DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Admission Requirements

Candidates for this degree are accepted under the general regulations of the School of Graduate Studies provided that they also satisfy the Centre for Comparative Literature’s requirements stated below. In all cases, their programs must be approved by the Centre.

Admission to the Ph.D. program requires a Master’s degree with an average grade of at least A-. Normally, the Master’s degree will be in Comparative Literature; however, students with a master’s degree in a humanities discipline involving literary studies will also be considered. Applicants must demonstrate an ability to do advanced research in two languages other than English.

Program Requirements
Ideally, the Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature should be completed in four years.

1. A student with an M.A. in Comparative Literature, or its equivalent, will be required to take four and a half full-course equivalents, two and half of which must be COL courses.

2. Time-Line : Ph.D. students, in close consultation with the Graduate Coordinator and faculty members, are responsible for defining the scope and approach of their plan of study. Students submit a preliminary statement of purpose at the time of application to the Centre. During the first two years of the program, students complete course work, language requirements, and prepare for the field examination. Course work must be completed within the first two years of the Ph.D. program. Students constitute a field examination/supervisory committee and submit a dissertation proposal no later than the end of the second year of Ph.D. study. The field examination is taken no later than the end of the first term of the third year.

3. Language and Literature Requirements: Candidates for admission to the Ph.D. program, in addition to their work for the M.A., must demonstrate an ability to work at the graduate level in two languages other than English. An adequate reading knowledge of a third language other than English must be demonstrated before taking the field examination. It is possible to substitute for this last requirement qualification in a non-literary discipline, such as History, Anthropology, Political Science, Philosophy, Religion, Women’s Studies, Cinema Studies, etc. What constitutes qualification in any particular discipline is determined and is normally a sequence of two graduate courses emphasizing method and theory. The assumption is that the exposure to another discipline will be of value for the thesis.

4. Students may pursue independent research for credit equivalent to one half-course at the Ph.D. level, under the direction of an advisor approved by the Centre.

5.  All Ph.D. students are required to enrol in COL 4000Y, a credit/non-credit course, in addition to the agreed upon number of full-course equivalents in their individual program. Normally students enrol in COL 4000Y in the Spring term of the second year of the Doctoral program (PhD 2). The course has no specific content, but it recognizes the work done in preparation for the field examination.

6. When the field examination has been completed successfully, the candidate will prepare and defend a dissertation which must be an original and significant contribution to the existing body of knowledge. The Centre for Comparative Literature is not obligated to provide supervision in areas which fall outside the competency, interests or availability of its graduate faculty.

7. The student must be geographically available, visit the campus regularly, and must register as a full-time student. In addition, a full-time student is not permitted to be absent from the University for an extended period or to participate in a program offered by another university without the explicit written permission of the Centre for Comparative Literature.

8. Students’ progress will be assessed at least once a year by the Centre’s Graduate Academic Committee and/or their respective supervisory committees.

9. Failure to satisfy and complete the above requirements in a manner consistent with the Centre’s timeline for completion of the PhD degree will result in loss of good academic standing and guaranteed funding.

FIELD PROPOSALS AND EXAMINATIONS

A field for comparative literary study is a limited and specific topic within a general area of inquiry. Although it includes texts from several languages, it must have a clearly established theoretical and methodological focus and historical as well as literary coherence. A broad area of interest, for example, might be “the Fantastic as a literary mode” while the more restricted Field would be “the Fantastic in 19th century French and German short stories.”

In preparing the Field Proposal, most students “work back” from a clearly defined dissertation topic. The preparation for the Examination can also be used as a way of clarifying students’ ideas and research interests.

The Proposal is developed by the student in consultation with his/her advisory committee . Each student is advised to submit a preliminary statement of the Field by the end of the first year of PhD study and a fully approved Proposal and Reading List by the end of the second year of PhD study (see Submission of the Field Examination Proposal).

Every Ph.D. candidate is required to take an Examination on his or her Proposal and Reading List. The written and oral examinations are held during the first term of the third year of the Doctoral program (PhD 3) following the completion of all Ph.D. course work and language requirements and following registration of the thesis topic.

The Field Examination is conducted by a special Committee appointed by the Centre in consultation with the candidate. The purpose of the Examination is to establish the competence of the student to proceed with the writing of a dissertation. In particular, the examination tests the student’s familiarity with the wider area within which the topic of the dissertation will be chosen.

TIMETABLE

1.COL 4000Y

All PhD students are required to enrol in COL4000Y (Practicum on Research and Bibliography in Comparative Literature), a credit/non credit course, in addition to the agreed upon number of full course equivalents in their individual program. Normally students enrol in COL4000Y in the Spring term of the second year of the Doctoral program (PhD 2). The course has no specific content, but it recognizes the work done in preparation for the Field Examination. Once the Field Examination has been completed, students receive credit for the course and this is entered on the candidate’s transcript as a CR (not a letter-grade).

2 Thesis topics
By May 1st of the second year of the Doctoral Program (Ph.D.2) students must submit a completed Ph.D. thesis proposal form indicating the aims, the general framework and issues, the methodology and the corpus of the doctoral dissertation. The thesis statement must envisage dealing with primary texts normally in three languages and literatures. The proposal form must also contain the names and signatures of the thesis supervisor(s) and members of the advisory committee who will normally also serve as members of the Field Examination committee. The thesis proposal is subject to the approval of the academic administrative officers of the Centre.

The doctoral dissertation is a major research project which should make an original contribution to the discipline. It frequently becomes a young scholar’s first published book and establishes the reputation of an individual in the academic community. The selection of a topic and the completion of the project should therefore be undertaken with the utmost seriousness. Candidates should discuss possible topics with the academic administrative officers of the Centre, faculty members and prospective supervisors.

3. Formation of the Committee for the Field Examination

Preparation for the Field Examination normally starts at the beginning of the second term of the second year of the Doctoral Program (Ph.D.2), when students enrol in COL 4000Y.

It is the responsibility of the student to approach COL core faculty members and adjunct faculty members and invite them to serve as his/her supervisor, co-supervisors or advisory committee members, and to serve on his/her Field Examination. Students should begin by informally consulting potential members whose area(s) of specialization and interest seem closest to the proposed thesis subject, preferably during the first year of the Doctoral Program, or in the Fall term of Ph.D.2 at the latest. However, it is the Director who officially appoints the supervisor (or co-supervisors) and the members of the Field Examination/Advisory Committee, once thesis proposals have been submitted and approved.

The Committee is normally made up of the supervisor (or two co-supervisors), who acts as Chair, another member from the Centre’s core faculty, and one or more advisors from either the Centre, the Adjunct Faculty, the Graduate Faculty at large, or, in certain cases, from the Graduate Faculty of other institutions. The membership of the Field Examination/Advisory Committee must be constituted so as to ensure that all the main theoretical and national literature aspects of the dissertation are covered, and that the candidate will benefit from the advice and guidance of specialists in the pertinent areas. Obviously the Centre cannot offer specialists on every possible topic and theoretical approach, and is therefore not obligated to provide supervision in areas falling outside the competency, interest, or availability of its graduate faculty.

According to the Centre’s policy, COL core faculty members can act as the sole or major supervisor of a doctoral thesis. Associate (Adjunct) faculty members can co-supervise a disertation together with a member of the core faculty.

Once the Committee has been appointed, it becomes the Chair’s responsibility to arrange meetings of the Committee as a whole, to seek agreement on the appropriate number and types of questions, to set the dates for the examinations, etc.

4. Submission of the Field Examination Proposal
The Field Examination Proposal will probably undergo revisions through discussions with the members of the Committee as the work progresses. Students must submit a first version of the Proposal to all the Committee members in the Spring term of the second year of the PhD program (PhD 2) for Examinations in the following Fall. The Proposal should contain:

· a working title;
· a statement delineating the Field of study (see below);
· a brief description of the method to be followed in order to study the Field.
· a bibliography of primary and secondary material.

It is crucial that the candidate and the Examination Committee arrive at an explicit mutual understanding about the scope of the Field and about the kind of questions appropriate for it. After each member has expressed her or his satisfaction with the Proposal, the candidate meets with the Committee as a whole to forestall any possible misunderstandings. The final version of the Proposal (maximum 1500 words) and the bibliography must be approved by the entire Committee at least six weeks before the date of the written part of the Examination. Changes made after this date can only be of a minor nature.

5. The Field Examination:

The Examination has a written and an oral component. The written part consists of two questions designed primarily to test the candidate’s mastery of the Field, i.e. his or her familiarity with the selected literary texts as well as his or her understanding of the theoretical problems inherent in the topic. For example, a student working on figurative language in Rilke, Garcia Lorca and Eluard would be expected not only to know those authors well, but also to be familiar with modern theories of metaphor.

The maximum time allowed for the written part of the Examination is 8 hours. It may be hand-written or, preferably, typed and it normally takes place in an office assigned by the Centre’s administration. The candidate may bring books and notes to the Examination. S/he may go out for lunch and speak with friends but s/he may not enter the library stacks nor discuss the questions themselves with anyone. If the Committee decides that the candidate’s performance on the written part of the Examination is satisfactory, s/he may proceed to the oral which takes place approximately ten days later. The candidate will be notified at least four days before the scheduled date whether the oral will take place or not.

The oral part of the Examination begins with a textual explication by the candidate, no more than thirty minutes in length, of a specific passage or poem from a work in the primary reading list, assigned for preparation at least three days in advance. For the presentation, only notes or a general outline may be used. The rest of the Examination usually consists of questions concerning the candidate’s commentary on the text, the written part of the Examination, and/or other aspects of the Field. The discussion may be directed to a broad factual and historical understanding of the Field and is not necessarily limited to the Proposal’s specific, and consequently narrow, scope. A doctoral candidate working on the narrative techniques of Nabokov, Calvino and Kundera, for example, can reasonably be expected to have an awareness of the seminal importance of the major innovators of modern fiction (Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Proust, etc.) .

During the Examination, the Committee Chair is responsible for procedural matters, i.e. clarifying rules and regulations, calling on the examiners to address questions to the candidate, etc. As a member of the Committee, s/he will of course participate in the examination and discussion, but s/he will not interfere, nor should s/he be expected to interfere, with another member’s line of questioning, no matter how inappropriate a particular line may seem. Most examiners feel that it is the candidate’s knowledge and competence which are being tested and they will object if someone else appears to be speaking for, or instead of, the examinee. Any reservations or disagreement which the Chair, or any other member, may wish to express will normally be left for the deliberations following the Examination, after the candidate has been asked to step out of the room to await the Committee’s judgment.

The Committee decides, by consensus, whether the candidate has shown sufficient mastery of the Field to be allowed to proceed to the writing of the Dissertation. If that is the case, the Centre notifies the School of Graduate Studies that the student has passed the Field Examination. In exceptional cases, the Committee may decide that a candidate’s performance merits a special “with distinction” mention to be entered on his or her record. Such a mention can only be assigned upon the unanimous recommendation of the Committee.

If the Committee decides that the candidate has not shown a sufficient mastery of the Field to proceed to the Dissertation, it may recommend that:

1. the Examination be adjourned. A new Examination, on the same Field Proposal, must then be rescheduled within one year. Or,
2. the Field Proposal be modified and a new Examination be rescheduled within one year.

If the Committee for a student’s second Examination decides that s/he has failed to demonstrate a sufficient mastery of the Field to proceed to the Dissertation stage, his or her candidacy for the degree will be terminated.

6. The Ph.D. Dissertation

Following the completion of the Field Examination, the disertation topic occasionally takes a different orientation, resulting in a change of the advisory committee membership. Both changes (in topic and committee membership) must be referred to the Centre’s academic administrative officers for approval.

It is extremely important that a supervisor and a candidate be intellectually congenial and that there be no serious personality conflicts. Since dissertations in Comparative Literature require the expertise of faculty members from other departments, one of the most important functions of the Chair of the Dissertation Advisory Committee is to genuinely supervise the progress of the thesis in order to ensure that the various components form a cohesive whole and that it will meet the high standards expected of the Centre’s doctoral dissertations. S/he must also mediate between the various members of the Advisory Committee and s/he must accept the responsibility for guiding the candidate through all the related administrative steps (i.e. arrange meetings of the committee, decide to request the setting of the Final Oral Examination, etc.). The role of the central supervisor is thus much greater than that of the other members of the Advisory Committee.
At regular intervals after the first meeting (at least once per year), the Advisory Committee should meet with the student as a committee to consider the progress of the student in the program since the last meeting. The specific format of the meeting should be designed to suit the needs of the student and department best. It will be appropriate for the student to make formal oral and written reports to the Committee giving details of progress to date, work remaining, and timetable for completion. The student could then defend his/her report very much as would be done in the final oral examination. After the report, the progress and level of achievement of the student should first be discussed by the members of the Advisory Committee in the absence of the student and recorded on a standard evaluation form for the record. The written comments must be explicit concerning whether research progress and the development of the student as a scholar are appropriate for the current stage of the student’s program. The Committee should then discuss its report with the student. The student should be given an opportunity to respond to all comments of the Committee, and should be encouraged to include his/her comments in the report. The chair and the student should sign the final report, and a copy should be placed in the student’s file with another copy to the student. The approximate date of the next meeting should be established before the meeting adjourns. Advisory Committee meetings are not intended to take the place of meetings between the student and supervisor which should occur with much greater frequency than the Advisory Committee Meeting.

Upon the advice of the supervisor and of the Advisory Committee, the Centre’s administrative officers will recommend that the thesis proceed to the Final Oral Examination for the defence. At this point, candidates will be asked to provide, at their own expense, at least 5 copies of their dissertation. These will then be distributed to the members of the Oral Examination Committee. (See SGS Calendar concerning the rules and procedures of this Examination.)

If and when the candidate passes the Final Oral Examination, the School of Graduate Studies will recommend to the University that the Ph.D. degree be awarded.