Required of all M.A. students, the Comprehensive Exam measures the comprehensiveness of your knowledge and understanding of literature across a range of literary movements, historical moments, and critical schools.
As of Spring 2021, there are two formats for the exam. The list based exam, available for students admitted before 2020, and the field essay format, introduced in Spring of 2021.
Below you will find information on both style exams.
The list exam consists of three questions about the texts on your Reading List. In each of the three categories you will choose one of two questions to answer.
Exam questions are broad in nature, and not provided to students in advance. The exam is closed-book, but you may bring with you three 3x5 index cards containing any information you think will help. You will have four hours to complete the exam.
You should think about your Reading List as you progress through the first year of coursework and plan to take your comprehensive exam after you have completed 18 credits (6 courses).
Students who plan to write an M.A. thesis should take the exam in the semester after the first year of coursework in order to allow time for the initial work on the thesis.
Comprehensive Exams (list based) are offered two times per year. You will need to submit your Reading List to the M.A. Coordinator by the dates listed below. Any subsequent changes to your Reading List must be approved by the M.A. Coordinator.
To take exam on this date submit Reading List by
February (2nd Saturday) October 15
September (2nd Saturday) April 15
Select one topic from each of these three categories:
Literary and aesthetic movements,
Social and cultural developments, and
Critical and theoretical schools.
For each topic selected, compile a list of six texts that includes four primary and two secondary texts so that your lists altogether contain EIGHTEEN different texts. You will be using three different approaches to analysis in these three essays, as per the instructions at the start of each essay. Choose a diverse range of topics to assist you in pursuing unique analysis in each essay.
You may propose movements, developments, or schools that do not appear on this list, but justify your choices with a paragraph of explanation for each. Topics selected from the existing lists do not require such justification.
Your topics and your lists of texts must be approved by the Graduate Committee before you will be permitted to take the exam.
Literary and aesthetic movements: Each item in this list designates a group of literary writers who shared a common purpose and compositional approach in their writing. When writing this essay, you should analyze how specific rhetorical, compositional, and stylistic strategies demonstrate the collective artistic beliefs and values of this group of writers.
Social and cultural developments: Each item in this list designates a group of literary texts whose authors were motivated by a common set of historical, social, and cultural circumstances. When writing this essay, you should analyze how specific historical contexts demonstrate the social relevance and cultural significance of your chosen texts.
Critical and theoretical schools: Each item in this list designates a body of critical thought or theoretical approach to literature. When writing this essay, you should analyze how this school’s critical frameworks and theoretical approaches contribute useful insights into the formal, social, historical, rhetorical, and/or compositional elements of specific literary texts.
You will have three opportunities to schedule and take the MA comprehensive exam.
Failure to attend an exam for which you signed up (by submitting your reading list to the MA coordinator and indicating the relevant exam date) will count as a failed attempt. If you find that you will be unable to attend an exam, you may cancel up to 24 hours in advance by contacting the MA coordinator. In the case of cancellation, you will not have forfeited one of your three opportunities to take the exam.
If you do not pass the exam on your first attempt, you are strongly advised to consult with the MA coordinator about your reading list and strategies for preparation well in advance of the next exam date. Please consult our official policy on students’ participation in the comprehensive exam:
Any student entering the program prior to Fall 2018 may follow the “old version” (choosing six texts, four primary and two secondary, from each of three categories: British Literature, American Literature, and World Literature or Critical Theory) OR the “new version” (identifying a literary/aesthetic movement, a social/cultural development, and a critical/theoretical school and then choosing six texts, four primary and two secondary, from each) of the exam.
Students entering the program in Fall 2018 or later must follow the new version.
Students will have the option to sit the exam up to three times in total, no matter which version they choose. Even if the exam is failed all three times, the student must have completed the entire exam and received the committee’s grades and comments each time.
After the second failure of the exam (though we also recommend it after the first), the student MUST arrange to meet a graduate faculty member in the English Department for no fewer than six tutoring sessions in order to prepare for the next exam. Any faculty member with current graduate faculty status may tutor a student who is preparing for the exam. The faculty member should send a message to the MA Coordinator when all tutoring sessions are complete.
If the student fails the exam three times, s/he will be offered a final option. The student will revise 30 pages of work previously submitted for graduate courses, ideally two seminar-length papers that explore common themes, rely upon the same theoretical framework, and/or investigate the same historical or literary period. Revision in this case means restructuring the original argument, incorporating additional secondary sources, and expanding the paper’s readings and analyses. After completing these revisions to the Graduate Committee’s satisfaction, the student will submit this work in portfolio form, along with a cover statement of 3-5 pages that explains the overall themes and arguments that the work traces, to both the MA Coordinator and the Graduate Committee.
Each section of the exam has two questions, of which you must choose to write about one.
Discuss the ideas of migration/movement and nationalism in world literature. Are these contrasting or opposing ideas? Does the literature of colonizer (or former colonizer) countries treat these ideas differently than the literature of colonized (or formerly colonized) countries?
Feminism is an overlapping term that covers many different groups, ideologies, and ways of approaching texts. Discuss. Provide an outline of each theorist’s critical model, and then discuss in very specific ways how women figure in this model. If the theorist does not address questions of gender, explain whether or not you think this might be a shortcoming of the model.
Rather than studying specifically assigned texts, you are responsible for assembling your own Reading List from the master list, which will be provided to you or accessible on our department website. To ensure coherence, you will select your texts under the advisement of the Graduate Committee. The texts should not be a random collection of books you have read. You should be able to devise a logical narrative linking the texts in each section. Your final Reading List must be approved by the M.A. Coordinator before you take the Comprehensive Exam.
Beginning in the Spring 2021 semester, the English M.A. program will require students to complete a two-essay comprehensive exam as a prerequisite for completing the degree.
Spring of second year
Spring of second year
Summer after second year or fall of third year
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