Comprehensive Examination
The comprehensive exam is administered twice each academic year, once in October and once in March. Normally, it will be undertaken in a student's final semester. At the beginning of each regular semester, the graduate director will invite students to register their intent to take the exam.
The entire exam will be based on a reading list of nine works, which can be found below. The exam consists of two parts: one short answer and more "objective" than the second part, which is an essay covering the three "periods" (pre- and post-1800 British literature, and American literature) and at least two genres. The first part of the exam will ask students to write a full paragraph on each of ten prompts that are taken from the texts (you'll have twelve to choose from). These might be concepts or characters, ideas or identifications, but all will derive from the nine texts. Likewise, the essay will require you to draw on selective works from this master list, and will require you to be conversant with the general, current critical conversation surrounding these texts.We encourage students to form and utilize study groups.
Exam Dates,
2009/2010:
Fall: October
17, 2009: Citadel, Bond Hall 255, 9 am - 12 pm
Spring: March
27, 2010: College of Charleston, room TBA, 2 pm - 5 pm
Previous Exams: Fall 2004
Spring 2005 Fall 2005 Spring 2006 Fall 2006
Spring 2007 Fall 2007 Spring 2008 Fall 2008 Spring 2009
Reading List: Fall 2009 / Spring 2010
pre-1800 British:
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowles
- William Shakespeare, King Lear
- Jonathan Swift, "The Battle of the Books"
post-1800 British:
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
- Ted Hughes, Crow
American:
- Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man
- Eudora Welty, The Golden Apples
- Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street