MSt in English (1900-Present)

at University of Oxford

The MSt programme consists of four main components as outlined below.

A. Core course: Literature, Contexts and Approaches

The ‘A’ course on ‘Literature, Context and Approaches’ will 

explore significant texts, themes, and critical approaches in our period, in order to open up a wide, though by no means exclusive, sense of some possibilities for dissertation research. The exact topics covered change from year to year according to the course convenors’ expertise and analysis of what will be valuable. Topics in recent years have included ‘Models of Modernity’, ‘Interdisciplinarity’, ‘Theories of the Avant-Garde’, ‘Formalism and Historicism’, ‘The Transnational Turn’, ‘Multimediality, Intermediality, and Remediation’, ‘Limits of the Human’, and ‘Late Styles’.
There will be five classes across five weeks, followed by two weeks in which students present on their ideas for their dissertations.

B. Core course: Bibliography, Theories of Text, History of the Book, Manuscript Studies

This is a range of lectures and seminars in each of the first two terms designed to train students for research in English. Within this strand, there will be classes on book history and theories of text, appropriate to the period.

C. Special options

Special option courses are one-term courses on specialist themes usually relating to the current research interests of the teacher(s).

Recent ‘C’ options for this strand - some of which cross period boundaries - have included: ‘British Literature and Culture at Mid-Century: 1940-70’, ‘20th and 21st Century Theatre’, ‘Modernism and Philosophy’, ‘The New T. S. Eliot Studies’, ‘Literature and Science, 1890-present’, ‘Sea-Voyages, Literature, Modernity’, ‘Contemporary Poetry by the Book’, ‘Aesthetic Education: Goethe to Coetzee’, ‘Modernism and the Ideal Society’, ‘Citizens of Nowhere: Literary Cosmopolitanism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Henry James and His Legacies’, ‘Senses of humour: Wordsworth to Ashbery’, ‘Literatures of Empire and Nation’.‘

Students take one special option in each of the first two terms.

The special option courses present an excellent opportunity for you to develop your research interests. You are not constrained to follow option courses within your designated period, and indeed, option courses often traverse the boundaries of the broad periods.

D. Dissertation

All students write a dissertation on a subject of their choice, but related to the work they have been doing over the year. You will be assigned to a member of the faculty who will act as your supervisor.

Proven and potential academic excellence

Degree-level qualifications

As a minimum, applicants should hold or be predicted to achieve the following UK qualifications or their equivalent:
 

• a first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours in English literature and/or English language, or exceptionally a related subject.

For applicants with a degree from the USA, the minimum GPA sought is 3.75 (with at least 3.85 in the major) out of 4.0.

GRE General Test scores

No Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or GMAT scores are sought.

Further guidance
 

• Publications are not required and the English Faculty does not expect applicants to have been published.

• There is no automatic transfer from a taught to a research course. Current students wishing to be considered for the DPhil programme submit applications that are assessed and considered alongside applicants with master's degrees from other universities.

English language proficiency

Minimum scores required to meet the University's higher level requirement

IELTS Academic

 7.5  

TOEFL iBT, including the 'Home Edition'

110

Home    
£14,410

Overseas    
£30,910

Many English taught-course students go onto doctoral research, both at Oxford and at other universities worldwide. Other graduates pursue careers in occupations including teaching, journalism, law, publishing and the civil service.