Master of Letters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Master of Letters (MLitt from the Latin magister litterarum) is a postgraduate Master's degree.
[edit] United Kingdom
The MLitt (T) is a one-year full-time taught degree at the ancient Scottish universities. Usually, the degree involves nine months of postgraduate-level courses, followed by a short research dissertation written during the summer months. Often the MLitt is awarded here because for the ancient universities the first degree in the Arts and Humanities is an undergraduate MA (Hons), and contrasts with the MPhil degree, a more advanced one-year research Masters.
The older MLitt, now often called the MLitt (R) to differentiate the two, is a research degree lasting two years in many UK universities, including the ancient Scottish Universities who also grant MLitts (T). Students rarely apply for an MLitt in the first instance, but for those who have completed two years of a PhD and do not wish to or cannot continue with the final year(s), they have the option to write up their completed research so far and graduate with an MLitt (R).
In all cases, the MLitt is usually awarded in Arts, Divinity, Fine Art, Humanities, or Social Sciences.
[edit] United States
The M.Litt. is awarded by only three schools: Middlebury College in Vermont, which offers the degree for advanced study in writing; and Drew University in New Jersey which offers it as an intermediate degree in their Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) program (the only earned/non-honorary Doctor of Letters degree in the U.S.), an interdisciplinary Humanities program in scholarly writing. More recently, Mary Baldwin College in Virginia has begun awarding the M.Litt. degree for indepth research in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature.
