Re: Senior Oral Examinations in Comparative Literature, 2017

To: All Seniors in Literature

From: Sandra Naddaff

Re: Senior Oral Examinations in Comparative Literature, 2017

At the end of the senior year, an oral examination will be given to test your proficiency in the field of comparative literature. It will be one of several factors determining honors rankings within the department, and will take place during the first few days of reading period in your final semester in Comparative Literature. This year, the exam will take place on Thursday April 27th, 2017.

The senior oral exam is an opportunity for you to engage in a formal but friendly conversation with informed interlocutors about texts and topics of your own choosing. It is also a moment for you to look back on your work and your intellectual development during your time in Comparative Literature. While, like any examination, it requires thoughtful preparation, it is also a unique occasion for meaningful reflection, exchange, and demonstration of your scholarly achievements.

I.  Structure of the Exam

The exam will consist of a senior thesis defense, an intellectual autobiography, and an examination list comprised of two topics, with seven texts in each topic. These texts can be drawn from course work, including sophomore and junior tutorial, and can incorporate work from the junior special field. Short works (such as short poems, essays, or manifestos) may be grouped together as one text. No topic may be the same as that of the Senior Thesis.

Each list of texts for the examination must cohere around a clear topic or theme, and be accompanied by a paragraph (150-200 words) that lucidly describes this theme to the examiners. The paragraph accompanying each list is the student’s opportunity to shape the exam so that it reflects their interests and lays the basis for a reflective and fruitful conversation with the examiners.

The first list should demonstrate the student’s breadth in their knowledge of comparative literature. Texts should be chosen that allow the student to make connections across a plurality of languages, time periods, genres, or theoretical traditions. The second list, which may or may not be related to the first, should showcase the depth of the student’s knowledge in a particular area of literary studies. This list should be tightly focused; works should be drawn from the same tradition, or time period, or school, or (in certain cases) one or two authors.

Lists must be approved by the senior tutor before they can be submitted to the department. Drafts of the lists and the accompanying paragraphs are due to the senior tutor by Wednesday April 5, 2017. Final versions of the lists must be submitted to the department by 4pm on Wednesday April 12, 2017.

II.  Preparing for the Exam

Ideally, the exam will give you the opportunity to reflect on your life in Comparative Literature over the past three years. This means that you should take the time to conceptualize in broad intellectual terms the work that you have done in Comparative Literature: Review the courses that have been central to your work, re-consider your special field work and your junior essay, re-figure your senior thesis in relation to the preceding work (or not). What larger trends do you discern? What interests have been abiding? What works (literary, visual, musical, cultural, historical) have been most important to you? What did you always mean to study/read/write but never did? Build your topics and lists around this kind of question. Your Senior Tutor will help you prepare for the exam, including the composition of the topics and reading lists (which she or he must approve). S/he will help you work through a questionnaire designed to help you compose strong and coherent lists. S/he will also conduct a mock oral with you.

For each of the works on your lists, you should prepare a few basic talking points on which you can draw during your exam: a concise summary of the work (plot, argument, or structure), an explanation of its significance in relation to your chosen topic, and a brief situation of the work in its context of production.

III.  How the Exam Works

Three people will form the examining committee for your oral exam. One of the committee members should be a faculty member, and the other a thesis reader. Ideally, one person on the committee should know the student well and one person will have read the thesis carefully. The committee should be chaired by someone able to provide an objective evaluation of the student’s performance. In the best of all possible worlds, this will be the junior tutor. The Director of Studies will consult with the student’s senior thesis advisor about the composition of the orals committee, and students will be informed of the committee’s membership in advance of the examination.

The first 15 minutes of the examination will be devoted to the thesis “defense.” The student will offer a 5-minute introductory summation, followed by 10 minutes in which she or he will address thesis comments or answer questions from the committee. This is the student’s opportunity to respond to the thesis critique and reflect upon the project in a formal conversation. The next 10 minutes will be devoted to a presentation of the student’s intellectual autobiography. The intellectual biography should serve as an introduction to the two specific topics and texts chosen by the student, and may be a description of the process through which the student developed these interests. It should not be a chronological recitation of courses, since the committee already has access to each senior’s Student Record. The final 30 minutes of the exam will be questions from the committee about the two topics and texts the student has prepared.

IV.  Exam Grades

The exam will be graded on the same scale used to grade the senior thesis: Cum, Magna, Summa, No Honors. This grade will count as 12.5% of the overall degree recommendation. The junior essay grade will count for another 12.5%, the thesis for 30%, and concentration grades for 45%.

Don’t hesitate to talk with your senior thesis advisor/tutor, or with the Director of Undergraduate Studies if you have any questions or concerns. We are all here to help you in whatever way we can.