Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences 0 courses
The department of Comparative Thought and Literature offers a PhD in humanistic studies, including a program in comparative thought and literature. Priority is given to highly-qualified candidates whose proposed course of study is congruent with faculty interests and strengths. Tuition grants, stipends, and teaching fellowships are available to doctoral candidates. Each PhD student works with a committee of faculty members who helps to design a coherent, individual program of study. During the first two years, the candidate works closely with each of their advisors. The course of study, seminars, and tutorials lead to three area examinations administered by the department and committee. During the second year, qualified students are invited to teach under faculty supervision, and occasionally students may offer undergraduate seminars of their own design. PhD students choosing a focus in comparative literature should be competent in three national literatures and have a general familiarity with critical theory. Students are encouraged to spend at least one year studying abroad, usually working in Paris, Florence, Hamburg, Geneva, or Madrid in programs sponsored by the department or the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Students can become supervised teaching assistants in the German Program in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and they can earn a master’s degree in German upon completion of the field examinations, before their doctoral degree is completed. Similar arrangements can generally be made with the Department of Classics and the programs in the Modern Languages and Literatures. New PhD students will work with the department chair to select a faculty member to serve as a primary academic advisor. As a student’s interests become defined, they may change advisors or work with a faculty member in another department. Students who choose to work with a faculty member outside of the department should meet regularly with the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature’s director of graduate studies. During their third year of residence, after completing all outstanding seminar papers, students will have their work reviewed by a faculty committee. The committee will comprise three faculty members from the department and the faculty members from the other departments with whom the student plans to conduct field exams. The review allows the faculty to assess the student’s progress, clarify their status in regards to remaining course work, and define future fields. Prior to the meeting, the student should circulate materials that they judge to be work that will best serve the purpose of the review. In their third and fourth years, students are expected to complete three field exams. The exams may serve to help students refine their dissertation topics, or they may be a means of extending and deepening students’ knowledge of an area in which they propose to teach and conduct research. The examinations may take a variety of forms, and the form should be discussed at the student’s third-year review. Examples include: Work further on a project begun in a seminar and produce a longer paper that would become part of a dissertation
The Johns Hopkins University catalog does not list a course sequence for this program.
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