Comprehensive Examination in Cultural Studies

Full-time students who are candidates for the Ph.D. will normally take their comprehensive examination no more than one year after completing their course work. Completing the language requirement is a prerequisite for sitting for the examination.

Committee for the Examination:

Students will discuss the choice of a chair for their Examination Committees with their advisors and the Director of Graduate Studies. One CLCS faculty member will be asked by the student to serve as chair the Committee. Three more faculty members who can examine the student in one or more areas of the examination, as defined below, will be selected by the student in consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies, the Advisor and the chair of the Committee. At least three of the four members of the Examination Committee must be members of the department's faculty (including affiliates).

Reading List:

A reading list for all four parts enumerated below will be compiled by the student with the help of the Examination Committee. The definitive version of the reading list, whose cover page bearing signatures of the Committee members indicates who will chair and who will serve as primary examiner for which part (see below), must be submitted to the Graduate Studies Committee no later than one month prior to the scheduled date of examination. The list must be approved by the faculty members of the Graduate Studies Committee. Students should submit a description of the special area, related to the dissertation, along with the reading list.

Examination:

The examination is oral, with the duration to be determined by the members of the Committee but not shorter than two hours and not longer than three. Questions posed by examiners will be based on the reading list for the examination. The examination may be passed, passed with distinction,failed, or failed in part. In case of failure, the examination may be retaken once, but no later than the end of the semester following the time when it was initially scheduled. In case of partial failure, the second examination will cover only the area(s) on which the candidate's performance was inadequate.

The Cultural Studies comprehensive examination will consist of four parts:

1. Cultural theory. Students will be examined on the history of cultural theory from 1950 to the present. The historical, geographic, and thematicc aspects of the list will be determined in consultation with the student's examining committee, although the reading list will be based in part on material covered in CST 609. This part of the student's list should contain no fewer than forty titles.

2. An in-depth study of a cultural phenomenon. Among numerous possibilities, students might choose reality television, manga, the engraving, or studies of film stars. A knowledge of the historical development of the phenomenon will be expected, and the reading list should include, in addition to relevant primary texts, a selection of relevant critical and theoretical works. The list must include works from at least three language traditions.

3. A historical periods. Possible options include classical antiquity; Medieval; baroque and neo-classical; romanticism; and modernism as well as unique historical moments chosen by the student, such as the time between the two world wars or the last two decades of the twentieth century. Other traditions outside the West may also be included. The student will be expected to know the history and the social and intellectual background of the period and to demonstrate, where appropriate, a knowledge of the period in at least three language traditions.

4. A special area of a comparative nature, defined as a broad subject related to the student's more specific projected dissertation topic. The student will be expected to have a wide knowledge of the history and scholarship that inform the background of the dissertation project.

For parts 2 to 4 of the comprehensive examination, the reading list submitted must include primary texts in at least two languages other than English. Reading lists in these areas are not intended to be exhaustive, but they should provide coverage of the field that adequately prepares the student to teach courses in the areas of the examination. Guidelines for the preparation of the reading lists can be obtained in the Department. Parts 2 and 3 normally include forty and fifty items.