PhD Requirements
coursework
During the first three years in the program, students take 13 graduate seminars, two of which are required: History of Criticism and Seminar in Pedagogy. The remainder of the courses needed to complete the PhD may be taken from a range of course offerings in areas such as early modern literature, global studies, world cinema, rhetoric, queer theory, Shakespeare, literacy and pedagogy, Victorian fiction, and the African-Arabic novel; and courses focused on the work of figures such as Michel Foucault, W. E. B. DuBois, George Eliot, Jean-Luc Godard, and Gilles Deleuze.
Our course offerings are diverse, reflecting the many research interests of our graduate faculty, although we have particular strengths in, cultural theory and criticism, film studies, rhetoric and literacy, global studies, American literature, early modern literature, and nineteenth-century British literature and culture.
At the end of coursework, each student is required to organize five elective seminars into a “teaching and research field.” This is a way to conceptualize one’s coursework in relation to future work, both at the level of the PhD Project (see below), and one’s future work as a scholar and teacher. To see what we are currently teaching, please follow the link to this year's Graduate Seminars on the right-hand side of this page.
language requirement
PhD candidates must demonstrate proficiency in two languages or comprehensive command in a single language.
Normally this requirement is fulfilled through advanced readings courses or examinations administered by the foreign language departments at the University of Pittsburgh. Language requirements must be fulfilled before a student takes the PhD project examinations, described below.
phd project
At the end of the third year, students develop a critical project that functions as the comprehensive examination required to achieve doctoral candidacy. This project defines an area of study sufficiently broad in scope to suggest a range of long-term intellectual goals that build on previous coursework and prepare them for more focused dissertation work. For example, past projects have brought together nineteenth-century fiction and feminist nationalism, popular film and the history of sexuality, literacy and literary history, globality and the Irish Renaissance, Indian cinema and global media, composition studies and Foucaultian critique, and Renaissance prose and the history of Protestantism.
The first phase of the project involves a project proposal, a 10-page document with bibliography developed in consultation with a student-formed project committee. Between the end of the third year and the end of the fall term of the fourth year, students write a 30-page project paper or papers that explore some of the problems and issues laid out in the proposal and developed in the course of their research. The final phase of the PhD project is a written and oral exam, which takes place before the second term of the fourth year. The exam phase of the project builds on the proposal, the bibliography, and the project paper.
The overarching goals of the PhD project are to prepare students for the broadly informed yet in-depth inquiry required of a dissertation, and to facilitate participation in the critical intellectual activity of English studies.
dissertation prospectus
After students have passed their project examinations, they will register for Independent Study credits (normally during the spring term of the fourth year in the program) in order to write a prospectus for the dissertation. The student should choose a dissertation director and a committee at this time. Once a dissertation committee has been formed, the students submit a formal dissertation prospectus to the commitee for approval.
dissertation
Once students have had their dissertation prospectus passed and have been admitted to doctoral candidacy, they should begin the work of researching and writing the dissertation. Normally students will complete the dissertation during the fifth and sixth years in the program. Review Pitt's Graduate Studies web site for more information.
