Our Ph.D. program offers full financial support at nationally competitive levels. Students usually receive five years of guaranteed support (assuming continued progress toward the degree) and a year-long teaching release while writing their dissertations. Stipends for 2026-27 begin at approximately $28,800, though several of our students have fellowships that increase their stipends to as much as $33,660.
Our students have also regularly received Sparks Fellowships and University Graduate Fellowships.
Students on assistantships take on a variety of assignments, including both language and literature teaching, working as a research assistant, or being an editorial assistant for departmentally-affiliated journals.
Our students have had substantial success in receiving competitive internal grants, awards, and fellowships, many of them offered through the Office of Research and Graduate Studies of the College of the Liberal Arts, as well as Funding Awards and Grant Opportunities for their study and research from external organizations such as the Fulbright Program, the American Association of University Women, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and many others.
Our annual departmental travel budget for graduate students is about $30,000.
Current students may receive funding through various mechanisms.