General Exam Guidelines

Preparing for the general examination is meant to give students the opportunity to read broadly and deeply, to follow preexisting inclinations and to drift, to explore, to serendipitously discover new questions and texts that seize their imagination. By reading for the general examination, students will come away with both a general knowledge of their literary tradition, the kind that is necessary for teaching broad overviews of their field to non-specialists, as well as with a clearer sense of their own intellectual investments, which will enable them to transition to the specialization that comes with the dissertation. At the time of the examination, successful candidates will be able to demonstrate breadth of knowledge and acquaintance with their field, to speak to how they would like to specialize for their dissertation, and to articulate their individual methodology and perspective that they will bring to bear on the dissertation. 

The general examination is to be taken by the end of the first two weeks of the spring semester of the third year of the graduate program, with the expectation that students will, upon completing the examination, participate in the department’s prospectus writing workshop, which begins in the third week of the semester. 

The examination committee is made up of all the faculty members in the student’s section. In the case of joint-track students, the examination committee will comprise at least four faculty members, with at least two members from each section to ensure balance. In some cases, a faculty member from another department may join the committee. 

The committee’s role is to advise candidates as they constitute their lists and read for the examination, and to administer the examination. Students should, at the end of the second year, begin consulting with the members of the examination committee, meeting with them regularly (at a frequency to be determined in conversation with each faculty member) to discuss their reading and the 3-5 questions that they will generate (see “Student-Generated Questions” below for more information). 

At the end of their second year, each student will create two lists, which can be amended as they progress with their examination preparation. The first list constitutes the “primary” list and comprises 80-100 primary works of literature spanning from the premodern to the contemporary. The second list constitutes the “theory and methods” list and comprises 20-30 theoretical works that will give the student a good introduction to the kind of methodological approach they would like to take on in their research. 

Both lists will be built from master lists that are provided to the student by the department. Each section makes up its own primary list of texts that the faculty members in that section have determined to be important, and all four sections contribute to the theory and methods list. 

Students can petition to have up to 5 texts that are not on the lists set by the faculty added to their individual lists, and faculty can use these student-suggested texts to update the lists as is appropriate. 

Students on the joint track will draw upon both sections' lists to come up with a list that is balanced, with approximately the same number of texts allocated for each language. 

Both lists should be finalized, approved, and shared with all members of the committee at least two weeks before the date of the examination.

Students will, at the end of the second year, begin consulting regularly with faculty members to receive feedback on their lists and to, in consultation with faculty, come up with 3–5 questions that will allow them to thoughtfully analyze and interpret multiple works spanning different time periods. Faculty will choose some or all of these questions to pose to the students during the oral exam, allowing students to have some of the questions they respond to be ones that they have prepared for, and the remainder of the questions will be generated by faculty, and will not be shared with the student in advance. One of the student-generated questions will be selected by the faculty to be the basis of the written component of the examination.  

Faculty will, four weeks ahead of the student's oral examination date, assign one of the 3–5 student-generated questions. The student will write a 10–12 page essay responding to that question that will be due along with the syllabus two weeks before the student's oral examination date. 

As a step toward thinking about the prospectus and the dissertation, students will prepare a syllabus that represents a robust reading program that will serve as a generative starting point for their future research trajectory. If you could take a course that was the perfect fit for launching your dissertation, what would that course be? As with regular course syllabi, the syllabus should comprise a course description in addition to the reading list, which should have some kind of structure to its organization. The syllabus will comprise those texts that the student is most interested in thinking and working with in the next phase of the PhD, but can include texts that will enrich their understanding of those texts (e.g. a student interested in 19th-century French literature might put down a medieval intertext or a 19th-century Brazilian text that they know is exploring similar questions or an essential historical study of the period in question). The texts on the syllabus can be drawn from the faculty-drawn lists as well as include texts from outside those lists. The syllabus will be due along with the essay two weeks before the student’s oral examination date.

The exam can range from 2.5 to 3.5 hours and is structured as follows: 

• Oral examination (1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours): Covers the primary list in its full chronological span and the theory and methodology list. Some questions will be student-generated and the rest will be faculty-generated. It is up to the examination committee to decide in what order it would like to ask questions (e.g. whether the student-generated questions are spread out or posed one right after another), whether to ask questions about the theory and methodology list in isolation or bring theoretical work into conversation with one or more primary texts. The vast majority of questions will be faculty-generated. Questions will cover all time periods, from the premodern to the contemporary. 
• A 10-minute break that can be taken either during the oral examination or taken immediately after the oral examination and before the essay discussion. 

The goal of the examination is to assess the knowledge and familiarity candidates have with the field, their ability to think on their feet, and to go back and forth between concepts and particular traits of the works they have studied. The conversation is divided between English and the Romance language of the field, with the examination committee deciding whether to divide the exam equally between a part in English and a part in the Romance language, or to move back and forth between languages. In any case, each faculty member present should have the opportunity to ask more than one or two questions. The expectations of the section and their particular way of carrying out the examination should be made clear to candidates in advance.

• 15-20 minute discussion of essay: After the oral examination, faculty will give feedback on and engage with the essay. 
• 20-30 minute discussion of syllabus: The examination will culminate in a discussion of the student's dissertation-oriented syllabus, which will serve to help launch the student into the dissertation phase of the PhD. 

The members of the examination committee evaluate and comment on the essays and the oral examination immediately after it has been administered, and the committee communicates its feedback right away to candidates. The scale used is: distinction; high pass; pass; fail. The assessment and grade are recorded in a written report signed by all members of the committee. The graduate coordinator is in charge of filing the report in the candidate's dossier. If the committee judges that the examination does not earn a "pass," the candidate is asked to take the examination again within six months. If the candidate fails a second time, they are not authorized to continue in the Ph.D. program.