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The Department of English at the University of Hawai'i at
Mānoa (UHM) offers graduate programs leading to the MA
and the PhD. Students are drawn to the department by the strength
of our faculty, by the diversity of our graduate program,
and by the opportunity, with all the challenges that it implies,
to study literature and writing in a multicultural setting.
While most students in the graduate program are from Hawai'i
or have connections to the islands, others come from throughout
the Pacific region and from many parts of the mainland U.S.
In addition, there are students from Canada, Europe, Africa
and Japan.
Although MA and PhD students take many of their classes together,
the two programs serve different purposes. The MA program
is designed to give students a broad overview of the changing
field of contemporary English studies while also allowing
them to work within an area of concentration of their own
choice. The four concentrations from which the students may
choose are:
- Literary Studies in English
- Composition and Rhetoric
- Creative Writing
- Cultural Studies in Asia/Pacific
Students take courses both within and outside their concentration.
They are encouraged to explore the ways in which methodologies
and assumptions are evolving in their own area of interest
and how each part of English studies is being affected by
developments taking place throughout the discipline. For students
who choose to concentrate in Literary Studies in English,
Composition and Rhetoric, and Cultural Studies in Asia/Pacific,
the culmination of their studies is provided by their MA project,
in which they are encouraged to apply the theoretical and
methodological perspectives of more than a single course to
the study of a particular group of texts or other forms of
cultural production or to a particular theoretical problem.
Students in Creative Writing complete their MA with a creative
thesis, which they are then asked to place, in their oral
thesis defense, within the context of other works in the same
genre.
The PhD program is intended for highly motivated students
who have a clear sense of their own direction and who are
likely to make a significant contribution to the field. The
program is based less on course work than on independent study
and research. Students are required to take a small number
of courses, both within and outside of the department. The
focus of their study is determined by the students themselves
in consultation with their advisors, and their preparation
for their exams takes place largely outside of class. The
culmination of the PhD program is the dissertation, an original
work of research or writing that demonstrates the student's
readiness to assume his or her place within the profession.
As in the MA program, Creative Writing students produce a
creative work as their dissertation, while meeting all of
the other requirements for a degree in English.
The department's faculty includes distinguished scholars,
writers, and teachers in virtually every area of contemporary
English studies. The diversity of their interests and backgrounds
is reflected in the variety of courses that we offer at every
level of instruction in the department, from freshman composition
to the graduate program, including the wide range of classes
in both our introductory literature and our undergraduate
major programs. The department is strongly committed to the
quality of its teaching. We work hard to keep class size small,
especially in courses in which a significant amount of writing
is required. Twenty-one of our faculty members have won either
the University of Hawai'i Regents Award or a Presidential
Citation for Excellence in Teaching, and eighteen have won
teaching awards from the College of Languages, Linguistics,
and Literature.
The department is the site for the specially funded Citizens'
Chair, which has been held by such eminent writers and critics
such as Leon Edel, Robert Martin, Lillian Robinson, Peter
Elbow, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Albert Wendt. Traditionally,
we also have had a position for a Distinguished Visiting Writer
each semester, which has allowed us to bring to the department
poets such as Louis Simpson, Eric Chock, Naomi Shihab Nye,
and Cathy Song and fiction writers such as Robert Stone, Maxine
Hong Kingston, Michael Ondaatje, Sia Figiel, and Nora Okja
Keller.
Outside of classes, the department holds a regular series
of Thursday afternoon colloquia during an hour when no English
classes are scheduled, at which faculty members, students,
or local writers present an informal paper or reading, followed
by a discussion. The Center for Biographical Research also
holds a weekly noontime "brown bag" lecture by researchers
on biographical projects both on and off campus. The Humanities
Guest Lecture series brings other distinguished writers and
scholars to the university; and the various conferences, special
institutes, and colloquia sponsored in conjunction with the
East-West Center, the Center for Pacific Island Studies, and
the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature have
brought to the campus scholars, poets, fiction writers, critics,
and theorists from all over the world.
Among the many ways in which the faculty reaches outside
the department, one of the most important is its published
writing and scholarship. We have a large number of scholars
and writers who have attained national and international recognition
for their work. The department also houses or is affiliated
with a number of scholarly and literary journals: Biography,
the nation's preeminent journal in the area of life-writing;
Manoa, a journal of Asia-Pacific writing; Hawai'i Review,
a student-run literary journal; and two journals of experimental
writing, Tinfish and Chain. Long-standing affiliations
with such organizations as the Hawai'i Literary Arts Council,
the Conference on Literature and Hawai'i's Children, the Hawai'i
Theatre for Youth, the Poets in the Schools program, and the
Hawai'i Writing Project demonstrate the department's commitment
to its location, to community service, and to the promotion
of literature and writing throughout the islands. To a diverse
student body and a diverse citizenry, the English Department
offers a diverse vision of English studies, and a variety
of voices that reflects the diversity of activities and practices
in the profession itself today.
The university's library system can support research in most
areas of British and American literature and culture, and
world literature in English. Its Asian and Hawai'i -Pacific
collections in particular are among the most important in
the world. Additional research resources are provided by the
Hawai'i State Library and the collections of the Hawai'i Historical
Society, the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, the state
archives, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and the Bishop Museum.
For the convenience of faculty and graduate students, there
is a small collection of reference materials and basic texts
in the Green Room, the department's library on the fourth
floor in Kuykendall Hall.
One of the university's computer laboratories is located
in Kuykendall Hall, across from the department office. Graduate
students are welcome to use its networked collection of IBM
and Macintosh machines for word-processing, library catalog
searches, and Internet access. The laboratory can also used
for the development and testing of software for computer-assisted
writing and instruction.
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