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General Information: Our Mission and Focus
The Department of English, College of Humanities, on the main (Río Piedras) campus of the University of Puerto Rico, offers a complete graduate program at both the M.A. and Ph.D. levels. The UPR is the State University, and the Río Piedras campus is its oldest and largest unit. The campus has an enrollment of approximately 14,000 students of whom 4,000 are graduate students. A land-grant university, UPR has been an accredited part of the Middle States Association of Universities since 1946. Among the distinguished faculty members of the English Department in past years have been Saul Bellow, William Kennedy, and George Lamming. Set amidst the lush sub-tropical vegetation and the old Spanish-style architecture of the campus, the English Department is centrally located and within easy reach of the library and other facilities.
We are committed to broadening our students' education through a wide variety of critical approaches and courses ranging from early British and American to African, Caribbean and diaspora literature and culture, as well as linguistics, writing, translation, conversational English and speech communication. We also provide our students with opportunities to meet eminent writers and scholars like Velma Pollard, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Lorna Goodison, Mervyn Alleyne, Víctor Hernández Cruz, and Willie Perdomo, by hosting many conferences, symposiums and seminars.
We offer two undergraduate majors (Literature and Linguistics / Communication), a Master of Arts in Literature or Linguistics, and a Ph.D. with a specialization in Literature and Language of the English-speaking Caribbean.
The Master's program provides advanced studies in the areas of general English-language literature and linguistics. The Doctoral program degree has as its aim the preparation of specialized scholars, critics, and linguists who will contribute to the development of Caribbean Studies as a field of academic knowledge inside the context of higher education.
The M.A. program has offered advanced studies in the areas of Literature and Linguistics since the 1960s. Courses represent the global range of Anglophone Literature, Language, and Culture: from Old English to postcolonial theory, from Shakespeare to reggae and calypso lyrics, from generative syntax to ethnolinguistics, from Paradise Lost to feminism and film theory. The program's primary goal is the pursuit of academic excellence in general English-language studies within the context of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean region as a whole.
The Ph.D. program began in January 2000 and aims to prepare scholars, critics, linguists, and cultural specialists who will contribute to the development of Caribbean studies as a field of academic and cultural knowledge inside the context of higher education in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean community at large.
The University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras Campus has a long tradition in Caribbean Studies and maintains specialized bibliographic holdings in the field. The new Ph.D. program in English places emphasis on (1) critical studies of oral and scribal forms of Anglophone literary and cultural expression and (2) the analysis of the development and structure of Anglophone creole languages within the broader context of Caribbean, Caribbean Rim, and diasporic metropolitan societies and cultures.
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