The Department of English at Tulane offers opportunities for graduate work towards the terminal Master of Arts or the Doctor of Philosophy .Students with the Bachelor of Arts may apply to the Ph.D. program and, if accepted, will receive their Master of Arts in the process. Tulane undergraduates who have been invited by the faculty may apply for the 4+1 program during their junior year to receive a terminal Master of Arts degree at the end of the year following their senior year. Transfer credit is available for students entering with graduate work done at other institutions..

Course offerings cover a variety of specialties from traditional historical fields (with particular strengths in American literature and Modernism and modernist literatures) to studies in theory and culture (with particular strengths in Literary Theory and postcolonial studies). We encourage interdisciplinary work and coursework taken in other disciplines.

The programs admit a small, select class of new students each year, approximately 6% of those applying.Graduate seminars typically have small enrollments of eight to ten students. All students admitted to the doctoral program receive financial aid in the form of tuition waivers and teaching stipends. Students in the 4+1 program pay a reduced tuition in their final year.  Admissions procedures  are listed on our website, and applications are made directly to the Graduate School at Tulane. The Director of Graduate Studies advises all graduate students.

Teaching is the goal of most doctoral students, and the department takes seriously its responsibility to train fine teachers. In a carefully graduated series of teaching opportunities, graduate students in the doctoral program take a course in pedagogy, serve as teaching assistants under faculty mentors, teach their own composition courses, and compete for opportunities to teach in their special fields.

Graduate students automatically become members of an active graduate organization (EGO) that sponsors lectures by visiting scholars, receptions, and an annual series of student-faculty forums.  Recent faculty conferences and seminars have included graduate students or featured their work. Faculty mentor graduate students to develop publishable papers.  Such opportunities for developing professional skills and credentials constitute an important part of our program.

Please read the information in our website, visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, and contact us if you have further questions.

The entire graduate program description is available here in adobe format

Fellowship Opportunities

Founded in 1945, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the encouragement of excellence in education through the identification of critical needs and the development of effective national programs to address them. This combination of analysis and translation into action is the Foundation’s unique contribution.