Department of English
P.O. Box 413
UW-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201

Curtin Hall 439
3243 N. Downer Ave.
Phone: 414-229-4511
Fax: 414-229-2643
E-mail: connieb@uwm.edu

Graduate Handbook - Preliminary Examination

The Preliminary Exam intensely explores a student's chosen field of study. It is intended to help the student prepare to write the dissertation by establishing breadth in the student's areas of academic interest and by enhancing the student's ability to carry on a critical, scholarly dialogue. For Plan C students, the Preliminary Exam provides a literary and critical foundation for the creative dissertation and for teaching literature and creative writing. The Preliminary Exam has a written and an oral component.

Students take the Preliminary Exam after completing all doctoral course work or with no more than three credits of doctoral course work remaining. Students cannot take the exam if they have any incomplete or unreported grades or a GPA less than 3.0. Students must also have completed a Program of Study and should have satisfied the second language requirement.

Students must finish the Preliminary Examination within one semester after all course work is completed, excluding the summer session. Students may receive a one-semester extension for additional course work from the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies.

Students who fail the exam may retake it once. Students who fail a second time are recommended for dismissal from the doctoral program. Students who entered the doctoral program during fall 2000 or thereafter must successfully complete the preliminary exam within five years of initial enrollment.

Planning for the Preliminary Exam

When students near the end of their doctoral course work (within 3-6 credits), they should establish a Preliminary Examination Committee. The committee consists of the student's advisor and two other graduate faculty members that the student and advisor choose. The Associate Chair for Graduate Studies must approve the committee. For approval of the Preliminary Examination committee, the student will complete the Declaration of Committee form available from the Graduate Studies Office in Curtin Hall 433. The Associate Chair will inform the student if a Committee member is not authorized to be on student exam committees. All Committee members must also be approved by the Graduate School to be on student committees. Inclusion of the names of at least 3 committee members on a properly filed 'Application for Doctoral Preliminary Examination' form constitutes a request for approval by the Graduate School.

Prior to the beginning of the semester in which they plan to take the exam, students must file an Application for the Doctoral Preliminary Examination form with the Graduate School. Students should check with the Graduate School Doctoral Specialist for applicable filing deadlines.

Students who have completed all doctoral course requirements, and have had a Preliminary Exam application approved by the Graduate School, may enroll for one credit of English 990 during the semester they prepare for the preliminary exam. Students can take English 990 to prepare for the preliminary exam only once.
In addition to filing an Application for the Doctoral Preliminary Examination, students with TA, PA or RA appointments must also file a Graduate Assistant Justification form with the Graduate School before the semester begins in order to keep their full-time student status.

Preliminary Exam Format and Procedure

At the present time, doctoral students have two options regarding the preliminary examination: a "rationale format" and a "proposal format." Both require students to prepare to be examined on the same number of scholarly items, and both follow the same procedures for the written and oral exam (e.g., duration of exam, page length). There are two main differences between the rationale and proposal formats: 1) the kind of materials students prepare and submit for approval and 2) the approval process. Doctoral students may elect either format. You are encouraged to consult your advisor, examination committee, and plan coordinator in selecting the format you will follow.

Preliminary Exam: Rationale Format

Components of the Exam

The preliminary examination consists of field bibliographies with rationale, a set of written questions, and a written and an oral exam. Make sure to check "Plan Guidelines" for requirements specific to your concentration.

1. Field bibliographies

Students prepare a set of field bibliographies, usually consisting of 90-100 items. An item is defined as a single-author book, a collection or anthology, a film, or a special journal issue. For those disciplines in which scholarly articles, rather than books, are the primary form of scholarly publication, a major article in a major journal may be counted as an item. All items must be listed in proper citation form. The bibliographies provide the basis for both the written and oral examinations.

Each plan has developed written guidelines for defining fields and constructing bibliographies. Concentrations may, for example, require a "major field" bibliography accompanied by two "minor field" bibliographies, with the "minor field" including areas either within or outside of the concentration. However configured, the total number of items should conform to the general guidelines.

2. Rationale

The bibliographies are accompanied by a rationale, of approximately 500 words, that describes the fields and explains their interrelationships and/or relation to the student's future work. The field bibliographies and rationale must be approved by the student's committee, the plan Advisory Committee, and the plan coordinator.

3. Written questions

Students prepare a set of three written questions of no more than 100 words each, for each of the three field bibliographies. Plans choosing not to have three equally weighted fields can shift the number of questions accordingly. The written questions serve several purposes: to demonstrate that the student has thought carefully and critically about significant issues or ideas raised by the texts he/she has selected and to help formulate ideas that may lead to the dissertation proposal. The examination committee may choose to ask the student some of these questions during the written or oral examination, if it wishes. Students submit their questions to the examination committee no less than two weeks before the scheduled exam.

Approval Process

In consultation with their advisor, students selecting this option prepare their field bibliographies and rationale. When the entire examination committee approves the rationale and bibliographies, the committee members must sign a Preliminary Examination Cover Sheet (available from the Graduate Program Assistant). Students then submit the signed form and copies of their materials to their plan coordinator. He/she will arrange for the plan Advisory Committee to review the student's rationale and bibliographies. The Advisory Committee may require revisions, such as the inclusion of additional items on the bibliographies or other specific changes to the lists or rationale. When the Advisory Committee has approved the materials, the plan coordinator must sign the Cover Sheet and return it to the English Graduate Studies Office. Students must give the Graduate Program Assistant a final version of the rationale and field bibliographies; these are placed in a student's file.

NOTE: Because it is not easy to schedule plan Advisory Committee meetings at certain times of the year, students are strongly encouraged to inform plan coordinators well in advance as to when they intend to submit preliminary exam materials for approval and intend to take the exam.

Written exam

The student sets a date for the written examination, in consultation with his/her committee. The student has up to three days to write the preliminary exam; these days can be separate or consecutive, by mutual agreement of the student and examination committee.

The written exam is open-book and may be taken at home, at UWM or at another location, with the consent of the committee. Written exams are ordinarily no more than 30-40 pages in length. The student's examination committee will identify appropriate page ranges for each question.

Oral exam

The oral exam should take place 7-10 days after the written exam. Students should contact the Graduate Program Assistant roughly two weeks in advance, so that a room for the oral exam can be found. The oral exam lasts for two hours and covers the written exam, bibliographies, rationale and student questions (if the committee chooses).

Plan Guidelines

Plan A: Literary Studies

In Literary Studies, students will identify a major field of literature in English, offering a field bibliography of at least fifty (50) items. A major field may be defined as a geographical or chronological period, a major literary form, or an emerging area of literature. Alternatively, a student may define or redefine a field of study and, with the support of his or her examination committee, petition the Literary Studies Advisory Committee to be examined in that field.
Students select two areas of secondary specialization, represented by bibliographies of twenty to twenty-five (20-25) items each. An area of secondary specialization may reflect study in another of the concentrations of the English graduate program or it may be a body of critical or theoretical material, a secondary literary period or form, or a single author and commentary on his or her writing.
The total number of items for the preliminary exam should be between 90 and 100. Up to one-third of these may be major theoretical or critical works. In some fields, for example Postcolonial Studies, the set of "primary" texts may include literary, cultural, and theoretical texts.

Plan B: Rhetoric and Composition

In consultation with their examination committees, students will prepare field bibliographies in three areas of study.
The written examination will consist of three questions administered in three sections over the course of two days. Students will be provided with the questions for the next session after submitting their responses to those of the preceding session. Students can elect to take two exams the first day and one the second, or vice-versa.
The oral examination will include a question or questions, where appropriate, that synthesize and connect the three field bibliographies. In effect, such a question is a fourth "rationale" that provides an overarching framework for the student's work.
Students may petition the examination committee with any requests for alternative examination arrangements (consistent with guidelines applicable to students across plans). These requests will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the student's committee and the plan coordinator.

Plan C: Creative Writing

Students will take their preliminary examinations in one broad field (see below) and two minor fields. One of the minor fields should be construed as an investigation of the kind of work the student will be presenting for the dissertation (for example: historical romance, lyric poetry, detective fiction, and hypertext). Also, one of the minor fields may be a more narrowly focused area of the broad field; the other minor filed should be focused inside a secondary broad field. The broad and minor fields are to be determined by the student, in consultation with the student's committee.

Broad fields:
1. 20th Century American Literature (including African-American and/or other minority ethnic literature)
2. 20th Century British Literature (including Neo-Colonial literature)
3. Modern Fiction (19th and 20th Centuries)
4. Modern Poetry (19th and 20th Centuries)
5. History and Theory of Criticism
6. Earlier Periods of Literature (at least two centuries)
7. History and Theory of Drama
8. Forms of Nonfiction Prose from the 17th Century to the Present
9. History and Theory of Women's Literature from the 17th Century to the Present
10. Another field of similar breadth, defined by the student and approved by the Creative Writing Advisory Committee
The bibliography for the broad field should contain 40-45 texts, with 20-25 in each of the minor fields. At least 20 secondary texts should be included overall.

Plan D: English Language and Linguistics

The student will prepare a bibliography consisting of important works in three fields. Ideally, there will be approximately 30 items in each of the field bibliographies. The fields should be distinct; that is, they should represent areas of specialization within the broad field of linguistics which are represented by their own journals. Allowable fields include, but are by no means restricted to, the following: syntax, typology, phonology, phonetics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, the linguistics of a particular language or language family, second language acquisition, first language acquisition, and computational linguistics. When the student initially submits the bibliography to his/her committee, at least 50 of the items must be annotated. Before the exam can be scheduled, a final version of the bibliography, with annotations for all of the items, must be submitted and approved by the student's examination committee and the Plan D Advisory Committee.
The written portion of the exam will be divided into three parts. The student will consult with his/her committee to determine the format of the exam, which may be all, or any combination of, "take home" and "sit down."
The oral examination will consist of questions of three sorts: those which relate generally to the fields represented in the student's bibliography, those which refer to specific works cited in the bibliography, and those which refer to answers given by the student in the written portion of the exam. The oral examination will last between one and a half and two hours.

Plan E: Modern Studies

Since the goal of a course of study in the Modern Studies Program most typically involves an unorthodox combination of materials, the Plan defines the areas covered by the field bibliographies according to the way the student intends to open up that combination methodologically. We do not expect to adopt the notion of a field defined according to the pre - existing lines of a historical, regional, or thematic identity. The articulation of the examination into its component parts will also follow this purpose. The division of the materials in the field bibliographies will most commonly follow differences in the disciplines that provide the basis for that methodological approach. For example, a project might involve combining a basis in psychoanalysis, media theory, and feminist social critique. The distribution of items comprising the field of the examination would then follow within those three focal domains. Items will typically be distributed fairly evenly across the domains.
The determination of items to be included in the bibliographies and the distribution of primary and secondary items will be done by mutual agreement of the student and the examination committee, subject to the approval of the Modern Studies Advisory Committee and Plan Coordinator.
The written exam will normally consist of three questions, but committees may recommend a different number if the area covered seems to require a different division of the material.

Plan G: Professional Writing

Please contact the Graduate Professional Writing Coordinator or Graduate Program Assistant for information regarding preliminary examination guidelines.

Preliminary Exam: Proposal Format

The Proposal

In consultation with their advisor, students choosing the proposal format prepare a preliminary examination proposal usually consisting of four to six pages of text and a list of 90-100 scholarly items. An item is defined as a single-author book, a collection or anthology, a film, or special journal issue. For those disciplines in which scholarly articles, rather than books, are the primary form of scholarly publication, a major article in a major journal may be counted as an item. All items must be listed in proper citation form. The exam can be organized in a number of ways: by genre, historical period, theoretical or critical concern or other rationale that delineates a coherent group of texts. The area(s) should be broad and comprehensive. The exam is designed both as an exploration of texts and ideas that will feed into the dissertation project and as demonstration of expertise in a student's chosen areas.

Approval Process

The student's examination committee must approve the preliminary exam proposal and sign a Preliminary Examination Cover Sheet (available from the Graduate Program Assistant). The student must then give the original Cover Sheet and original Proposal along with 14 copies of the proposal and cover sheet to the Graduate Program Assistant one week in advance of the GPC meeting at which the proposal will be considered. GPC meeting dates and dates for submission of materials for GPC consideration are posted in the English Graduate Studies Office, in the mailroom, and on bulletin boards and walls on the fourth and fifth floors of Curtin Hall. The student's advisor or one member of the examination committee attends the GPC meeting at which the student's proposal is considered.

The GPC can reject the proposal and return it for further work. If it does, the GPC must explain why it rejected the proposal and what revisions are required.

Written exam

Oral exam

The oral exam should take place 7-10 days after the written exam. Students should contact the Graduate Program Assistant roughly two weeks in advance, so that a room for the oral exam can be found. The oral exam lasts for two hours and covers the written exam, book list, proposal, and plans for the dissertation.