Comprehensive Examination in CLCS

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:

The student will discuss the choice of a chair for the Examination Committee with the Advisor and the Director of Graduate Studies. One Comparative Literature 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 Comparative Literature graduate faculty (including affiliates). At least four of the five Committee members must be present at the examination.

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 two weeks 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 comprehensive examination will consist of four parts:

1. The history and theory of literary criticism, from classical antiquity to the present. The reading list will be based in part on material covered in CLT 510. Works pertinent to the student's special interests may be added. Part A of this section includes works from Plato to the early twentieth century. Because of the immense variety of theoretical approaches in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Part B will consist of at least three sub-sections, each devoted to specific areas of literary theory. These areas include but are not limited to Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Mew Criticism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, structuralism, ,post-colonialism, deconstruction, feminist analysis, queer theory, gender studies, New Historicism, translation theory, science studies, and popular cultural studies. The student should obtain the latest version of Ph.D. Reading List for Literary Theory and Criticism available in the Department office and on the web site at
http://www.stonybrook.edu/complit/new/literary_theory.html

2. A literary genre. Possible options include tragedy, comedy, novel, short narrative, romance, autobiography, epic, film, essay, or other categories approved by the Graduate Studies Committee. A knowledge of the historical development of the genre will be expected, and the reading list should include, in addition to relevant primary texts, a selection of major critical and theoretical works about the chosen genre (which may include its relation to other forms of expression such as music, art, film and philosophy). The list must include works from at least three language traditions.

3. A period in literary history. Possible options include Classical Antiquity; Medieval; Renaissance; Baroque and Neo-Classical; later Eighteenth Century; Romanticism; later Nineteenth Century; Modernism. Other categories (e.g. in the Eastern literary traditions) will be considered by the Graduate Studies Committee. The student will be expected to be acquainted with the history and the social and intellectual background of the period and to demonstrate a knowledge of the major genres produced during that period in at least three language traditions.

4. A special area of a comparative nature, which is 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 35-45 primary texts and 12-15 secondary works.

Sample Lists

Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3