Requirements
Course Work
CLS graduate students take between 15 and 18 graduate courses of which at least 6 are in the “home department.” All CLS graduate students, regardless of “home department” take the CLS theory sequence (410, 411, 412) in their first year. The general aim of these three courses is to prepare students for an oral examination conducted at the end of the first year (or before the beginning of the second year). The remaining 6-9 courses can be taken in CLS, the “home department,” or any other graduate program. Students admitted through a “Cluster Initiative” have to take 3 courses in the cluster.
Exams
CLS graduate students take a two-part oral theory exam at the end of their first year (or before the beginning of the second year). One part of the examination is directed toward a list of 30 major works of theory from Plato to Foucault; the second, shorter part is directed toward a small group of contemporary literary theorists, whom the student chooses with the help of the DGS in the program. The examination is localized around a small set of “problems” developed by the student.
Reading list for oral exam:
Plato, The Republic (books 3 and 10), The Phaedrus, The Ion
Aristotle, Poetics
Horace, Ars Poetica
Longinus, On the Sublime
Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia
Sidney, "Defense of Poetry"
Diderot, “Paradox of the Actor”
Kant, Critique of Judgment (Introduction, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment)
Schiller, Letters on Aesthetic Education
Hegel, Lectures on Aesthetics (Introduction)
Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (chapters 1-15), "On Truth and Lying in an
Extramoral Sense"
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy
Baudelaire. "The Painter of Modern Life"
Mallarmé. "Crise de vers"
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (chapters 2 and 3), "The Uncanny,"
"On Narcissism," Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (parts 1 and 2)
Benjamin, The Origin of the German Mourning Play, "The Work of Art in the
Age of Its Technical Reproducibility," "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire"
Brecht, "The Modern Theater is an Epic Theater"
Lukács, Theory of the Novel
Jakobson, "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles"
Auerbach, Mimesis (selections); "Figura"
Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism
Bataille, "The Notion of Expenditure"
Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art"
Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel,"
Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society"
Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (selections)
Lacan, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious," "The Mirror Stage,"
"Seminar on the Purloined Letter"
Fanon, Black Skins/White Masks (excerpts), "On National Consciousness" from
The Wretched of the Earth
Barthes, S/Z, “Structural Analysis of Narrative”
Burke, The Rhetoric of Motives (excerpts)
Blanchot, "Literature and the Right to Death"
Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"
Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,” “Plato’s Pharmacy,” &&&
De Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric," “Genesis and Genealogy (Nietzsche),”
"The Resistance to Theory"
Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Discipline and Punish (Introduction)
Said, “The World, etc. &&
Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition
Deleuze, Towards a Minor Literature
Gallagher and Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism
Irigaray, The Sex That is Not One
Butler, Gender Trouble
Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"
Bhabha, The Location of Culture
Ngugi, "The Language of African Literature"
Requirements: two “threads” in which students identify large-scale problems to which a fairly large number of the items below respond. At least two of the preparatory seminars (CLS 410, 411, 412) are geared toward the development of these “threads.”
Students are allowed to “block out” up to 10 items on the list; that is, they will not be examined on them.
All students take an exam in their “home department.” Students need to consult with the DGS of their “home department” about the scope and structure of the exam.
The third exam is in the form of a public presentation of a paper. In their third year students present in a public forum a research paper that contains a distinctly comparative dimension. The papser should thus concern itself with literature in more than one literary-cultural tradition or with the relation of literature to another medium, mode of art, or scholarly discipline.
Language Requirement
CLS graduates students have to show proficiency in two languages other than a native language. A primary foreign language requires two levels of examination (reading and writing; advanced reading in no-longer-spoken languages); this requirement is normally met through graduate level course work. A secondary language requires only a single level of examination; this requirment is normally met through a reading exam.
Prospectus and Dissertation
Before qualifying to write their dissertation, students are expected to develop a dissertation proposal of about 8-10 pages. This proposal serves as the basis for the student’s prospectus, in which both the structure and the general argument of the dissertation are made apparent. The prospectus is usually around 12-15 pages, along with a detailed bibliography and it should be completed during the fall quarter of the student’s fourth year. It is submitted to the graduate committee in CLS for review and approval.
Upon completion of the dissertation students defend their work in a public forum.
Progress Towards the Degree
YEAR 1: Students take 3 courses each quarter, including the required theory sequence (COMP LIT 410, 411, 412). They are encouraged to start taking courses in their home department as well as literature courses in CLS. At the end of the year (or before the beginning of the Fall quarter of the second year) they take the oral exam in theory.
YEAR 2: Students start TA'ing and hence take only 2 courses each quarter, in their home department, CLS, or other graduate programs. They prepare for the home department exam and, if possible, take it by the end of the year.
YEAR 3: Students continue to TA. They take their home department exam no later than the Winter quarter; they also give a public presentation of a comparative paper. By the end of the year (or the before the the beginning of the Fall quarter of the fourth year) they submit a short draft of a prospectus, 8-10 pages, to their advisor.
Students need to qualify by the end of their third year. This means that they completed their course work, have taken the theory exam, the home department exam, delivered their public presentation, and fulfilled the language requirement.
YEAR 4: Students either teach or are on fellowship (internal or external). By the end of the Fall quarter they should expand the prospectus proposal into a 12-15 page prospectus, along with a detailed bibliography. Upon approval of the prospectus by the CLS graduate committee students start writing their dissertation.
YEAR 5: Students either teach or are on fellowship (internal or external). They continue working on their dissertation and defend it.
