English

Completing the MA

Our program is designed to be both flexible and rigorous. We know that for some students, completing the thesis is the best option. We also know that for other students, completing the thesis is not practical or best for their professional or educational goals. As such, students in the MA program can opt to either write a thesis (if they qualify) or finish additional course work to complete our 30 credit hour program.

In order to qualify to write the thesis, a student must do the following:

• Pass six graduate courses up to that point and receive an A (4.0) in at least four of them.
• Pass the comprehensive exam.
• Receive a formal nomination from a faculty member who will serve as the thesis director.
• Submit a two- to five-page abstract of the proposed thesis, including an annotated bibliography of at least ten primary and secondary sources.

Given the above, we recommend that only students who are considering pursuing additional graduate work in literature (at the PhD level) consider writing the thesis.

For many students, completing the MA by taking additional course work (2 courses) is a better option. Some of the circumstances that may be suited for course work completion may include the following:

• Students completing the MA for professional certifications
• Students who need to complete the MA on a specific timeline
• Students who have significant work or family obligations
• Students who wish to pursue additional graduate work in areas other than literature (such as in Education or Writing)

If a student meets the thesis qualifications and opts for this path to completion, there are a few things you should be mindful of and prepare.

Thesis Timeline

You will need to register for ENG 695, the thesis course, during the spring semester. This course is only offered in the Spring, so you should plan your coursework and your comprehensive exam timeline accordingly. This is a 6 credit hour course, and will be the only course you typically register for. If you do not complete the thesis in one semester, you then register for ENG 721 the thesis continuation course (there is no charge for this course). If you need an additional semester to finish your thesis, you must register for 722, which is credit bearing course that you will need to pay for.

In planning your timeline for the thesis, there are a number of things you need to keep in mind. The first is that for most students the thesis is not a one semester project. While a thesis can be completed in one semester, for most students this is a semester+ project (a semester+ summer or semester+ winter break) or a multiple semester project. This has to do with timeline requirements for graduation. Keep in mind if you want to finish the thesis in Spring, this does not mean that the thesis is completed in early May. Rather, in order to meet timelines for graduation, the thesis has to be entirely completed, approved by readers, and uploaded to the Digital Commons by April. Here are the general timelines from the graduate school:

• Fall: Thesis must be uploaded to the Digital Commons by the Friday of the third week of November.
• Spring: Thesis must be uploaded to the Digital Commons by the Friday of the third week of April.

What this will mean is that you should plan to have everything finished by the last week of October and the last week of March respectively, to give your committee time to read and approve it.

Pragmatically, this means that for students who wish to finish the thesis in one semester, you will not have 16 weeks to work on it (the length of a typical semester), rather you will pragmatically have more like 8 weeks. This is a very tight writing schedule. It is not impossible, but it is very difficult.

As you plan your thesis timeline, you will need to be aware of this. If, for example, you want to work on the thesis in the Spring semester, you may still write the thesis in the Spring, finishing the revising by May, but take the August graduation.

Choosing the Thesis Committee/Readers

The English Department requires that students have 2 readers for their thesis. In approaching faculty to be your readers you should keep a few things in mind:

• The faculty member should have explicit expertise in the area you are writing about. While having a good working relationship or rapport with a faculty member is important, if their field of expertise is not in the area you are writing about, you should not ask them to be a reader. If you want to write on Victorian literature, you should not ask a faculty member specializing in the 20th century to oversee your thesis.
• While the thesis should be a reflection of your interests, keep in mind that your thesis is limited to the areas of expertise of our graduate faculty. As such, you cannot write a thesis, for example, on Beowulf, as we have no graduate faculty specializing in this area.
• Your readers have to have graduate faculty status in literature. An MA thesis is a thesis that is based in Literary Studies (not pedagogy or creative writing, for example). As a result, only graduate faculty can serve as thesis readers.

When you approach faculty to work with you on your thesis, you should provide them with the following information:

• Submit a two- to five-page abstract of the proposed thesis, including an annotated bibliography of at least ten primary and secondary sources.
• Provide faculty members with a proposed timeline for completion. The timeline for completion is important because faculty need to have a sense of how long you intend to work on the project (including whether you are intending to work on it over breaks, etc.). Keep in mind that faculty may not always be available (if they are away for research, going on sabbatical, etc.) so having a sense of your timeline is important.
• All of the above should be in place BEFORE the semester begins. You should not be trying to solicit readers, etc. during the semester you take 695, rather this should be in place before the semester begins. All of the paperwork for the thesis (including the Thesis/Project enrollment form) is due to the graduate coordinator BEFORE you register for 695.

Working with your readers

As you begin working on your thesis, there are a few things you can do to make sure that your relationship with your readers is fruitful and productive. As you begin writing, make sure you have a good sense of the following:

• What are your readers’ expectations for the work? Typically, your first reader reads the work, requests revisions, and once the work is revised satisfactorily, approves it to go to the second reader. For some faculty who serve as second readers, they only want to see the thesis once the first reader approves everything. Other faculty are willing to read chapters as soon as they have been approved by the first reader. Make sure you understand what your readers expect in this regard.
• Keep in mind that each reader of the thesis can ask for significant revisions. Even if the thesis is approved by your first reader, your second reader can still ask for significant revisions. Your thesis also has to be approved by the English Department Chair (who can likewise send the thesis back for revision) as well as the Dean of the graduate school (who can also send it back for revision).
• Give yourself adequate time. Your thesis will likely go through many rounds of revision before it is approved, so plan your work and timeline accordingly.    
• Set up due dates for your writing with your faculty members and stick with them. Keep in mind that commenting and reading your work is a significant time commitment for your faculty members, who are juggling many things, including other students, their own publishing, and service obligations. If they are expecting a draft from you on a Friday afternoon, and you do not contact them or provide it until the next Wednesday, they may not have the time or the ability to comment on it right away. If something is happening that is making it difficult for you to make your deadlines, you should discuss this with your faculty.
• Stay in consistent communication with your faculty. If you need to miss a scheduled meeting or deadline, let your faculty know. If you do not understand the feedback you are getting on your work, ask for clarification or a meeting. If you are stuck on the writing, reach out for help. Do not just disappear if the writing takes longer or gets off track.

In relation to the above, remember that your faculty have committed to work with you for a specific period of time. If you disappear and come back a year or two later to finish the work, your faculty may no longer be able to work with you.

Cultivating an appropriate professional relationship with your committee is ultimately your responsibility. If you continuously miss deadlines, do not respond to emails from faculty, do not make revisions when requested, etc. your readers may opt to terminate their work on your thesis.

Writing the Thesis

How long a thesis takes to complete is dependent on a lot of variables. Things like work commitments, family commitments, writing time, research time, etc. all contribute to how long the process takes. The following are some tips in formulating how to approach the thesis process.

• Read the thesis abstracts on the MA webpage. This will give you a good sense of what kinds of arguments a thesis should make
• Read some of the more recent theses from the English Department on the Digital Commons site (you may need to login with your Buffalo State credentials). A thesis is a specific kind of document—it is not just three or four seminar papers stitched together, nor is it your magnum opus where you write about everything you care about—rather a thesis is a specific argument and intervention in the field, supported by close reading, criticism, and theory. In other words, it is both like and not at all like writing you have done in the past. Reading a successful thesis or two will give you a model of how the writing can look.
• Create a consistent work schedule for yourself. You should be writing/researching every day. Schedule your writing/work time the same way you would schedule time for classes or a job. A good text that might be useful here is Writing your Dissertation in 15 minutes a Day by Joan Bolker.
• Consider working with a writing group/writing buddy. Studies show that people who work with writing groups are more consistent, accountable and effective than those who do not. There are lots of different kinds of writing groups (silent writing groups that meet over zoom, for example, where no one speaks but everyone works at the same time on their own projects; critique groups where people workshop drafts and/or share their work, etc). It is a good idea to find (or create) a writing group that will support you and help you meet your goals.
• Know what your writing process is. As you learned in your undergraduate work, all writing is revising and that holds true here too. More specifically, writing is about process and figuring out what an effective writing and research process looks like for you will be vital. Keep in mind that this may not be the same process that worked for you as an undergrad or even with your seminar papers. In writing the thesis, part of what you will need to figure out is what kind of writing process works best for the way you think. Outlines, word association, free writing, timed writing, can all be useful tools, but what works will vary from person to person.
• Keep good records of your research. If you have yet to do this, you will need to figure out how to keep appropriate and useful records of your research. Annotated Bibliographies, research notes, annotation, and the précis, are all useful tools here. You should also be keeping track of your research sources. Software like Zotero, RefWorks or EndNote can be really useful here.
• Make redundant copies of your drafts as you work. This is really important when you are working on writing of this length. At the end of each session, make sure you are saving your writing in a redundant location.