Purdue University College of Liberal Arts
Information for
Theory and Cultural Studies
Examination
The TCS preliminary exam will be designed and administered by the student's three-person advisory committee. The exam will address a well-defined research area chosen by the student. The requirements for the TCS Ph.D. preliminary examination are generally the same as those of the English Department Ph.D. preliminary examination. A reading list for the examination should include, but need not be restricted to, approximately thirty book-length texts, or the comparable amount of reading, agreed upon by the candidate and the examination committee. Certain works, such as Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or Deleuze and Guattari's Thousand Plateaus (each over 600 pages of difficult reading), may be considered as requiring more effort than other books, while some articles, such as, say, Derrida's "White Mythology" (in Margins of Philosophy), which is about 100 pages in length, may count as a book. These matters should be appropriately discussed between each candidate and the committee.
As part of the examination process, a dissertation prospectus will be prepared, and an oral defense will take place with the student's three-person advisory committee.