50-Book Exam

On the day before the first day of classes, second-year Ph.D. students take the 50-Book Exam.

The 50-Book Exam requires students to demonstrate knowledge of a group of texts that is diverse in terms of historical period; generic and formal categories; national and geographic origin; and racial, gendered, and sexual identifications. Students work with a committee of three faculty members to create a list of 50 works; at least 30 of which should be from outside the student’s designated area of specialization. As this is a generalist exam aimed at building broad coverage of well-known literary, theoretical, and cinematic works, at least 35 of the 50 works on the list must come from the department’s 50-Book List. At least 30 of the 50 works should be outside of the student’s designated area of specialization.

The student will organize the selected 50 works into three broad rubrics according to Genre; Historical Period; and Theme or Theory. Each topic should provide a framework to structure the reading with works that speak to one another. Each of the three rubrics should include one or two critical, theoretical, or historical works (books, articles, and other media). All or most of the works from the period chosen by the student should be included in the Historical Period list (i.e., not in the Genre or Theme/Theory lists) to prevent that period's overrepresentation in the exam as a whole; no more than 20 works from that period should appear on the full list. The final topics and lists must be approved by the student’s 50-Book committee, with feedback from the GEC.

Three rubrics: 

• Genre: At every stage of its history, literary studies has asked whether works of literature can and should be classified into distinct kinds, types, and forms. This rubric is an opportunity for students to enter that conversation by considering a recognizable genre or mode in the context of its development across different periods, places, languages, and/ or cultures. Topics may as broadly framed as drama, epic, romance, novel, or poetry. They may also be more specific, such as tragedy, comedy, lyric, pastoral, autobiography, melodrama, elegy, travel writing, naturalism, noir, the gothic, science fiction, and utopia. In every case, the rubric should be developed in a way that will allow the examinee to address the chosen topic in specific and general ways, paying attention to the formal character of the genre or mode at a particular place and time and to the changes that it undergoes as it evolves. 

• Historical Period: This framework invites students to explore the contours of a major literary-historical period, to understand how literary works are embedded in historical contexts. The period may be designated by literary historiography (seventeenth century, turn of the twentieth century), or literary movements (age of romanticism, modernism). The list of reading for this framework should include a range of genres and authors, and when useful, a transatlantic or transnational perspective. The rubrics should follow recognized periods, though these may be as broad as a long century or as narrow as several decades.

• Theme or Theory: This is the broadest category with the most leeway for the development of a specific interest. The topic should be focused enough to be easily understood and capacious enough to include a variety of texts across time periods, genres, and national traditions. Some thematic suggestions: literature and law, nature, representation of labor, war and literature, sexuality, gender, coming of age, slavery, figures of monstrosity, the body in pain, memory, empire. A theoretical concept should provide an optic or set of questions through which to interpret a variety of texts. A student may draw on notions that have been defined --or refined-- by specific thinkers, or a topic addressed by a variety of theorists to be used as theoretical or thematic handles. One might select a specific critical movement e.g. Marxism, psychoanalysis, queer theory--or a concept: e.g. mimesis, hegemony, realism, pragmatism, power, racialization, the performative, subjectivity, orientalism, mourning, epistemology of the closet, bio-power, desire, the uncanny.

Students prepare for the exam in the summer following their first year. On the Monday before fall classes begin, students take a two-hour oral exam in which they discuss the works on their list in response to their exam committee’s questions. The committee provides detailed feedback on the student’s performance at the end of the exam and in a written report shared with the Grad Chair. The Grad Chair then meets with the student at the beginning of the fall semester to make a plan for addressing the feedback.

Eligibility: All students must resolve any incompletes by June 1st to take the 50-Book Exam.

Should a student fail the 50-Book Exam, they are allowed to retake the exam with a new committee assigned by the GEC. The second exam must be scheduled no later than the end of the fall semester. The student will be considered not in good academic standing until they have passed their 50-Book Exam.