areas of study:
We study American literature and culture in national, global, and hemispheric contexts. Our innovative, non-traditional curriculum has notable strengths in early to contemporary print culture, comics and visual culture, African American literature, children’s literature, cultural studies, indigenous studies, US empire studies, Asian-American studies, Latinx studies, disability studies, science studies, prison studies, labor and left studies, and gender studies (including womanism). Students in this area take advantage of resources across the UF campus, including History; Latin American Studies; Center for the Study of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; Museum Studies; College of the Arts; College of Education, and the UF Libraries Special Collections.
The British Literature and Culture Area Group brings historical depth, innovation, and collaboration to our graduate curriculum. With key strengths in Early Modern Culture, Victorian Studies, and post-1900 literature, our faculty also collaborate on dissertations about American studies, eighteenth-century literature and culture, children’s literature, critical theory, film and media studies, and postcolonial studies. Our program in Comics Studies originated through our late colleague Donald Ault, and several members are active in Digital Humanities. On campus our British Studies faculty frequently engage with the Center for European Studies; the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies; the College of the Arts; the Harn Museum of Art; UF Libraries; and Medical Humanities.
The Department has long been a leader in children’s literature studies, broadly construed, and faculty and graduate student research spans a wide range of topics and areas, from international and comparative children’s literature to the interdisplinary/multidisciplinary history and theory of children’s and young adult literature to the intersections of writing for the young with intellectual history, popular culture, transcultural media, and fanwork. Recent dissertations by PhD students in this area have taken up topics as diverse as Bengali children’s publishing, Harry Potter fandom, Cold War/atomic children’s literature, rape culture and YA fantasy, Puerto Rican children’s literature, American historical series fiction for girls, and multimedia Hindu mythological narratives. The children’s literature area is supported further by the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture, which hosts talks and other events, and by UF’s Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, one of the largest such collections in the world. Students and faculty in the area are actively involved in national and international professional organizations and networks.
The Department of English has had a long history of being a national leader in the fields of theory and cultural studies, and students working in these areas will have opportunities to take courses from and study with some of our most distinguished faculty. Theory and cultural studies are at the foundation of our creative labors as readers, teachers, scholars, and intellectuals, and hence all of the areas of research and scholarship in the department. Rather than focusing exclusively on specific methods, practices, or traditions, the study of theory at UF cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries to produce a rigorous self-awareness and critical reflection upon the form of what we do when we read, listen to, look at, and talk about cultural texts, the latter understood in the most expansive sense possible, as well as the institutional contexts within which such labors take place. Comparative and interdisciplinary work in cultural studies likewise expands the range of practices and forms that we take up in our vocation as scholars, critics, and teachers to include not only diverse media and popular forms but also the practices of audiences and a diverse range of cultural and subcultural communities. Work in theory and cultural studies is supported by the Working Group for the Study of Critical Theory (SCT@UF), and a number of the graduate student directed reading groups, annual conferences, and online journals.
The Feminisms, Genders & Sexualities area group brings diversity to our graduate curriculum through our courses, research, and community work. We are especially strong in feminist and womanist theories, masculinity studies, Queer studies, LGBT literary and cultural studies (eighteenth century to contemporary), popular culture, and women’s writing. Several faculty are affiliated with UF’s Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research. FGS faculty also collaborate with African American Studies, Latin American Studies, the Center for European Studies, and Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere. Our faculty have served on the editorial boards of Feminist Studies and Contemporary Women’s Writing.
UF archives conducive to research in feminisms, genders, and sexualities include the Zora Neale Hurston Papers, the Johns Committee Collection, and editorial papers for the journal Kalliope.
Please visit the Film & Media Studies Homepage for more information.
The postcolonial area group dynamically combines the study of literature, film, rhetoric and digital media with theoretical, social, and political analyses addressing past and present forms of colonialism. Our strengths in African, Caribbean, Latin American and Latinx, South Asian and US and British empire studies attract a diverse group of students. We have a vibrant intellectual culture with annual symposia and an ongoing study group. We foster interdisciplinary links with the Center for African Studies, The Center for Latin American Studies, and the digital library of the Caribbean.
Our graduate students comprise a lively community of scholars, artists, and teachers-in-training. They bring to the Department a wide variety of life experiences and come from all over the United States and Canada, as well as Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean.
Our community of graduate students pursue their passions and actively contribute to the intellectual and creative life of the department through a wide variety of graduate-student led groups, publications, and conferences. These include:
- The English Graduate Organization
- The Film Studies Graduate Group
- The Graduate Comics Organization
- ImageTexT, a journal of interdisciplinary comics studies
- The Imagining Climate Change Initiative
- The Marxist Reading Group
- The Science Fiction Working Group
- Sequentials, a journal of visual scholarship in comics form
- Subtropics literary journal
- TRACE: an innovation initiative linking writing studies, digital media studies, and ecocriticism
- The TV Reading Group
These organizations provide essential and diverse professionalization opportunities for careers in academia and beyond. Indeed, professionalization is central to the culture of the PhD program. Students organize annual conferences and symposia through the Marxist Reading Group, EGO, the Graduate Comics Organization, and other organizations. They edit journals, such as ImageTexT, Sequentials, Subtropics, and the TRACE Journal.
Our graduate students can also take advantage of the University of Florida’s strengths and resources in a variety of areas of interest, including African Studies, Jewish Studies, African American Studies, Latin American Studies , Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies, the Collective for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medicine and Culture, Center for Children’s Literature and Culture, and more.
The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries is one of the largest scholarly libraries in the Southeast and holds a number of important collections in areas of relevance to students in English. These include the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature and the Latin American and Caribbean Collection, both part of the George A. Smathers Special Collections.
Partnering with the University Writing Program our graduate students teach courses in literature, cultural studies, composition, rhetoric, film studies, new media studies, and technical and professional writing. As instructors of record, they gain experience designing their own classes and developing their own pedagogies both digital and face-to-face. Students also contribute to national and international conferences and publish in a diverse array of publications.
Our students take positions in research universities, state and community colleges, and small liberal arts colleges. While the majority of our doctoral students join the professoriate, our graduates also pursue careers in diverse fields, including library studies, instructional design and technology, publishing, and academic and labor advocacy. Our placement averages are well above national averages. To see Recent PhD Student Placements, click here.
Program Specifics
Students entering the program with a Master’s degree in English are required to take seven department seminars. They then take their qualifying examinations and write their dissertations; they receive five years of funding through teaching and research assistantships (along with a full tuition waiver).
The Department offers funding in the form of fellowships and/or teaching assistantships to all students in our PhD program. The nine-month stipend for PhD students is $19,200. We offer a limited number of top-up awards ($5,000-&6,000) and fellowships. All applicants are considered for these opportunities. The Kirkland fellowship and the McKnight awards require additional steps at the time of application.
For more information on funding, click here.
The PhD program is residency-based; we do not offer online degrees.
For information about how to apply, please click here:
For Frequently Asked Questions, click here.
Contact
For further information about the PhD programs, contact:
Dr. Leah Rosenberg
Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator
Department of English
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7310
Office (call or leave messages during business hours, 9-5pm EST only): (352) 294-2875
https://english.ufl.edu/leah-rosenberg/
email: rosenber@ufl.edu