M.A. English

The region surrounding the University of Idaho is the ancestral land of both the Coeur d’Alene and Nez Perce peoples, and its campus in Moscow sits on unceded lands guaranteed to the Nez Perce people in the 1855 Treaty with the Nez Perce. As a land grant university, the University of Idaho also benefits from endowment lands that are the ancestral homes to many of the West’s Native peoples. The Department of English and Creative Writing Program acknowledge this history and share in the communal effort to ensure that the complexities and atrocities of the past remain in our discourse and are never lost to time. We invite you to think of the traditional “land acknowledgment” statement through our MFA alum CMarie Fuhrman’s words.

Our degree requirements are designed to give students maximum choice in their degree, and we encourage you to focus your studies in ways that best reflect your interests. To complete the M.A.-English degree, you need to earn 30 credits of graduate-level English coursework and 3 credits of Master’s-level research.

Our faculty are working at the top of their fields and winning major awards for their research. Learn more about Our People.

Most M.A.-English students choose the non-thesis degree track, which we designed to help best prepare you for your next steps upon completing the degree. The non-thesis track culminates in a Master’s Project, which can take various forms. Traditionally, it involves working closely with a faculty mentor to produce an essay suitable for submission to publication that can also serve as an excellent writing sample for job and Ph.D. applications. But students are also welcome to propose alternative formats that prepare them for the next steps in their careers, including digital projects such as Storying Extinction: Mapping the Loss of North Idaho’s Mountain Caribou.

Many students in the M.A. program are fully funded through Teaching and Research Assistantships. All Assistantships come with a full tuition waiver and a stipend, which for the current academic year is roughly $15,000. The M.A.-English Admissions Committee automatically considers prospective students for assistantship positions; you do not need to submit any additional application materials for these appointments.

Teaching Assistants (TAs) teach composition courses for the English Department, including ENGL 101 and ENGL 102. When you join the M.A.-English program, you receive teacher training prior to the beginning of your first semester. Current teaching loads for Teaching Assistants are two courses per semester.

Research Assistants (RAs) are employed through various offices and initiatives on campus as communications content producers, editors, and grant consultants.

In addition to this funding, we also award a variety of competitive and need-based scholarships to help offset general living costs. Our Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) offers extra-departmental funding in the form of research and travel grants to qualifying students throughout the academic year. We also encourage M.A.-English students to apply for CD?L Fellowships with our library’s Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning.

We offer several internship opportunities for M.A.-English students. The Confluence Lab is an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together scholars in the arts, humanities, and sciences, and community members, to engage in environmental issues impacting rural communities. Fugue, our in-house literary magazine, is edited and managed solely by University of Idaho graduate students and publishes poetry, fiction, essays, hybrid work, and visual art from established and emerging writers and artists.

In addition to these internship opportunities, we also encourage practicum credits for our M.A.-English students that allow you to gain on-the-ground experience teaching  undergraduate literature, composition, and/or linguistics courses.

The University of Idaho Graduate English Conference (UIGEC) is an annual event sponsored by M.A. and M.F.A .English students. Each year, the conference chair(s) develop a theme, create a call for papers, invite a keynote speaker, and plan panels based on proposals submitted for the conference. All conference-related work is done by graduate students, with the faculty support and mentorship from the M.A. English Director. The UIGEC is a unique opportunity for graduate students in the English Department to gain experience in planning, executing, and presenting at an academic conference. See the UIGEC website for more info.

Situated in the foothills of Moscow Mountain amid the rolling terrain of the Palouse (the ancient silt beds unique to the region), our location in the vibrant community of Moscow, Idaho, boasts a lively and artistic local culture. Complete with independent bookstores, coffee shops, art galleries, restaurants and breweries, (not to mention a historic art house cinema, organic foods co-op, and renowned seasonal farmer’s market), Moscow is a friendly and affordable place to live. Outside of town, we’re lucky to have many opportunities for hiking, skiing, rafting, biking, camping, and general exploring—from nearby Idler’s Rest and Kamiak Butte to renowned destinations like Glacier National Park, the Snake River, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area, and Nelson, BC. As for more urban getaways, Spokane, Washington, is only a ninety-minute drive, and our regional airline, Alaska, makes daily flights to and from Seattle that run just under an hour.