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Creative Writing Program

Requirements for the Ph.D.

The Creative Writing Program currently offers the Ph.D. in the genres of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Once admitted to candidacy, students are required to take 30 hours of coursework beyond the M.A. Except for the required English Language course, and certain optional courses in other departments, at least 18 hours must be taken at the 8000-level, with those courses distributed as follows:

  1. A minimum of 9, and a maximum of 12 hours of 8000-level Creative Writing Workshops: 8510 in fiction, 8520 in creative nonfiction, 8530 in poetry. If a candidate chooses to take 12 hours of workshop, 3 of those hours may be taken in a second genre (including 8000-level writing courses in other departments within the Center for the Literary Arts). No courses may substitute for workshops.
  2. Candidates shall have had or shall be required to take:
    1. a graduate-level course in the history or theory of literary criticism
    2. a course in the history or structure of the English language.

    Students scheduled to teach English 1000 (Composition) must also take English 8010: Theory and Practice of Composition.

Additional Requirements

  • Residency requirement: A minimum of 18 hours beyond the M.A. must be taken in residence at the Columbia campus.
  • Language Requirement. A candidate must achieve either a working knowledge of two foreign languages, or advanced proficiency in one. This requirement may be fulfilled either by exam or by course work.
  • Written Comprehensive Exam. After a candidate’s course work, foreign language, and residency requirements have been completed, she or he may take the Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam. This 12-hour written exam is taken over a period of three days (four hours each day) and is composed of (a) an 8-hour exam covering the candidate’s primary field, and (b) a 4-hour exam covering the candidate’s secondary field. Questions are prepared by the 5 or 6 faculty who form the candidate’s Comprehensive Exam Committee.
  • Oral Exam. Taken within one month of the successful completion of the Written Comprehensive Exam, the 2-hour oral exam addresses both the primary and secondary areas, and goes back over material covered in the written exams.
  • Creative Dissertation. After completing all the above requirements, Ph.D. candidates in Creative Writing may choose one of three options for the dissertation:
    1. a creative dissertation - a novel, novella, a book-length collection of poems, a book-length collection of short fiction or creative nonfiction - with a prose introduction (2500-word minimum) which demonstrates the correlation between the candidate's academic and creative interests;
    2. a scholarly Dissertation; or
    3. a combined Scholarly and Creative Dissertation, which includes significant contributions in each area.

    Of course, candidates may also choose to write two independent disserations, one creative and one scholarly.

    Once the dissertation has been read and approved by the committee, the candidate will take a 2-hour oral examination, the "dissertation defense," which addresses the formal, thematic, and topical concerns of the dissertation.

Additional information about the Creative Writing PhD in English may be found at the English Department website.