Poetics
The Ph. D. in poetics is offered as a result of a personal exploration of the pattern and beauty of language. Candidates will take coursework equivalent to that for the Master's Degree in Literature and for the Master's Degree in Theoretical Linguistics. The former area will include survey courses in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, as well as courses in bibliographic method and critical theories. The latter requirement will include courses in phonology, syntax, typology, language acquisition, sociolinguistics and field methods. In addition candidates will normally take at least one course apiece in creative writing and in linguistics and literature. Depending on training and interest, candidates will also take courses in related areas, such as rhetoric, semiotics, technical writing, music, dance, speech pathology, cognitive science, biology, philosophy and metaphor.
As the program welcomes students who enter the university with various kinds of Master's Degrees from other institutions in hand, all of the above requirements should be seen as being highly flexible and customizable.The doctoral dissertation may draw from any part of the wide spectrum of fields mentioned above. It may be purely in linguistic theory, purely in literary studies, and it may be a thesis in creative writing; but normally, theses will be of a high degree of interdisciplinarity. The thought on which a thesis is based will be shaped in close collaboration with a team of thesis advisors, which will normally include a faculty member in each of the areas of creative writing, linguistics, and literature.
While candidates are not required to write Master's Theses in these last two areas, this option is available in exceptional cases. The course of study is such that successful candidates should be able to teach introductory courses in literature and in linguistics, and graduate courses anywhere along the trajectory which their interests have led them to follow.