Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree


No specific number of hours of coursework is prescribed for the Ph.D. degree (except for a minor outside of the Department).  Students normally complete course work with sixteen to eighteen graduate courses beyond the B.A.  The following courses are required: two seminars in the major; and one seminar in the minor; English 131; at least three hours of dissertation work (English 394).

Although no further coursework is required, it is assumed that doctoral students will continue to take courses relevant to their professional development.  In consultation with their advisors, students concentrate in field-specific training in their majors and minors, leading to the production of the dissertation; at the same time they may choose to pursue training in genre, literary theory, or further generalist study.  As interdisciplinary studies may also be appropriate to some research projects and career plans, students should consult the availability of appropriate courses in other departments via the Graduate Course Clearinghouse.

Students entering in the fall of 2008 will be required to take another 3 hours of seminar work for the doctorate, in addition to the requirements outlined above.

A majority of students choose their major from the following fields:

Students may also petition for an alternative major.

Minors
The major must be chosen from Groups II through XII.  The minor also is ordinarily chosen from the same groups (including Group I, The English Language).  With the support of two faculty mentors, students may petition the Graduate Advisory Committee to allow an alternative minor.  They should submit that petition with the form they submit in August declaring their intention to take the Ph.D. exams.  Minors in American Studies, Renaissance Studies, Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies are determined by their respective curricula and have their own set of requirements.  It is possible to minor outside the Department in other areas with permission of the Director of Graduate Studies.  Minors in American Studies, Renaissance Studies, Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies are determined by their respective curricula and have their own set of requirements. For all other outside minors, however, students must present at least fifteen credit hours of approved work (listed outside of or cross-listed with English) and be tested in this minor via the standard three-hour written Ph.D. examination followed by an oral examination in conjunction with the Major.  A member of the faculty representing the outside minor must serve on the student’s written and oral examination committee.

Residence Credit:  A minimum residence credit of four full semesters which must be spent in continuous registration on this campus is required of all Ph.D. students.  Two of these semesters must comprise contiguous registration of at least six hours each; the remaining two may be earned over a longer period of time, and during noncontiguous semesters, if so desired.  All must be earned through UNC-CH registration—transfer credits can not be applied.  Residence credit earned on work for a master’s degree at UNC-CH is applicable as residence credit for a doctoral degree.  The residence credit requirement should be completed before the doctoral written and oral examinations are taken.  (Please see http://handbook.unc.edu/residencecredit.html for more information). 

Transfer of Credit:  A doctoral student may transfer required teacher training, philology, and foreign language courses from accredited institutions with the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies.  Grades earned on transferred work must be equivalent to B or better.  Normally, required seminars do not transfer.  Students may transfer a maximum of 6 hours credit.

Demonstration of Proficiency In Two Foreign Languages:  [provide link to previous discussion] 

 Departmental Examinations:  Candidates for the Ph.D. must pass three examinations administered by the Department: a written examination in the major and minor, an oral examination in the major and minor, and an oral defense of the completed dissertation.

Ph.D. Written Exam:  The written examination in the major and minor consists of three hours of writing on the minor and six hours on the major.  Students should take their written examinations no later than the third semester of their doctoral studies (their seventh semester in the graduate program—or the fourth semester for students admitted directly into the Ph.D. program after earning an MA elsewhere).  Continued Teaching Fellow support is directly linked to satisfactory progress toward the degree.  A student must notify the department in August of the year before he or she plans to take either the Fall or Spring exams.  The student will take an individualized exam, composed by a five-member committee (three in the major; two in the minor), one of whom the student will designate as the anticipated dissertation advisor, and one of whom the Director of Graduate Studies will designate as Chair.  Students may request specific faculty, but the final choice of committee rests with the Director of Graduate Studies.  The student works closely with that committee in preparation for the exam.  Consulting the comprehensive list of titles for the subject areas in her or his major and minor, the student and committee prepare an individual focused list of works, reflecting the student’s interests and anticipated dissertation work.  While the individual list does not entirely constitute the exam, it gives the student a focus of study during the year preceding the exam and provides a focus for discussion between the student and committee. 

Year Before Exams Meeting: As soon as Ph.D. exam committees are confirmed by the Director of Graduate Studies (a year prior to the exams), students should schedule a meeting with their committee to discuss and confirm their reading lists. The examination committee and the student will meet as a group a year before the scheduled exam.  In this meeting, the committee will come to a consensus on the final reading list, and the student will have the opportunity to ask questions about the examination format.  Use the following the form to arrange this meeting and submit it to the Graduate Studies Office.  It is the responsibility of the student’s Dissertation Director to help the student arrange this meeting and any others needed prior to the exams.

Exam Assessments: The examinations are graded as Pass with Distinction (H), Pass (P), or Fail (F); pluses or minuses, while sometimes awarded, make no difference in the student’s official grade.  Students taking the examination for the first time shall fail if they do not receive a grade of P or H on both the major and the minor portions of the examination.  Such failure will be reported to the Graduate School on the appropriate form as failure of the examination.  Failing students shall be required to retake only the part or parts on which they received an F, however.  As a rule, they will not be allowed to substitute a major or minor different from the one they have failed.  Graduate School regulations require that at least three months elapse before a second taking of an examination.  On retaking, students must pass all remaining parts of the examination with a grade of P or H or they will be judged to have failed the examination for the second time.

Student Responsibilities in Preparing to Re-Take Examinations:  A student who has failed an examination is responsible for making an appointment with the faculty member named in the letter from the Director of Graduate Studies within a month of receiving the letter or by the end of the semester, whichever is earlier.  After this meeting, the student is urged to consult other members of the examining committee.

The student should bring to the meeting a list of course work in the area of the failed examination and a brief description of the way in which he or she had prepared for the examination, including his or her focused reading lists as well as the comprehensive list for the field(s).

After the conference, the student is encouraged to make up a revised study plan, incorporating suggestions from the faculty member.  This plan may be presented to the faculty member for review at the student's initiative.

The student should keep the Director of Graduate Studies informed of the progress being made in preparing for the retake so that a second examination can be scheduled in a timely manner.  As already noted, Graduate School regulations require that at least three months elapse before the second taking of an examination.

Oral Exam in the Major and Minor:  After passing both the major and minor written examinations, students will take, within the same semester, a two-hour oral examination on the major and minor.  Graduate School regulations stipulate that students must have fulfilled, or will have fulfilled by the end of the semester in which the oral doctoral examination is to be taken, all of the required course work.  The minimum residence credit requirement for the doctorate should also be satisfied at this time. The student’s appointed committee will examine in both the written and oral portions.  The oral examination will use the student's written examinations as a point of departure but may cover any aspect of the major or minor.  A majority of the five committee members must judge the candidate’s performance acceptable for a passing grade.

The oral examination includes a twenty-minute area of questioning on a well-defined research subject designated by the student and his or her presumed dissertation director as the general topic of the dissertation. This research area would necessarily be a subset of either the major or the minor.  Possible areas of study might be:  nineteenth-century travel literature, slave narratives, medieval saints' lives, etc. This area would be reflected in the student’s focused reading list.  The student might begin this section of the oral exam with a brief presentation of issues he or she explored while working through the focused reading list.

Graduate School Policy Concerning Doctoral Examinations

A doctoral student who fails either a doctoral written or oral examination may not take the examination a second time until at least three months have elapsed.

A student who fails an examination for the second time becomes ineligible for further graduate work.  Upon request from the student’s director of Graduate Studies, The Graduate School may grant a student a third and final opportunity to take the examination.  No student may continue in a program or take an examination a third time without approval by the Administrative Board of the Graduate School.
(The Graduate School Handbook, 2004-2005, pg. 2.20.)

 Dissertation Prospectus:  Within one academic semester after having passed the Ph.D. oral, a doctoral student, in consultation with an advisor, should provide a written prospectus (including a copy for the Director of Graduate Studies) that demonstrates (1) knowledge of scholarship in the area, (2) an awareness of the scope of the subject, and (3) a provisional approach to the problem.  The names of the members of a dissertation committee must be submitted by the Director of Graduate Studies to the Graduate School for approval.  This committee is usually set up in consultation between the dissertation advisor and the candidate.  The Ph.D. examination committee and the dissertation committee need not be the same, although some overlap of membership is probable.  At least 3 members of the Committee must be on the tenured or tenure-track faculty of the UNC-CH English Department.  The Committee meets to examine the prospectus, and its members are available for consultation throughout the writing of the dissertation and will constitute the committee for the oral defense of the completed dissertation.  All five members of the committee must be present at the meeting.  Once the committee and the date of the prospectus have been determined, the student should notify the Administrative Assistant in Graduate Studies so the appropriate memos and forms can be prepared.

Dissertation:  The Department expects the completed dissertation to make a significant contribution to its field and to prove that its writer has mastered the research methods of the discipline.

A student is expected to consult with members of his or her dissertation committee at frequent intervals and is required to submit a progress report to each member at least once a year, around May 1.

Early in the semester in which students expect to defend their dissertations, they must file applications for graduation.  At this time they must also reserve a date for the defense after consulting committee members.

The final oral defense of the dissertation may take place only after all members of the committee have had adequate opportunity to review the draft of the dissertation that the student and the dissertation director are prepared to submit for final typing.  The dissertation director is responsible to members of the committee for ensuring that the draft is in a form appropriate for their evaluation.  The draft of the dissertation must be submitted to members of the committee one month prior to the scheduled defense. 

The final oral is in the strict sense a defense of the dissertation, but the student may also be asked questions relating the dissertation to its field.  Interested students and faculty are invited to attend and participate, if they choose, in the questioning.  At the time of the defense but no later, the committee may require alterations in the dissertation.  The dissertation advisor will be responsible for ensuring that the required alterations have been made, but may delegate that responsibility to the committee members who proposed the requirement.  When the requirement has been met, the Report on the Final Oral Examination is submitted to the Director of Graduate Studies, and the dissertation, in final printed form designed to meet the standards defined in A Guide to the Preparation of Theses and Dissertations, is registered with the Graduate School.  Deadlines for submitting a dissertation to the Graduate School and registering for graduation are inflexible and are given in the "Calendar of Events" in the Graduate Bulletin and the Summer School Bulletin.  A graduation checklist is available in the Graduate Studies Office.

University Microfilms International publishes Dissertation Abstracts International which includes a copy of every UNC doctoral student's dissertation abstract.  University Microfilms International will not publish doctoral abstracts that exceed 350 words.  A longer abstract may be included in the body of the dissertation, provided a shorter version is submitted for University Microfilms International.

Scheduling Oral Examinations:  Examinations on the major and minor and the defense of the dissertation must take place during Fall and Spring terms.  Again, continued Teaching Fellow support is directly linked to satisfactory progress toward the degree.  Students should be examined on their prospectuses no later than the sixth semester of their doctoral studies.  They should begin to arrange the date for the dissertation defense one semester in advance.

Time Limit:  Normally, the Ph.D. program is completed in four years of study beyond the M.A.  The Graduate School requires that, for those students given permission to proceed, the Ph.D. be earned within eight calendar years from the date of the receipt of the master’s degree.  Direct-admit Ph.D.s have eight years from first registration in the doctoral program.