Requirements

Students receiving the MA from this department who wish to continue toward the PhD need not make separate application through the School of Graduate Studies, but there is a formal application process in the department. MA students wishing to continue for the PhD may apply by letter to the Graduate Director when they have completed 18 hours of coursework and have no outstanding incompletes. Early admission to the PhD program is conditional until completion of the MA degree. The Graduate Committee will consider grades and course evaluations in its decision; it may decide to 1) grant early admission or 2) postpone until completion of the MA; it will communicate its decision in writing. A student denied admission may request a review upon presentation of additional evidence (consult with the Graduate Director).

1. Residency Requirement

The University requires each PhD student to spend a substantial amount of time "in residence," which is defined as follows: continuous registration in each regular semester for at least six consecutive semesters (excluding summers), or six semesters in two consecutive calendar years (i.e., including summers), at any time from matriculation until all degree requirements are completed. The requirement may be fulfilled with course work toward the MA or the PhD or with ENGL 701 (dissertation credit).

2. Hours and Courses

The doctoral program requires 24 hours of course work beyond the MA. Students must take a minimum of FOUR 500 level seminars (12 credits). ENGL 590 (Special Reading or Research-Independent Study) does NOT count toward this 12 credit minimum. A maximum of six hours of graduate work from another institution or a related department at CWRU may be counted toward the PhD on application to the Director of Graduate Studies; such courses will count toward the coursework requirements for the degree, but not toward the grade point average standards for Advancement to Candidacy.

All PhD Students must take English 510 (Research and Methods) and either English 487, Introduction to Critical Theory, or an advanced course in critical theory and enroll in the Preprofessional Workshops. All PhD students must also take English 400 (Teaching Composition) if they have not taken an equivalent course for the MA.

3. Advisory Committee

When a student has satisfactorily completed 12 hours of coursework toward the PhD(normally at the end of the second semester), the Director of Graduate Studies in consultation with the student will appoint a three-person advisory committee (a primary adviser and two other faculty members) to guide the student's progress toward the PhD qualifying exam. The committee's duties will include advising the student in

• Selection of remaining coursework;
• Selection of areas of focus;
• Preparation of a book list (50-75 works) in the student's areas of concentration;
• Preparation of questions for the written component of the qualifying exam.


4. English PhD Foreign Language Competency Requirement

Prior to advancement to candidacy, all PhD students must demonstrate competency in one foreign language in one of the following ways:

• Earn a grade of A or B in a 300-level CWRU foreign language course that requires the student to show competence in reading the language. Such courses ordinarily will not count toward the 24-credit doctoral course requirement. However, the department will allow 3 credits of tuition waivers to be addressed to the Foreign Language Competency Requirement.
• Pass an examination comprised of passages of an appropriate level for translation and/or summary of literature or criticism in the language, designed and administered by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (or Classics, when needed for the student's field), to be scheduled once in each semester. Students desiring this option must register with the Director of Graduate Studies during the registration period for the term in which the examination is desired. Students who fail the examination twice must use option 1.

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures Guidelines for the Foreign Language Reading Exam

1. The exam will be administered once during the Fall semester and once during the Spring Semester.
2. The exams for all languages will be scheduled and administered by the Department (DMLL) the same day, during the same session.
3. The exam will last 2 hours.
4. There will only be one exam in each language.
5. The exam is not discipline or period specific; it is devised to test reading ability in the humanities in general.
6. Each language section will design the exam to test reading proficiency. Reading proficiency is interpreted as the proficiency required in a 300-level culture or literature course in the language.
7. The exam will consist of 8-12 questions about a written text that is 10-20 pages long.
8. Questions will direct students to specific pages only when essential for clarity.
9. Students may answer the questions in English.
10. In some cases the exam may include a translation component.
11. Students may bring and use one dictionary.
12. Students will receive a PASS/ NO PASS grade.
13. Departments should inform their students of these guidelines before the exam is given. They should also inform the students of the Department’s rationale behind the exam requirement.
14. Questions should be directed to the Chair of DMLL.


By the completion of the first 12 credit hours of PhD course work, students should inform the Graduate Director of how and when they plan to fulfill the foreign language requirement. Students must complete the language requirement within one semester after the conclusion of course work in order to be advanced to candidacy. The progress of any student who fails to establish competency within one semester after the completion of coursework will be reviewed by the faculty members of the Graduate Committee to ascertain whether the student may continue in the program. Ordinarily, failure to advance to candidacy in a timely way means that the student must leave the program.

Bilingual students or students whose native language is not English may petition the Graduate Committee to waive the foreign language requirement.

5. Advancing to Candidacy

When students have completed 24 credits of course work beyond the MA and fulfilled the foreign language requirement, they must apply for formal advancement to PhD candidacy. Eligibility is based on grades earned at CWRU. Students with more A's than B's are advanced to candidacy; students with more B's than A's are not advanced to candidacy. A tie or other anomalies will be referred to the Graduate Committee of the English Department for final decision. Students not advanced to candidacy are separated.

The department reports its decisions on formal advancement to the Dean of Graduate Studies. Upon being advanced, students have five years to complete all requirements for the PhD During this period they must register for at least eighteen hours of ENGL 701 (Dissertation), taking at least three credit hours per term until the eighteen are complete. According to current Graduate School regulations, this five-year time period begins with early registration in 701 while the student is preparing for the Qualifying Examination. (Consult with the Graduate Director for specific limitations.) Pre-candidacy 701s may only be taken concurrent with coursework and once embarked upon must be taken continuously until student advances to candidacy (CWRU General Bulletin, 93). Students may NOT enroll for 9 hours of 701 in a semester until advanced to candidacy.

6. Taking the Qualifying Exam

No later than one semester after students have been advanced to candidacy, in cooperation with their Advisory Committee, and subject to the Committee's approval, the student will:

• Decide on either two or three areas of concentration, one of which must be a literary area, from broad disciplinary fields such as those recognized in the MLA divisions and discussion groups, and represented in current department expertise. The Advisory Committee will have final approval of these areas and will take into account such issues as contiguity, relevance, and relation to possible dissertation interests.
• Prepare a list of 50-75 primary and secondary sources in these focus areas. The list may not be more than 75 works.
• No later than two semesters after advancing to candidacy, the student will prepare four questions based on the readings on the approved book list and schedule the written exam, which must take place within a calendar year of advancement. The questions should be designed to allow the student to demonstrate his or her knowledge of the field or focus area, drawing upon both primary and secondary texts from the list.

The usual progress for a PhD student receiving financial support from the department should follow the chart below. Because the department can usually only obligate itself to a maximum of five years of funding for each PhD student receiving support, it is essential for students to keep to this schedule in order to have enough funding left to write the dissertation.

PhD (usual) Progress Timetable:

	Fall Semester	Spring Semester
Year 1	2 courses	2 courses
Year 2	2 courses Select Research Director and committee	2 courses Last semester to take language exam Get reading lists approved Advancement to candidacy
Year 3	Read for PhD exam	Take written exam before October 30, OR Take written exam before March 25, ideally in Jan. or Feb. Get prospectus approved before end of semester.
Year 4	Write dissertation	Write dissertation
Year 5	Write dissertation	Write dissertation Finish and defend dissertation

All students taking the exam during the fall semester should complete the oral section of the comprehensive exam by November 15. Those taking the exam in the spring semester should complete the oral section by April 10. The orals follow the written exam by ten days to two weeks; therefore students should schedule their written exams before Oct. 30 in the fall and before March 25 in the spring.

The chair of the exam committee (the Research Director, in University parlance) will coordinate all aspects of the exam for the other committee members. The candidate should draft questions at least six weeks before the scheduled date of the exam so that each committee member has a chance to read and approve the questions. The candidate should first present the proposed questions to the committee chair for suggestions and approval. The revised questions should then be circulated by the student to other committee members for their revision and approval. If the chair feels it is necessary, the committee may meet as a whole to discuss, edit, and revise the questions. Any conflicts should be resolved by the committee chair, or, if necessary, in a meeting of the committee without the candidate. It is important for both the student and the chair to make sure that the committee has a common understanding of the language of the questions. Once approved, the questions may not be altered. The chair of the exam committee must submit the approved questions, along with the final approved lists, to the DGS to be put in the student’s file.

Preparation for the exam and composition of the exam answers:

The exam must represent the student’s own writing and may not include any written material previously submitted for a seminar or other coursework.

While students may discuss exam questions and, in very general terms, possible strategies for composing answers with faculty members before the exam, they may not submit drafts of their exam answers to faculty before the exam.

The committee will select two of the four questions submitted for the exam. Candidates may discuss the slate of four revised questions with the chair but are never given advance sign about which two will be selected.

On the day of the exam the student will be given the two questions chosen by the Advisory Committee and will have a maximum of seventy-two (72) hours to write substantial responses in the form of two well-organized and carefully-argued essays, one in response to each question. The exam answers must be submitted both to the committee members and to Freddy by the deadline. Freddy must have both a hard copy and an electronic copy. The committee may decide in what form they want to receive the written exam, but it is the student’s responsibility to get the exam to them.


Within one week of completion of the written exam, the Advisory Committee, through its chair, should report to the candidate whether that portion has been passed or failed. The committee members should send their comments to the committee chair (not directly to the student). The committee chair should then write up a report for the student and the student’s file that puts together the various responses he or she has received from the committee members. The committee chair should try to resolve any contradictions in advice among the committee members before responding to the student. The report should give the student a sense of the exam’s strengths as well as any weak points that might need to be worked on for the oral. The report may be communicated to the student by e-mail (with a copy to the DGS), but the committee chair should also meet with the student in person to go over the report and to provide general suggestions for the oral. Committee members will not, however, tell the student specific questions that will be asked in the oral. The oral exam, which usually takes place ten days to two weeks after the candidate has passed the written exam, will address any questions that arise from the written exam, and may range to any work on the student’s reading list.

After the oral exam, the committee chair should write up a brief report about the exam for the student’s file, describing the student’s performance. This report may either be submitted separately to the DGS or added to the previous report on the written exam and submitted as one document. In either case, a copy of the report goes in the student’s file.

After being notified of the results of both parts of the exam, the DGS is responsible for filing the reports and sending any paperwork to Grad Studies.


Failure on the Written Qualifying Exam

Students who fail either question of the written exam must retake that part. They are given a grade of U in English 701 or Exam 700 for that semester; they must ordinarily retake the failed section(s) of the exam the following semester and receive a passing grade. The exam may be retaken during summer semester only at the discretion of the chair of the exam committee and if all members agree. The grade of U remains on the student's transcript. On the retake, the Advisory Committee may ask for two new questions from the student for each section failed, if so desired. Aside from this possibility, guidelines above for the first attempt apply.

In the event of failure the student meets with the committee chair as soon as possible. In this meeting the Research Director will summarize the committee members' responses on the exam. After this meeting, the chair will write a one-page report evaluating the exam; this becomes the official grade report and is placed in the student's file. The student may request to meet with the entire committee or may choose to meet with individual committee members to discuss the exam and preparation for the retake.

Failure on the Oral Qualifying Exam

A student who passes the written exam the first time but fails the oral will have a grade of U in English 701 or Exam 700 recorded for that semester and will retake the oral early in the following semester. As in the case of a failed written exam, the Research Director writes a summary report on the performance for the student's file. If, after one failure on the written exam, the oral exam results in a failure, a second oral exam must be scheduled for the same semester in order for the student to receive a grade of S in English 701 or Exam 700 for that term. Failure a second time on either the written exam or the oral exam will result in separation from the program.

Advice for the Written Qualifying Exam

The PhD qualifying exam is designed to test your knowledge of your chosen fields or focus areas. While you should have a thorough knowledge of the individual works on your list, you should also be able to situate them in the context of wider critical debates and relevant theoretical issues in your area of concentration. It is expected that each student will be familiar with some background reading of a general critical, theoretical, or scholarly nature that will help to provide the student with knowledge of current debates and scholarship in the chosen focus areas.

The function of the exam is not simply to test your knowledge of isolated texts from your list, but rather to test your ability to provide a focused, substantive, and intelligent discussion of those texts in relation to the wider field(s) that they have been chosen to represent. It is thus important to design your questions and answers in such a way as to highlight your own readings of the chosen texts in relation to significant issues in the contemporary critical discourse of the field. An exam which merely summarizes the critics without providing any original argument or readings, or an exam which fails to situate readings of the primary texts in a wider critical and theoretical context, will not provide an adequate demonstration of your ability to synthesize the primary and secondary materials.

7. The Dissertation Committee

The composition of the dissertation committee is usually, though not always, the same as that of the qualifying exam committee. Students should confer with the Director of Graduate Studies early in this process. The following regulations of the School of Graduate Studies must be observed in forming the dissertation committee.

• The committee consists of at least four members, of which the chair and two members must be from the candidate's home department.
• The fourth member must be from another department within Case Western Reserve University. For English Dept. dissertations, this member has typically come from Modern Languages, History, American Studies, Religion, Philosophy, etc. The practice of appointing fourth readers from other universities is no longer followed. See below for information on readers from other universities.
• Emeritus faculty of CWRU may serve as directors or faculty as long as they have not left the university.
• Faculty who have left CWRU may serve as chairs or readers for 18 months after the date of their last formal employment.
• Faculty at other universities with appropriate credentials may only serve as additional readers, i.e. fifth readers.


8. The Prospectus

Ordinarily within one semester after passing the qualifying examination, the student will select a dissertation committee and submit a dissertation prospectus. The prospectus must be approved within one year of passage of the comprehensive exams.

The prospectus should include:

• A clear statement of the student's thesis, theoretical approach, and a summary of anticipated evidence;
• A discussion of the likely contribution of the study; indicating what gaps in our knowledge it will fill.
• An outline/summary of proposed chapters or sections;
• A bibliography.

The prospectus must be reviewed by all of the departmental members of the Dissertation Committee and discussed at a meeting with the student. Once the dissertation director has approved the prospectus, it is filed in the student's permanent file, circulated to all faculty in the department, and posted on the Graduate Bulletin Board (across from Guilford 201). Circulation of the prospectus is required and is the student's responsibility.

9. The Dissertation

Students must register for a minimum of eighteen hours of dissertation credit (ENGL 701) during dissertation writing; if the dissertation is not complete by the time this requirement is fulfilled, they will then normally register for one credit hour per semester. Students must complete all requirements for the PhD, including the dissertation, within five years of the semester in which they are advanced to PhD candidacy or in which they begin 701 registration.

Regulations concerning dissertation credit and fees, terminal dates for degrees, and possible extensions are published separately by the Graduate School.

In addition to more traditional kinds of dissertations, the department will accept the following:

• A part of a larger project, provided that the part submitted is substantial and coherent in itself;
• A collection of related essays;
• Edited translations, scholarly editorial projects, and transcripts of documents—with quality and significance, not length, as criteria;
• The Department requires that students follow the documentation procedures of the current MLA Style Manual. Regulations concerning the format of the dissertation and other procedures must be obtained from the Office of Graduate Studies.
• The completed dissertation is submitted to the departmental committee plus one faculty member from outside the Department. The student defends the dissertation in a formal two-hour oral examination before the committee.

Readers of the dissertation will file with the Graduate School reports including comments on style, originality, and scope; on the quality and value of the argument; and on the publishability of the material. Copies of the reports will be given to the candidate.

A student must be registered for ENGL 701 during the semester in which the final oral examination is taken.

Contact with the Dissertation Committee

The doctoral student is expected to arrange meetings and maintain periodic contact with each committee member. A meeting of the full committee for the purpose of assessing the student's progress should occur at least once a year until the completion of the dissertation, according to the CWRU General Bulletin.

The Oral Defense

An oral defense is required. All committee members must be physically present for all of it. Only one dissent of the four members is permitted for the dissertation to receive a pass. Four faculty are committee members; one must have a primary appointment in another department at CWRU. Faculty at other universities are not permitted to be among the four regular committee members, but can be added as fifth readers. The candidate must schedule the defense with the School of Graduate Studies not later than three weeks ahead of time. Committee members must receive the complete dissertation to read at least 10 working days before the oral defense. It is not advisable to press these deadlines. Committee members should be kept informed as to the progress on the dissertation throughout its writing.

Time Limits

All requirements for the PhD must be finished within five consecutive calendar years from the date of the first English 701 taken. Candidates may petition for a one year extension on the recommendation of the dissertation advisor and with the approval of the Chair or Graduate Director and the Dean of Graduate Studies. If an extension is granted, the candidate must register for 3 hours of 701 each term. The English Department does not award tuition credits for this purpose.

Grace Period for Submission of Dissertation

If the oral defense is passed, but the dissertation has corrections or required changes, the candidate may notify the School of Graduate Studies in writing of "a desire to use the grace period." This is granted only once: it is a one month extension granted from the date of commencement for that semester. The degree is then awarded the next semester, but without additional registration.

Transfer Credit

A maximum of six semester hours of transfer credit for graduate-level courses will be accepted from another institution, subject to approval by the Department and the Dean of Graduate Studies. Such courses must have been taken within five years of matriculation at Case Western Reserve University and passed with grades of B or better.

For further information, consult:

Office of Graduate Studies
6th Floor Nord Hall
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland OH 44106-4390

or

Director of Graduate Studies in English
Guilford House
Case Western ReserveUniversity
Cleveland, OH 44106-7117

Email requests should be sent to Prof. Christopher Flint, Director of Graduate Studies in English

View Graduate Handbook

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