Doctor of Philosophy Under normal circumstances the department admits to the doctoral program only qualified students with an M.A. in Comparative Literature or one of the individual languages and literatures. Entrance ExaminationFor The Doctor of Philosophy Program An entrance exam for the Ph.D. program must be passed by the Ph.D. candidate before March 1 of his/her first year of residence in the program. In the case of a candidate who has received an M.A. in this department, the M.A. exam will be considered as having satisfied the requirement and a student who has passed this exam will be considered qualified for the doctoral program. Any student who has not received an M.A. from this department will be required to pass the entrance exam, consisting of one hour of oral questioning on the M.A. Reading List. (See M.A. Oral Exam.) In case of failure, the exam may be taken again by the end of Spring semester of the same year. A second failure will result in dismissal from the program. Major Professor and Advisory Committee Before the end of their first year of residence, Ph.D. students, in consultation with the Graduate Coordinator, must choose a Major Professor and an Advisory Committee consisting of the Major Professor and four other members. It is most important that the persons who serve on the Advisory Committee, at the time the dissertation research is undertaken, be faculty members knowledgeable in the areas of the student's research. They should be selected irrespective of their departmental affiliation to the extent that this is compatible with Department and Graduate School guidelines. Sometimes it will be appropriate for the membership of the Advisory Committee to remain unchanged during a student's entire doctoral program, whereas at other times changes in the original committee will be necessary. The Major Professor must be a member of the CMLT faculty and a member of the Graduate faculty. Besides the Major Professor, two members of the Advisory Committee must be members of the CMLT faculty and two members of the advisory committee must be members of the Graduate faculty. The Advisory Committee, in consultation with the student, is charged with planning the student's course of study. It is also charged with approving the Program of Study, arranging the comprehensive written and oral examinations, approving a subject for the dissertation, approving the completed dissertation and approving the student's defense of his/her research. The Committee should advise the student of required research skills and other requirements. Ph.D. Course Requirements A minimum of 30 credit hours beyond the M.A., distributed as follows:
No more than 3 semester hours of Comparative Literature 8980 (Independent Study) may be counted in category I. (No more than 3 semester hours of Comparative Literature 8980 will be accepted on the Program of Study for the entire program.) Courses in category II include those in Germanic and Slavic Languages, Romance languages, English and Classics. At least 6 semester hours of credit in this category must come from courses in which substantial use of a foreign language is required, as opposed to courses in English or those involving literature primarily or exclusively in translation. Students whose native languge is not English may not satisfy this foreign language course requirement by courses in their native language buy may do so by English courses or courses using English translations. Students must enroll for 3 credits of CMLT 9300 in the semester in which they are to receive the degree. Courses required for the Ph.D. degree are in addition to those required for the M.A. degree. The Graduate School requires that the student maintain at least a 3.0 average in all courses taken for the degree. Credit will not be awarded for any grade lower than "C". NOTE: It is a Graduate School requirement that 12 semester hours of credit be in courses open only to graduate students.
Program of Study
Departmental Language Requirement for the Ph.D. Candidates for the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature will be required to pass proficiency exams in three foreign languages, demonstrating "reading fluency" in two languages and "reading competence" in a third. The exams on the first two languages will require an acceptable translation into idiomatic English of passages of standard prose or verse in those languages without use of a dictionary. The exam on the third language will require an acceptable translation of a passage in that language with the use of a dictionary. In no case shall a Ph.D. exam be arranged before all language proficiency exams are passed. A student who as passed a "fluency" exam in a language for the M.A. will be considered to have passed the fluency exam for that language for the Ph.D. However, a student who as passed only a "competency" exam in a second language will be required to pass a "fluency" exam in that language in order to meet the second language "fluency" requirement. Proficiency exams will be administered by a departmental examining committee at the beginning of each semester. This committee shall be the sole judge of the acceptability of the translations. Students must inform the Graduate Coordinator of the languages in which they wish to be examined by the first day of classes in the semester. Students are urged to take the language proficiency exams at the earliest possible date; in no case shall the student be admitted to candidacy before all language proficiency exams are passed. It is a regulation of the Graduate School that students whose native language is not English may not use their native language to satisfy the foreign language requirement. Such students may, however, use English toward this requirement by submitting written work from a graduate course for evaluation. The English Proficiency Examination must be taken by the end of the second semester of residence.
Research Skills Requirement Ph.D. Written and Oral Examinations Candidates for the Ph.D. are required to pass three 3-hour written examinations in the following areas:
Candidates must also pass a 60- to 90-minute oral examination covering the material tested in the three written examinations. All examinations must be taken within a single 2-week period. The examinations in the History of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory and Methodology of Comparative Literature and the Major Literature will be based on the department reading lists (pp. 25-28). Students may choose as their Major Literature French, German, Spanish, Italian, English, American, Russian, Latin, Japanese or Chinese. The examination in the Period/Genre will be based on a reading list prepared by the student, in consultation with the Major Professor, which has been approved by the Advisory Cmmittee and the Graduate Coordinator. All works on the reading lists of the examinations in the Major Literature and Period/Genre must be read in the original language of composition; however, in some cases the Major Professor may choose to give the student a supplementary list of works to be read in translation. In addition to reading the items on the reading lists, students will be expected to obtain knowledge of historical and philosophical background and of literary relationships by reading histories of literature, background studies and interpretations of major items on the lists. The Major Professor may therefore choose to give the student a supplementary list of secondary works which the student may be required to read. The Ph.D. preliminary examination is graded by the Advisory Committee on a pass/fail basis. Each individual portion of the exam must be passed by four out of five Committee members for the examination to be considered passing as a whole. Any student who fails any part of the exam will be given an opportunity to retake the exam. In the event of a failure of the initial exam, the examining Committee will decide (after considering the student's performance on the entire exam) whether the student will be required to retake the entire exam or only the part(s) of the exam which were failed. At least one semester must elapse between an unsuccessful examination and any re-examination; no more than one re-examination shall be permitted. It should be noted that the Ph.D. preliminary examination is the department's final opportunity to evaluate the candidate's general competence in the discipline before the approval of the dissertation and the awarding of the degree. The candidate will be called upon to demonstrate his/her knowledge, both general and specific, within the boundaries of the chosen field acquired through course work and independent study during residency in the program.
Admission to Candidacy The Dissertation The candidate is responsible for choosing a dissertation topic, which should be comparative in nature and should be connected with the student's major field of study. The candidate's Major Professor serves as the dissertation director. Although the dissertation normally will be a work of critical analysis and research, the department may on occasion accept as a dissertation a scholarly translation of a major work of literature, furnished with an adequate introduction and critical annotations. Before beginning the dissertation, the student must submit a Prospectus describing briefly the nature, scope, organization and purpose of the dissertation. The Prospectus must be approved by the Major Professor and the Advisory Committee in a meeting with the student. When the dissertation has been approved by the Major Professor, it must be submitted to the reading committee (which consists of the other four members of the student's Advisory Committee), one of whose members (who must be a member of the graduate faculty) will be designated chairman of the reading committee. The dissertation director may not serve on this committee. The committee will represent the Graduate faculty in determining the acceptability of the dissertation and will report to the Major Professor if the dissertation is approved. If one of the members of the Committee finds the dissertation unacceptable, the candidate may, even at this stage, be asked to rewrite it, change sections, or make additions or deletions. If the reading committee declines to approve the dissertation, the dissertation director and the Graduate School must both be notified. The candidate must submit the dissertation to the reading committee no later than the third week of the semester in which the degree is to be awarded. (The dissertation, signed by the dissertation director and by the chairman of the reading committee, must be submitted to the Dean of the Graduate School for his/her approval no later than two weeks prior to graduation.)
Final Examination (Defense of Dissertation)
Change of Major Professor
Minimal Graduate School Requirements for Satisfactory Progress
Application for Graduation All of this information and more can be found in the CMLT Graduate Handbook.
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