The Ohio State University Department of English

Graduate Minor in English

Graduate Minor in English

The Ohio State University's graduate minor in English offers focused, high-level training in any of the Department of English’s many fields, including creative writing, literary history, folklore, narrative studies, critical theory, popular culture, film, writing, rhetoric, literacy studies, and postcolonial and ethnic studies. All students in the arts, humanities and social sciences are invited to construct a customized minor that will further their individual academic and professional plans. 

The graduate minor in English offers considerable flexibility with regard to program design and course selection. For example, students could take courses that correspond to one of the following tracks:

  • Writing, rhetoric and literacy: Students could take courses in writing, rhetoric and literacy studies, including courses in digital humanities.
  • Folklore: Students could take courses in fieldwork, ethnography and performance studies.
  • Theory: Students could take courses in critical theory, narrative theory, theoretical approaches to gender and sexuality and/or theoretical approaches to postcolonial and ethnic studies.
  • Literary history: Students could take courses in one historical period (ex: Renaissance), adjacent historical periods (ex: medieval and Renaissance or eighteenth and nineteenth century) or a range of courses that provide students with a solid background in a national literature (ex: American literature, nineteenth-century American literature and contemporary literature).

Alternately, students may take a series of courses that cut across tracks in ways that further their particular area of study. Students are also welcome to propose other ways of fulfilling the course requirements for the minor. Students may have already taken one or more of these courses before they enroll in the minor.