English Master’s Degree Program

The English Master’s Degree Program centers on the academic study of literature, emphasizing close analysis of literary texts and the historical, cultural, and formal conditions that shape them. Scholars read across genres and periods, engaging works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction alongside the critical traditions that have interpreted them.

Through sustained attention to language, form, and context, you’ll track how meaning is produced and how texts participate in larger cultural and intellectual conversations.

In this program, you’ll expand your critical thinking skills, enabling you to analyze complex ideas — not just in print but online, where stories thrive but often conflict. You’ll learn to contextualize competing narratives and interpret their meanings. The value of this attention to narrative extends well beyond literary study into fields such as law, journalism, publishing, marketing, politics, education, film, and even game design.

Through the graduate program in English, you’ll:

• Develop a working knowledge of major literary genres, periods, and movements, and the formal features that distinguish them.
• Build the ability to analyze how meaning is produced through language, form, structure, and style in literary texts.
• Gain familiarity with key critical and theoretical approaches used to interpret literature.
• Learn to analyze primary texts and relevant scholarship in ways that promote original, well-supported interpretations.
• Cultivate the ability to formulate precise arguments, integrate evidence, and engage in the scholarly conversation.
• Graduate with a Harvard University degree: Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) in Extension Studies in the field of English.