Postgraduate Study
PhD/MPhil American Studies
With our outstanding collection of Americana, we are pleased to
offer the research degrees of MPhil and PhD on a full- or part-time
basis.
In history, our principal areas of expertise include:
- war and 20th-century American society
- history on film
- the Cold War era
- America in the long 1960s
- the African American experience during and after the Civil
Rights movement
- Mexican American history
- Gang culture and the incarceral society
In literary and cultural studies, the main areas of research
activity include:
- Modernist and Postmodernist aesthetics
- the racing and gendering of contemporary American culture
- cinematic and televisual narratives
- twentieth century visual art (painting, photography, sculpture,
architecture)
- modern american poetry
- conspiracy culture at the turn of the millenium
The best indication of how the interaction of our small unit
works to the advantage of our students, lies in the work of our
recent PhD candidates. The fertile crossing of disciplinary borders
is apparent in projects such as 'How Can One Tell the Truth About
My Lai?', which examined how historians, novelists,
journalists, filmmakers, and the United States Army itself, have
examined and sought to ‘explain' and represent the massacre that
occurred in March 1968 in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai in
Vietnam. Another recent project drew upon cultural studies, gender
studies and political history to analyze the Cold War history to
explore 'Masculinity and Myth in Marvel Comics, 1961-74'.
More traditional - but no less impressive - are
successful doctoral analyses of 'The Republican Party and
Civil Rights, 1924-1948'; 'The Representation of the Other in the
Contemporary American Novel'; 'The Hollywood Horror Franchise';
'Women Photographers of the 1930s'; 'Representations of Slavery in
the novels of Paule Marshall, Ellen Gilchirst, Ellen Douglas and
Gloria Naylor'; and such individual poets and novelists as Edith
Wharton, Hilda Doolittle, William Carlos Williams, Frank O'Hara,
Charles Bukowski, Gary Snyder, Joyce Carol Oates and Cormac
McCarthy.
Many of our successful PhD candidates have gone on to become
lecturers at such universities as Cambridge,
Liverpool, Newcastle, Bangor, Manchester and Northumbria.
Others have entered teaching, publishing, arts administration and
broadcasting.
Applicants for MPhil and PhD degrees are asked to submit a
detailed proposal for research (a few pages of description and a
brief indicative bibliography) together with examples of their
written work (approximately 5,000 words on any pertinent subject).
At least two members of staff with appropriate expertise will read
this material independently and confer, to ensure that proposals
for research are viable from the outset. Once admitted, you are
allocated a specialist as supervisor who remains responsible for
your academic progress and well-being throughout the period of
study. If you want to discuss ideas before drawing up a formal
proposal, please contact Dr John Osborne, Director of Studies, for
futher advice (j.a.osborne@hull.ac.uk).
For details of the University's postgraduate application
procedure, and links to the relevant forms, please go to www.hull.ac.uk/admissions.