Graduate Program

Welcome!

The M.A. English program at Georgetown is dynamic, innovative, and committed to offering students a breadth of choice and a variety of opportunities for scholarly and professional specialization and development. We welcome applications from students aspiring to careers in writing, editing, teaching, and many other fields requiring advanced skills in written communication, critical analysis, and research, as we do from those intending to pursue a Ph.D. elsewhere after completing an M.A. at Georgetown.

We invite prospective students to contact the Program Administrator if you need more information about the program than what our website provides. If necessary, they will pass your inquiry on to the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS). Students considering visiting the Georgetown campus before or after applying to the program should make every effort to schedule their visit in advance with the Program Administrator, who can make additional appointments with the DGS and/or other program faculty.

Program features include:

Interdisciplinary Variety

The seminars offered each year reflect the faculty’s broad interests but also allow students to develop sub-fields of study in several areas based on the courses being offered in any given year; these may include Medieval Studies, the Early Modern period, British and Trans-Atlantic 18th-Century Studies, Romanticism, British and American 19th-Century Studies, 20th and 21st-Century American Literature & Culture, Critical Theory, and Irish and other Anglophone World literatures, as well as in a variety of emerging interdisciplinary fields including: cultural studies; ethnic, race and post-colonial studies; gender and sexuality studies; disability studies; and performance, film and media studies.

Ph.D. & Other Advanced Degree Placement

We have an excellent and consistent record of placing our graduates in top Ph.D. programs, including: Harvard, The Graduate Center at CUNY, NYU, Northwestern, UVA, University of California at Berkeley, Duke, University of Southern California, Princeton, Stanford, McGill, Ohio State, and The George Washington University.

We also have a record of placing graduates into other advanced MFA, MLIS, MEd, and JD programs, including: UNC–Chapel Hill, University of California at Riverside, University of New Mexico, University of Maryland, GWU, Columbia Law School, University of Maryland School of Law; plus a couple recent Fulbright Scholars.

Writing Pedagogy

Our program boasts a strong commitment to training students in the teaching of writing through a combination of coursework, direct individual and group mentoring from the Writing Program and other faculty, and hands-on, practical experience in apprentice-teaching and peer-tutoring settings.

Learn More

View answers to Frequently Asked Questions OR dive deeper into details about the M.A. English Program.

Director of Graduate Studies: Professor Patrick O’Malley

Please note: If you are awarded the Truman Scholarship, Georgetown University will provide a match of up to $30,000 to cover cost-of-education expenses, e.g. tuition and related fees, living expenses, textbooks, etc.