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The UBC English Graduate Program stands as one of Canada's most dynamic and comprehensive, granting M.A. degrees since 1919. Students can pursue studies in two distinct fields: English Literature and English Language. Notably, UBC's English Department is among the rare North American institutions that provide both literary studies and a dedicated language program.
English Language
This program focuses on linguistic history and structure, discourse and genre analysis, along with rhetoric's historical and theoretical aspects. Language faculty guide research in areas like descriptive and historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, functional grammar, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, stylistics, genre studies, and rhetorical theory. Literature students may enroll in Language courses, which have recently covered topics such as reported speech across genres, classical rhetoric's modern applications, and cognitive approaches to literary language. Conversely, Language students benefit from the department's diverse Literature course offerings.
English Literature
The Literature program spans British, North American, and global English literature across historical periods and genres. Faculty research explores varied subjects including ecocritical approaches to Renaissance drama, transportation themes in Romantic poetry, media's influence on modernist writing, post-identity politics in Asian American literature, and war's traumatic effects in 20th-century Canadian, American, and British works. Graduate students can also engage with interdisciplinary programs at UBC, such as Medieval Studies, Canadian and U.S. Studies, Sexuality Studies, and Science and Technology Studies.