Doctor's degree Comparative Literature - Harvard University

Doctor's degree Comparative Literature from Harvard University is a Campus Ph.D Literature degree that prepares you for a Liberal Arts career. The Department of Comparative Literature undertakes to promote and facilitate studies in the history, theory, and criticism of literature extending beyond the limits set by national and linguistic boundaries. The work of the department is designed to provide for the needs of students who wish to pursue a unified program of study involving literature in two languages (for the AM) or more than two (for the PhD). Students will take most of their courses in the departments of their elected literary fields, whose offerings those of this department are designed to supplement. Courses in other disciplines may be included when appropriate in individual programs. Every member of the department also participates in one of the other departments of language and literature , and members of those departments are regularly or occasionally engaged in the work of this department, and generally available upon request for consultation by its students. The members of the faculty listed as cooperating in Comp. Lit. 399 will usually be available for direction of dissertations and other counseling of students in this department; members of literary departments not there listed may also be willing to engage themselves for such assistance upon request. All students in the department are required to take the proseminar (Comp. Lit. 299ar) during their first year of residence; candidates for the doctorate are required also to take at least one further course in theory and method, critical, historical, or linguistic. During the first two years of graduate study, the prospective candidate for the doctorate in comparative literature is expected to fulfill the residence requirements by taking courses offered in this and other departments of the University (thus also discharging the requirements for the master's degree ), and to prepare, by both general and specialized studies, for the Common Essay and reading check at the beginning of the third year. After passing these examinations, candidates may continue to engage in seminars and attend courses, but their primary task thenceforth will be the completion of a dissertation. The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD): The number of required courses for the PhD in comparative literature is 16, of which only two may be reading courses; at least 14 are to be letter-graded courses (i.e., not reading courses). Candidates are required to have at least as many 200-level courses as 100-level courses, and only in rare exceptions will courses below the 100-level be allowed to count toward the degree . Candidates may arrange to produce extra work, often in the form of longer papers, so as to receive from the department 200-level credit for courses that are listed at the 100-level in the Courses of Instruction. Such arrangements should be made early in the term when the course is being taken, because they must be approved by the course instructor and the director of graduate studies or the chair. Each candidate will normally be expected to balance coursework in the following manner: four courses in the Department of Comparative Literature ; three in a first literature ; two in a second literature ; and two in a third literature . Other coursework may include relevant courses in any of the above literatures; in another literature ; in philosophy, anthropology, religion, linguistics, art, economics, and so forth. Any question regarding the nature of courses taken should be resolved with advisors before submission of study cards. If candidates or advisors have questions, they should pose them to the chair, DGS, or curriculum committee. Each degree candidate is expected to fulfill the 16-course requirement by including a significant dimension of comparative historical study. This dimension can be met by taking a minimum of three courses with a chronological emphasis or focus different from the candidate's primary chronological focus. It is important that these three courses be distinctly different from the main period in the candidate's program. Thus a candidate concentrating upon 20th-century modernism would not be able to fulfill this requirement with three courses in the 19th century, nor would a candidate specializing in neoclassicism be able to claim satisfactory completion on the basis of three courses in the Renaissance. Many candidates will normally declare a chronological focus. However, candidates may request a focus that covers a genre or field of study if it is followed throughout a very broad historical range, e.g., tragedy or lyric poetry in languages ancient and modern. In addition, all candidates will be welcome to identify a special interest in a particular literary form (such as drama, lyric, narrative, and the like) or a topic of substantial scope in literary theory (poetics, literature in its social context, the relation between literature and one of the other arts, and so forth). Whatever choice the candidate makes, the decision must be communicated to the chair by April 1 during the first year of study. 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