Prelims

The committee for the preliminary examinations consists of three or four faculty members, each representing a field in which the student chooses to be examined. At least one faculty member must be affiliated with History, and one with Women’s Studies (usually the WS 891 advisor).

Overall, the committee should have a balanced representation from both History and Women’s and Gender Studies.

Preparation for Exams:

• Collaboration: Students should work closely with their prelims committee to prepare for the exams.
• Reading List: At least six months before the exam, students must discuss with each committee member a provisional draft list of readings. This list should include scholarship in History, interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies, and feminist theory. The list should be reviewed with each committee member to understand the expected process of preparation.

Faculty Responsibilities:

• Faculty members have a responsibility to ensure that their leaves or sabbaticals do not negatively affect a student’s timeline for taking preliminary exams and achieving candidacy.

Definition of a Prelim Field 

A field is a comprehensive area of knowledge and inquiry. The scope of a field can vary widely in terms of its breadth and depth. When defining your fields for the preliminary exams, aim to strike a balance:

• Avoid being too narrow: A field should not be so limited that it feels like a mere bibliography for a research paper.
• Avoid being too broad: A field should not be so expansive that it only allows a superficial understanding of the scholarship.

Consider the Following When Identifying and Preparing Your Field:

1. Field Parameters: What are the boundaries and scope of the field?
2. Methodologies and Approaches: What different methodologies or approaches have shaped the field’s development?
3. Perennial Questions: What key questions have historians and feminists in this field sought to answer? How have their answers varied?
4. Current Topics and Themes: What are the most important topics or themes in the field today?
5. Debates: What are the current debates among historians and feminist scholars in the field?
6. Essential Works: What are the major works that anyone contributing to this field should read?
7. Future Research Directions: What directions for future research in this field are particularly interesting or promising?
8. Impact of Feminist Scholarship: How has feminist scholarship influenced this field? What Women’s and Gender Studies scholarship might be relevant?

Outcome
Students should come away from this process with a strong understanding of their fields. They should feel confident in their ability to explain these fields to others, develop course syllabi, and pursue research in these areas.

For the written prelim component, students have a choice of preparing either a state-of-field historiographic paper or a four-hour written exam (see below). Whichever format is elected, the exam is read and evaluated by the chair of the prelim committee and one other committee member. In special cases, a faculty member who is not a committee member may be asked to serve as the second reader. The prelims chair must notify the graduate office that the written exam is acceptable at least 24 hours in advance of the scheduled oral exam. Passing of the written exam is required to proceed with the oral exam.

The topic of the historiographic paper will be established by the prelim chair. Students have 2 weeks to complete this paper. It should be approximately 20-30 pages in length and should critically analyze current directions and methods of scholarship in your major field. It is due to the prelim chair and second reader 3 days before the oral exam and must be graded at least 24 hours before the oral exam. Passing is required to proceed with the oral exam. 

Instead of the historiographic paper, students may choose to take a timed written exam. The written exam is taken within two weeks of, and at least two days before, the oral prelim. It may be “open” or “closed” book or a combination of the two, in accordance with the examiner’s choice. The chosen format must be made explicit to the student well in advance of the examination and indicated clearly, in writing, on the Preliminary Exam Information Form. The written exam typically consists of one question to be answered in four hours or two questions to be answered in two hours each. The prelims chair usually devises the written exam, although in some cases the prelims chair and a second committee member will each contribute one question.

The exam is read and evaluated by the chair of the prelim committee and one other committee member. In special cases, a faculty member who is not a committee member may be asked to serve as the second reader. The exam is generally four hours, with 30 minutes additional time for breaks. During the exam, consultation with another person or cutting and pasting from previously written documents is not allowed. The prelims chair must notify the graduate office and the student of the exam results. If the written exam is not acceptable, the graduate office must be notified at least 24 hours in advance of the scheduled oral exam. If the student does not pass the written portion, the oral portion is not taken.

Email Option. With committee agreement, you may take the exam at home, receiving the questions via email. In this case, the prelims chair should provide the questions to the History Graduate Office at least 48 hours before the exam. The student will receive the question(s) from the office by email, at a pre-arranged time (taken between 8-5pm, Monday - Friday). Time stamps on the relevant emails will be used to verify that the exam was finished within the time limit. Once the grad office receives the finished exam, it will be forwarded to the relevant faculty.

The oral exam, approximately two hours in length, usually covers three fields and should be taken within two weeks of a successful written exam or historiographic paper. After the conclusion of the exam, each member of the committee grades the student’s performance in his or her own field by ballot. There are three possible grades: “pass,” “low pass,” and “failure.” Automatic failure results when a student receives all “low pass” grades, or one grade of “failure” and two grades of “low pass.” If grades in the individual fields exceed these minimum standards, the committee discusses the student’s overall performance, including whether to pass or fail the student on the exam as a whole. In rare cases, a grade of “pass with distinction” may be awarded for the entire examination, though not for individual fields.

It is the prelim chair’s responsibility to inform the student of the result and to state the committee’s consensus in a final report, the Prelim Exam Results Record. The final report records a grade for the written exam, the three individual grades of the oral exam, one overall grade, and a description of the student’s general performance. A student who fails one or more portions of the prelim exam must submit a petition to all members of the prelim committee requesting re-examination (or, in the latter case, to take the exam), if they wish to remain in the program. The petition should outline concrete steps the student plans to take to address problems identified by the prelim committee and a timeline for completing those steps. The views of each member of the prelim committee will be solicited and collected by the prelim chair. On the basis of the petition and committee members’ opinions, the prelim chair has the option to recommend re-examining the student (in a format decided upon by the committee chair), or to terminate the student from the program. The student’s petition, along with the prelim committee chair’s recommendation and documentation of the other committee members’ views, should be sent to the History DGS and Graduate Committee for review and a final decision.

A student who is allowed to retake the exam must do so before the beginning of the fourth year in order to be eligible for department fellowship support.

Joint History and Women’s Studies students are exempt from the Teaching Portfolio requirement since the prelims already cover the extra Women’s Studies field.

Students must prepare a reading list for each field in consultation with their committee members. Each list should have between 50-150 works, with a total of 200-300 works across all 3 fields of study. These lists must be submitted to the prelim data using this Google Form by the time their oral exam takes place.