Grow your career in writing, teaching, editing and media through our Master of Arts in English. Explore your love of culture and language in a collaborative environment.
The M.A. is a 33-hour program offered in four concentrations: literature, rhetoric and composition, linguistics and film studies.
Regardless of which path you choose, you’ll select from a broad array of courses that will help you meet your personal and professional goals.
Degree Requirements
We offer four areas of concentration that represent distinct dimensions of our discipline. While all options emphasize research and critical thinking, each provides diverse cultural and language exploration pathways. You’ll hone your expertise through each concentration’s core and elective curriculum. At the end of the 33-hour program, you’ll fine-tune and showcase your knowledge through a capstone project.
The graduate concentration in literature offers courses on a variety of national, regional and world literatures and literary periods, along with courses on theory (postcolonial, feminist, cultural, psychoanalytic, etc.), film, linguistics and rhetoric. The program’s distribution requirements, including a required course on research methods, ensure that you acquire a broad understanding of literary history and the tools you need to do independent scholarly work, while the electives enable you to explore widely and then to develop a specialization.
At the end of the 33-hour program, you will work with an advisor to complete a capstone research project that allows you to delve deeply into a topic of your own choosing and to showcase the knowledge and skills you have acquired through your coursework.
The graduate concentration in rhetoric and composition provides focused study of writing and literacy, the teaching of writing and the role of persuasive language in academic disciplines, professional and civic life and culture at large. Graduates have gone on to work as practical communicators in industry, to teach at all levels of education and to pursue doctoral degrees in this field. The concentration offers a flexible curriculum, a nationally recognized faculty and an award-winning graduate teaching assistantship program.
Our rhetoric and composition program is situated in a vibrant intellectual community that also includes researchers in technical communication, digital humanities, and communication, rhetoric and digital media. Collaboration among these programs yields a rich mix of faculty and student interests and expertise. Rhet/comp students gain a firm theoretical foundation in both composition and rhetoric, and also have opportunities to study writing and new media, composition pedagogy, experimental and multimodal composition, rhetorical history and criticism, technical communication, writing across the curriculum, writing program administration, digital rhetoric and more.
The graduate concentration in linguistics has gained a national and international reputation as one of the outstanding sociolinguistic programs in the nation. Within four years of its inception, the program was cited in The Real Guide to Graduate School (Lingua Franca, 1997) as one of the top five sociolinguistic programs in North America. NC State is the only master’s level program in the list, which includes well-established, longstanding doctoral programs in sociolinguistics such as the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown University.
The graduate M.A. program requires 15 semester hours in linguistics out of a 33 semester-hour requirement for a Master of Arts in English and a capstone research project.
The graduate concentration in film studies includes training in writing, research, analysis, and theory. There are only two literature courses required for the film track in the MA; the remainder of the coursework is in film and media studies. The culminating capstone project will be focused on a subject of the student’s choosing in consultation with a member of the film faculty. For the capstone, past students have researched and written traditional academic articles or produced documentaries and video essays. The 33-hour program does not include production courses.
We welcome applicants with various academic, personal and professional backgrounds. Home to about 60 total students, our program is a tight-knit community of faculty and scholars who can help you get where you want to go. We also offer fully-funded graduate teaching assistantships to top applicants.
Application Deadlines
Fall Semester Enrollment: Feb. 1 to be considered for teaching assistantships; July 1 for admission only.
Spring Semester Enrollment: Nov. 15 (no assistantships available for mid-year applicants). Estimated wait time to hear back from decisions is December 15.
All of the skills I learned are transferable to other fields.
Megan Myers
Supervisor of Editorial Services, ’15
Program Outcomes
M.A. graduates work in a variety of disciplines and industries. Some alumni enroll in doctoral programs and pursue research and teaching careers in literature, linguistics, rhetoric or film studies. Other M.A. graduates go on to teach in community colleges, secondary schools, literacy centers and other educational settings. Still others pursue careers as writers, editors and media specialists outside the academy.
Job titles for recent alumni include:
Marketing development manager
Proposal writer
Doctoral student in English literature
Cognitive linguist
Documentary filmmaker
Community college instructor
Content writer and strategist
High school English teacher
Development editor
Contact Information
Director of Graduate Programs
Dr. Stacey Pigg Campus Box 8105 NC State University Raleigh, NC 27695-8105 919.515.4117
