Whither Prelims? The preliminary exams qualify a student in major and minor fields. Students draw up reading lists in consultation with an examination committee. Fields have ranged from period and national literature based lists to fairly specialized and idiosyncratic topics.

Reading Lists & Exam Structure Areas of Concentration Beginning in the second year of the program, the student selects one major and two minor fields of concentration that will form the basis of the preliminary examination on a major area of concentration. The student also selects a preliminary examining committee, consisting of a major-field faculty advisor and three other faculty members, by the end of the second year. A summer reading list is due to the Director of Graduate Study before the summer of the student's third year. Preliminary Examination In the spring semester of the third year, the student takes two written examinations, one on the major and one on the two minor areas of concentration. These take the form of two 24-hour take-home papers. The written portion is followed within two weeks by an oral examination on the major as well as the two minor fields. Both the written and the oral examinations are administered by the preliminary examination committee. Recent Field Exam Topics Exam Prospectus from Graduate Student Handbook

Independent Research and Field Definition The process of researching and composing serves as an induction to carrying out independent scholarship, which is later reinforced by the student's need to explain and defend their vision of the fields of knowledge they have constructed. By moving to a 24-hour take-home essay format, students are encouraged to produce a more thorough document that demonstrates mastery while also indicating how their own dissertation research will fit into current scholarly discussions.

Paper Trail Online Students produce a reflexive debriefing which some have posted to an internal online archive. Comments include the following reccurent observations: - Drawing up one's own lists is useful in many respects -- the initial experience of drowning in sources;the process of selecting and shaping texts to define a field; the defense of one's committments and perceived textual connections. - The greater amount of written material produced allows for richer materials on which to base the oral defense. - The more considered writing process has yielded major-field essays that germinate into dissertation topics or sections. This catalyses dissertation writing and shortens time to degree.

Reflection from a faculty member Having given PhD prelim exams for 30 years and at three different universities, I am familiar with a variety of formats. I think the present format of two written exams with orals a week or so week later is one of the best I have experienced. The actual reading is far more capacious than the "Fifty-Book" exam at the University of Pennsylvania and requires the student to prove a far more persuasive generalist's expertise. More important, I think, is the remarkable elegance of the writing and its impressive range. Seldom are we asked to write so widely in such a short space of time: while the activity is pressured, it also gives the student a chance to organize an immense amount of reading. Many people will, of course, need to write a lot in quick space - especially those who procrastinate MLA papers. But the compression can be very enabling - it has, at least, been so in the exams I have read so far. I do not know exactly how many paragraphs from an exam make it into the dissertation, but I do know they are very interesting to read. At the very least, the written exams provide a most useful shared set of texts for the orals - focusing the student's real area of interest while testing for breadth - from which a real conversation can develop.