MA in English
The English Department at CGU is characterized by small seminars, multidisciplinary study, and independent learning in a student-centered environment. The department‘s objectives are to impart to students the ability to write clearly and effectively; an understanding of research in their field; a sense of the fields and subfields that shape primary and related disciplines; and the ability to undertake independent research and make an original contribution to their field.
The academic program emphasizes the breadth of American and British literatures, as well as critical theory, the development of research skills, and area expertise at the master’s and doctoral levels. Along with the interdisciplinary concentrations offered in the School of Arts & Humanities—American Studies, Early Modern Studies, Hemispheric & Transnational Studies, Media Studies, and Museum Studies—students may tailor distinct courses of study in cultural studies, gender studies, religion and literature, hemispheric Americas studies, U.S. Latino/a culture and literature, the graphic novel, and more.
As a result of its close ties to other Arts and Humanities departments, the English Department encourages transdisciplinary inquiry in graduate study. All degree tracks allow students to integrate topics in other humanistic disciplines with research in literature and the critical, cultural, and historical context of literary texts. Our program is particularly strong in interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to literature and culture.
CGU’s close-knit community nurtures an atmosphere of lively intellectual engagement while retaining the resources of a large, well-appointed university through membership in the Claremont University Consortium—with world-class professors and libraries and an active calendar of humanities-focused speakers and events.
Chair: Eric Bulson
831 N. Dartmouth Avenue • Claremont, CA 91711 • 909-621-8612 • Fax 909-607-9587
Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair in the Humanities
Professor of English
Chair, English Department
Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair in the Humanities
Professor of English
Chair, English Department
Dean, School of Arts & Humanities
Director, Early Modern Studies Program
Director, Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards
Scripps College
African diaspora with specialization in its literature
Pomona College
British and Irish modernism, and contemporary popular music
Scripps College
Protest writing and rhetoric, American literature and culture, Disability literature, Prison writing, Short story and experimental fiction writing, Punk rock literature and subcultures, Writing pedagogy, Feminist theory, disability theory, queer theory, theories of race and class
Scripps College
Contemporary American literature; Asian American literature
Scripps College
British fiction, 1850-present, history of the novel in England and France, literature and morality, realism, satire, and theory of genre
Pomona College
18th- and 19th-Century British literature, History and theory of the European novel, Jane Austen
Holly Allen
MA Student, Concentration in American Literature
Queer literature, women’s literature, postmodernism, modernism, magical realism/ fabulism, surrealism, disabled/ mad studies and literature, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, American poetry
Michelle Arch
PhD Student
Psychopathological representations and the neurobiology of literary doubles in British/European and American literature of the nineteenth century; Gothic fiction; neuroscience; themes of consciousness, identity, and Being; Bakhtin; narratology
James Attwood
PhD Student
Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literary Theory for Fairy Tales and Fantasy
Nathan Bonar
PhD Student
Printing Press, Milton, Shakespeare, Keats, Charles I, Thomas Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, Henry VIII, James I, mystics and heretics
Steven Camacho
PhD Student
Greek Tragedy, Shakespeare, Milton, Spencer, Hawthorne, Songs of Lamentation
Charmaine Cordero
PhD Student
Early Modern Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean adaptation, Chicanx Shakespearean adaptation
Leah Dopp
PhD Student
20th Century and Contemporary Novels, Hemispheric & Transnational Studies, Women & Gender Studies, Postcolonialism, Decolonial Theory
Rose Engelfried
PhD Student
Cultural studies, gender studies, the power of story to shape identity
Ann Wilson Green
PhD Student
Modernism, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Dante
Malinda Hackett
PhD Student
Post-1800 American Literature, Detective/Crime Fiction, Gothic, Noir, Decolonial Studies, Ecocriticism, Gender and Trauma Studies, African American Studies, Film and Media, Popular Culture
Christopher Hines
PhD Student
Popular Culture, 21st and 20th Century American Literature, Asian American literature
Stephanie Jarrett
MA Student
American studies, American carceral literature, education with the American carceral system, resistance literature, African American literature and culture, women’s and gender studies, contemporary literature
Khalida Kareemi
PhD Student
Theory and Nineteenth-Century British Literature
Debilyn Kinzler
PhD Student
19th-century American Literature and History
Christina Kolias
PhD Student
Kolias Early Modern Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies; psychoanalysis, feminist theory, critical race studies, and female chastity and sexuality.
Taylor La Carriere
MA Student
Modern American Literature
Alex Lee
MA Student
American Romanticism, Immigrant Literatures, Metaphysics
Michael Lenke
PhD Student
Modern Literature
Summer Lizer
PhD Student
Medieval and early modern literature, literary theory, nature and ecology, mathematics and the natural sciences
Naomi Mageean
MA Student
Modernism, Literary & Critical Theory, and Theology
Camille Meder
PhD Student
Modernism, 20th century American literature, Federico García Lorca
Bess N Mobley
PhD Student
Female and queer voices, narratology, metafiction, fictional authors who appear in their own texts as characters, contemporary and postmodern literature; Gertrude Stein
Benjamin Momtahan
MA Student
Anthropological Approaches to Litrature including Myth, Folklore and Ritual
Sabrina Nesbitt
MA Student
British and American Literature, Dark Romanticism & Gothic, Victorian Age, American Modernism, Dystopian Literature, Christian Influence
Megan Person
PhD Student
Children’s Literature, Young Adult Literature, Literary Theory, Arab-American Literature, and Migrant Literature
Jeremy Quintero
MA Student
Expatriate writers, American Modernism, Literature between the wars, Queer literature, Queer theory, Latine poetry, American poetry, Popular culture, Decolonial literature, Soviet-era literature, Beat poets/poetry, Language poets/poetry
Christina Ramirez
PhD Student
Early Modern Studies: with particular interest in gender and the body, Feminist theory, Disability theory, and Aristotelian theory,
Maneesha Sarda
MA Student
British Gothic Literature, Monster Theory, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory
Monica Shaar
PhD Student
Feminist theory, queer theory, trauma theory, exploring identity, the family dynamic, and women in Islam
Bethanie Simms
MA Student
Feminism, Gender Studies, Female History of Warfighting, War and Conflict, Trauma, Creative Non-Fiction, Ethics
Philippe Thompson
PhD Student
Modernism; World Literature; European Art and History; Mythology & Folklore; Chicanx/Latinx Literature and Culture; New Media, Visual Culture, and Science Fiction
Andrea Tran
MA Student
19th Century Feminism & Rhetoric